Returning to New York, he became a session musician through the early 1930s. From 1925 to 1936, Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras; from 1926 to 1929, he worked in Cleveland and established a lasting reputation as music director and arranger for an orchestra led by the violinist Austin Wylie. In 1929 and 1930, he played with Irving Aaronson's Commanders, where he was exposed to symphonic music, which he would later incorporate in his arrangements. In 1932, Shaw joined the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra and made several recordings with the outfit including "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" and "Fit as a Fiddle".
Like his main rival,[11] Benny Goodman, and other leaders of big bands, Shaw fashioned a smaller "band within the band" in 1940.[8] He named it Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five after his home telephone exchange.[7] Band pianist Johnny Guarnieri played harpsichord on the quintet recordings, and Al Hendrickson played electric guitar. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge became part of the group, succeeding Billy Butterfield. In 1940, the original Gramercy Five cut eight sides, then Shaw dissolved the band in early 1941. The Gramercy Five's biggest hit was "Summit Ridge Drive", one of Shaw's million-selling records. His last prewar band, organized in September 1941, included Oran "Hot Lips" Page, Max Kaminsky, Georgie Auld, Dave Tough, Jack Jenney, Ray Conniff and Guarnieri.[12]
Artie Shaw played ukulele at ten and began as an alto saxophonist at the age of twelve. While still in his teens he formed his first band, the Bellevue Ramblers which performed at local gigs. He took up the clarinet in 1926 and spent several years honing his talent playing for various local bands in Florida and Ohio, often doubling up as an arranger and tenor sax player. He arrived in New York in 1929, participated in numerous recording sessions and quickly established a reputation for technical excellence on his chosen instrument. In his 1952 autobiographical book "The Trouble with Cinderella" he described himself as a mediocre talent who improved himself through countless hours of rehearsal. That self-critique notwithstanding, Shaw was a consummate perfectionist, almost to the point of obsession. He was unconventional, highly literate and often difficult to deal with. He hated 'annoying fans', eschewed fame for its own sake, avoided publicity whenever possible and rarely did encores. He was also a gifted musician, able to draw a richer, cleaner sound out of his instrument than any other contemporary clarinet player. Artie himself recalled "I didn't play clarinet. I played music".
Shaw formed his first band in 1936 (featuring a string quartet) but was unhappy with the result, disbanded and the following year set up a full-size conventional swing orchestra (three trumpets, two trombones, four saxes, four rhythm). He had his first million selling success for Bluebird Records with a Jerry Gray arrangement of the Cole Porter song "Begin the Beguine" which quickly became a swing standard and established the band as one of the best in the business. On October 26 1938, the Shaw orchestra opened at the Blue Room of the Hotel Lincoln on New York's Eighth Avenue, complete with a coast-to-coast radio hook up. More hits followed with "Yesterdays", "Out of Nowhere", "Nightmare" (his theme), "Softly As in A Morning Sunrise" and "Any Old Time" (famous for a magnificent vocal by Billie Holiday). Artie himself acquired the sobriquet "King of the Clarinet" as opposed to his perennial rival Benny Goodman who was known as "the King of Swing" (incidentally, this 'rivalry' was entirely orchestrated by publicists -- there was never any genuine ill-will between the two). Shaw later recalled "We weren't playing dance music. Our music was for listening primarily......If we had wanted to play just dance music, I could have saved myself an awful lot of money on some of the sidemen I paid". Those sidemen over the years included jazz greats like drummer Buddy Rich (whom Artie referred to as the band's 'spark plug'), Georgie Auld, Johnny Best, Ray Conniff and Billy Butterfield . Shaw also consistently hired top notch singers, foremost among them Helen Forrest, Kitty Kallen, Peg La Centra and Bea Wain. Sadly, Billie Holiday's tenure with the band was short-lived. Issues with racial discrimination came to a head at various New York concert venues and on radio broadcasts, forcing her to quit.
Nothing if not mercurial, Shaw folded the band at the peak of its popularity and left suddenly for self-imposed exile in Mexico. He stayed only a couple of months, gigging with local musicians and collecting traditional songs. Back in the U.S. in January 1940, he began work on the musical Second Chorus (1940). The film was a rare failure for its star Fred Astaire and Shaw also recalled it as the worst movie he ever made. On the positive side, he cut two hugely successful recordings of songs he had unearthed in Mexico: "Frenesi" and "Adios, Mariquita Linda". His new band now included a string section and a sextet nucleus which would become known as "Artie Shaw and His Gramercy Five". This incarnation, too, only lasted a few months as did the one which succeeded it. Fed up with celebrity, Artie enlisted in the U.S. Navy in April 1942 and eventually assembled the Rangers, a 17-piece orchestra which toured the Pacific theatre from Pearl Harbour to Guadalcanal. The band performed in jungles and aircraft hangars, surviving seventeen bombing attacks from Japanese aircraft while en route from island to island. In November 1943, Shaw was medically discharged and later hospitalised with a severe case of nervous depression. His wartime band was taken over by saxophonist Sam Donahue. It retained its popularity with service personnel and recorded many successful V-discs. Meanwhile, Shaw recuperated in Hollywood and eventually put together another 17-piece outfit which featured Barney Kessel on guitar, Dodo Marmarosa on piano and arrangements by Ray Conniff. Among the big selling hits for this group were "S'Wonderful" and "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive". After switching his record affiliation to Musicraft, Shaw added more strings and woodwinds. He recorded several excellent Cole Porter tracks with Mel Tormà and his vocal group, the Mel-Tones. Again, the venture merely lasted a year. For Artie Shaw "the personal price was too great. I wanted to do other things. And I just didn't have the temperament to stay on the scene too long". His final throw of the dice was the creation of a band playing bop-style jazz in 1949. It failed to find much of an audience and Shaw decided to call it a day. By the mid-50s, he had forsaken the instrument which made him famous and turned to writing. He even authored a novel about three failed marriages, titled "I Love You. I Hate You. Drop Dead". He may have had certain insights, since his unsettled private life seemed to mirror his career: married eight times, his wives have included actresses Ava Gardner, Lana Turner and Evelyn Keyes.
Shaw came out of retirement on rare occasions, notably at a London concert in June 1992 in which some of his music was performed by Bob Wilber.
At last in one CD the complete and rare recordings made by the outstanding saxophonist Frank Socolow as a leader.
Frank Socolow was an excellent tenor saxophonist who unfortunately never rose beyond the rank of journeyman. His transitional style on the tenor was heard with many dance bands, which formed the bulk of his employment in the music business. Having worked the reed section for Boyd Raeburn, Buddy Rich, Chubby Jackson and Artie Shaw, Frank was highly acclaimed by his music colleagues yet, as often happens, his fame as a soloist escaped wider notice, which could be direct result of him being such a good section man. The three first tracks features legendary pianist Bud Powell.
His first appearance as a band leader was in 1936 at the first ever Swing Concert at Broadway's Imperial Theatre. The birth of American Big Band Jazz was upon us. He hired Billie Holiday to sing for his band, making himself the first white band leader to hire a black woman full time to sing with a band. He recorded Begin the Beguine, as he says, "a nice little tune from Cole Porter's very few flop shows. Shortly after, Artie's popularity skyrocketed, and his band's salary topped off at $60,000 weekly, an extraordinary amount for a band at that time. He recorded many more popular hits, including Moonglow, Dancing in the Dark, and Star Dust. Disillusioned by the music business once again, Artie took off for Mexico, and later joined the navy in WWII. He formed a service band and was later medically discharged. After a disastrous marriage to Betty Kern (Jerome's daughter), Artie turned back to jazz in 1944, touring the US with his band and making many recordings. He blew his last clarinet note in 1954, and turned to writing, buying a dairy farm and later moving to a mountain in Spain.
These recordings were a big hit with the public in the early days of the Great Depression and provided easy, cheap entertainment to the masses. However, as the depression wore on sales slumped. the last Hit of the Week issue was released in June 1932.
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