TeledyN

In the "Big Band Era" there was no bigger star in the music universe than Artie Shaw. The jazz clarinetist and bandleader's rendition of Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" was one of the best-known songs of the 20th century. Shaw's recording of "Begin the Beguine" sold millions.

"Begin the Beguine" transformed the clarinet virtuoso into a pop star -- darkly handsome with squealing jitterbuggers in the audience and glamour girls on his arm.

But Shaw was more at home in the jazz life. In the 1938 session that launched 'Begin the Beguine', he recorded another tune called 'Any Old Time', featuring Billie Holiday, who was little known at the time. Shaw had persuaded Holiday to join his big band at a time when a black singer in a white band was shocking. "I knew that was going to be kind of scandalous, but she was a good singer," he says.

Shaw, who began recording in 1936, walked away from the business -- and his clarinet -- 18 years later. He says he didn't enjoy the life of a star and that his struggle for perfection was killing him. "I was very uncomfortable," he explains. "I played the role called Artie Shaw. People (ask) me for autographs, so I (say), 'I got out of the Artie Shaw business about 50 years ago.' That's why I walked out. I walked out of the business at my peak. I quit."

• Program 3 - April, 1971 - Artie Shaw, Part 1
• Program 4 - May, 1971 - Artie Shaw - Part 2

WTIC's Arnold Dean interviews and plays the music of Artie Shaw. When most youngsters are playing basketball in the backyard Artie Shaw was, after only two lessons (free with the sax purchase) already playing saxophone with Johnny Cavallero and his orchestra in his home town of New Haven. There he met Charlie Spivak, Tony Pastor and Rudy Vallee before taking up the clarinet and heading for Florida at the age of 16 ("I was terrible, but I was under age so he couldn't dump me there; by the time we were done, I was pretty good")

Artie Shaw talks shop about the early days of the Big Four and the discipline of the showbands and radio houseband work before the rise, and fall, of Swing, and he explains his simple approach to his self-taught versitility, from saxman to virtuoso clarinetist to million-selling writer and arranger, painter, author and husband to a string of hollywood starlets: you just go do it.