ABSTRACT
Arthur Jacob Arshawsky was no stranger to success, nor to the controversy that sometimes came with it. Born in 1910, on New York’s Lower East Side, he had come through several (often sensational) phases of his career by the time he signed Hot Lips Page to be his featured trumpet soloist in 1941. After starting out as an alto saxophonist with a predilection for Debussy, Stravinsky, and Willie “The Lion” Smith, Arshawsky, the son of Austrian immigrants, shortened his named to Shaw, took up the clarinet, and soon achieved virtuoso status on that instrument.
