ABSTRACT
The story of the clarinet in jazz is a remarkable and uneven one. From the beginnings of jazz, the clarinet and the cornet established themselves as the foremost expressive voices of the music. The clarinet progressed from its role as the mainstay of the jazz group front line (primarily the cornet, clarinet, and trombone) to the star soloists’ instrument of the swing era with figures such as Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, to finding itself, by the end of the 1940s, no longer playing a part in the way the art form progressed (a role taken over in reed playing terms by saxophone players). On the face of it a neat generalization, but this reflects the New Orleans roots of a music based on ensemble improvisation, a soloist’s need to play and be heard over a swing big band, and in bebop with the notion of individualism in jazz and the development of jazz as an “art form.” Jazz prior to bebop had in many ways been perceived as purely “entertainment” rather than “art,” as if these were mutually exclusive epithets: the Louis Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens (1926–28), Jelly Roll Morton’s 1926 to 1928 recordings, the 1940 Duke Ellington Orchestra, and the Benny Goodman Sextet/Septets (1939–40) are some of the finest examples of any art produced in the twentieth century.
