Artie Shaw, King of the Clarinet: His Life and Times

During America’s Swing Era, no musician was more successful or controversial than the legendary big-band leader, virtuoso clarinetist and renegade in music and romance, Artie Shaw. He broke racial barriers by collaborating with African American musicians, had seven wives (including Lana Turner and Ava Gardner), cultivated fierce rivalries, then stopped playing at the height of his powers. Inveterate reader and author of three books, he befriended the best-known writers of his time. Tom Nolan interviewed Shaw between 1990 and his death in 2004 and spoke with one hundred of his colleagues and contemporaries. This compulsively readable biography (The Wall Street Journal) follows Shaw’s various zigzags with aplomb (Ted Gioia, San Francisco Chronicle) capturing the man and his era with candour and insight, bringing the master to vivid life and restoring him to his rightful place in jazz history.