THE RETURN OF THE CLARINET!

After more than 30 years of having abandoned it, I finally got another chance to play the clarinet thanks to a much welcome recent birthday gift.  But of course, it has been so long, I have to remember how to play the instrument, so I'm back to my beginner's days and dusting off those old clarinet courses, charts and tutorials. I'm back to square one with embouchure, fingering, tone and reed control.

Will I ever attain professional status?  Of course not! Will I become the next Benny Goodman? Never! 

But the point here is to just have fun and play to myself trying not to squeak much and flub as less as possible.  Music, maestro, please!

My first year trying to get some decent sound out of the instrument!

After much practice, I was proficient enough to get a gig on stage at a small dinner theater, playing

 "As Time Goes By" and "St. Louis Blues" in a musical show!

The day I got my new clarinet, 30 plus years after I had abandoned the instrument.

Back to the Clarinet Player Starter Kit!

Hopefully, this won't ever happen...but you never can tell!

My Hohner Student Accordion years.

These vintage ads reminded me of my two years in grade school where I took accordion lessons and played with the Modern American School accordion band under the leadership of my music teacher, Miss Anne Pertack.  The highlight of that experience was a performance at a concert hall inside the Palace Of Fine Arts In Mexico City.

I never pictured myself as the Mexican Lawrence Welk although I have to admit I enjoyed The Lawrence Welk Show quite a lot, in a guilty pleasure kind of way.

                          

These ads promise hours of joy and pleasure and claim accordions are IN, which of course, 

were slight exaggerations. All I can say is that an accordion, played by a talented musician, makes delightful and very happy music.

My accordion was the Hohner Student VII and it was sold for a paltry amount when my mom died, in 2009.

But I still remember with nostalgia those boring hours practicing the instrument in the full knowledge I would never become a skilled musician.

Years later, I took up the clarinet and learned to play it with some proficiency. I even got to play it on an episode of a local TV sitcom and on a nightclub show. 

After that, I wisely left the music in the talented hands of professional musicians like Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.  My real passion is listening to music, not playing it.

And here's a sampling of good accordion music with Lawrence Welk!

ARTIE SHAW and BENNY GOODMAN, the Great Clarinet Players.

I've always been a big fan of Big Band Swing music which I've been listening to since my early childhood. My parents had a good sized collection of old 78 RPM shellac records which I continually played on an old Motorola player and later, on a Garrard turntable. The music of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and several other big band leaders, was a staple of their collection.

Later on, I managed to get hold of a second-hand clarinet and taught myself how to play the instrument, aided by Paul Harvey's THE COMPLETE CLARINET PLAYER Omnibus Edition from 1986 and A. Magnani's Complete Method for Clarinet in Two Books. Since there were no YouTube tutorials back then, and I didn't have the time to take lessons from a qualified music teacher, the learning process was quite slow and lengthy.

Of course, no virtuosity was achieved but after much practice, I managed to play it with limited proficiency, enough to carry me by when I had to perform in public for a musical play.

I don't remember the name of the show but I do recall I had two solo numbers with a piano accompanist: As Time Goes By and St. Louis Blues.

My clarinet kit.

The clarinet is no longer functional for lack of proper maintenance; however, I still keep it for nostalgic reasons and am planning to buy me a new one someday soon. Playing the clarinet along with Goodman and Shaw's recordings used to be a very pleasant pastime years ago and I hope I can indulge myself once more.

 

Artie Shaw was born May 23, 1910 and died December 30, 2004 at the age of 94.

Benny Goodman was born May 30, 1909 and died June 13, 1986 at the age of 77.