"Straight no chaser. That was Artie Shaw."

That's right, Artie Shaw -- you know, tattoo artist/writer Jonathan Shaw's old man, although this Esquire piece on the son doesn't even mention dad's name.

Jonathan Shaw Explains His Old-School Obsession

As for me, I have nary a tattoo, but I own a box set of Artie Shaw's recordings with his small group, The Gramercy Five: Six Star Treats - The Complete Commercially Released Recordings.

This 5-disc set from Jasmine Records, entitled "Six Star Treats" is perhaps the most essential box of jazz clarinet recordings available. Not only does it bring together, for the first time, all of the studio recordings of the various groups to work under the Gramercy 5 name, but it provides alternate takes and many live performances, including some tunes the group never recorded in the studio.

Shaw's cantankerousness is the stuff of legend. Some persons took to it ...

Pen Mightier Than Clarinet For Artie Shaw, by David Fantle and Tom Johnson (Modern Times Magazine)

... If that sounds like the phlegmatic raving of an embittered misanthrope, Shaw would’ve been the first to admit (albeit in a bellicose manner) that he never lost his maverick streak.

 ... while others couldn't help noticing a darker side.

Artie Shaw: Swing and Loathing, by David Gates (New York Times)

(Artie) Shaw said his father “had to be a selfish bastard” for leaving his family. One journalist who conducted a long series of interviews with Shaw echoed both the syntax and the judgment in speaking of the son: “Absolutely he’s got to be the most selfish man that ever lived. So you’ve got this enormously narcissistic man in a cocoon, who is quite happy. There’s no tragedy, I guess — other than for some of the women, and the two sons.”

Artie Shaw: Quest for Perfection is the BBC Four documentary, and clicking the video embedded above takes you to entire film. The interviews with Shaw were conducted just before he died. Although the overall quality certainly isn't the best ever witnessed at YouTube, it suffices.

Now, back to the music.

Artie Shaw, a curmudgeon out of nowhere.

I'll be standing on the street corner when a car or truck goes past. There'll be a noise from somewhere -- a random sound, a child yelling or a chord produced by a squeaking load shift -- and a song just begins playing in my head.

As noted previously, any innate ability of mine to create music is limited to the point of non-existence, and yet music is with me every minute of every day. One of these days I'll awake to dead air in my brain, and know it's my time to die.

"Out of Nowhere" is not the first tune that comes to mind in the recorded canon of Artie Shaw, the swing era's resident contrarian (perhaps that's why I'm a fan). But it remains fresh and vibrant almost 75 years later, and somewhat summarizes the theory and practice of arranging during the ascendancy of the big bands. I've known this song since I was a kid, and it makes me smile when listening. It re-entered my head Saturday after a snippet of hip-hop was heard from a passing boom car. Why, I'll never know. These things come out of nowhere.

Shaw was a survivor who discarded music a half-century before his death at 94 in 2004. Apparently he was a bright, complex, narcissistic and impossibly difficult man, one whose talent has brought me a good deal of pleasure. Life remains grimly funny that way.

Artie Shaw: Swing and Loathing, by David Gates (NYT)

 ... And then, at the height of his powers, Shaw stopped playing the clarinet, walked away from the music business and spent the next 50 years busying himself with dairy farming, marksmanship, movie distribution, writing a never-to-be-finished autobiographical novel — anything except what he seemed put on earth to do. And wondering what his life had been about.