Artie Shaw – Documentary Part 5

During World War II, Shaw enlisted in the United States Navy and later formed a band, which served in the Pacific theater (similar to Glenn Miller’s wartime band in Europe). After 18 months playing for Navy personnel (sometimes as many as four concerts a day in battle zones, including Guadalcanal), Shaw returned to the US in a state of physical exhaustion, receiving a medical discharge.[7] In the late 1940s, Shaw performed classical music at Carnegie Hall and with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. Like Benny Goodman and other leaders of big bands, Shaw fashioned a small group from within the band. He named it the Gramercy Five after his home telephone exchange.[2] Band pianist Johnny Guarneri played a harpsichord on the quintet recordings and Al Hendrickson played an electric guitar, which was unusual in jazz recordings of the time. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge later became part of the group, succeeding Billy Butterfield. The Gramercy Five’s biggest hit was “Summit Ridge Drive”. A CD of The Complete Gramercy Five sessions was released in 1990. Throughout his career, Shaw would take sabbaticals, quitting the music business. This included studying advanced mathematics, as cited in Karl Sabbagh’s The Riemann Hypothesis. His first interregnum, at the height of his success, was met with disbelief by booking agents. They predicted that Shaw would not only be abandoning a million-dollar enterprise but that nightclub and theater owners would sue him for breach of …
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