Word: clarinet
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Woody remembers that trip, along with two earlier jaunts to the Crescent City, as high points of his life. Accompanied by Diane Keaton, he scurried around the French Quarter with his clarinet under his arm, looking, listening and sitting in with local jazzmen. "It was like watching Willie Mays all your life and then finding yourself in the outfield with him," Woody recalls. Festival producer George Wein even talked him into playing a set at one of the official concerts...
Woody goes after that sound in two ways. First, by using a wide open mouthpiece and a very hard reed -- a Rico Royale No. 5 -- which provides a lot of volume but requires cast-iron lips to play. (Benny Goodman once borrowed Woody's clarinet for a sit-in and had to shave the reed down with a kitchen knife before he could get a toot out of it.) Second, by playing an Albert System clarinet -- an antiquated, wide-bore instrument based on a virtually obsolete fingering method. Why the Albert System? "Because all the guys I liked played...
...jazz club one night a week, and there have been feelers from several European jazz festivals. The tapes are always rolling during the rehearsals, moreover, so there is a chance that the sessions could ultimately produce something Woody has long resisted: a record featuring him on clarinet...
...would be a mistake to see Woody Allen's obsession with the clarinet as an eccentric hobby or psychological crutch. In ways both direct and indirect, concrete and spiritual, his musician's ear and instincts have helped make him the remarkable artist he is in other domains. "Jazz is a perfect music for him," says Eric Lax, who is writing a book on Allen. "It hates authority. It is a quirky, individual style requiring great discipline to play right. It is all the things that fit his comic character." So play it again, Woody...
Every Monday night, before packed houses, Woody Allen plays jazz clarinet with the same ardor and style that he puts into his films, but he's never been one to blow his own horn about...