Word: clarinetist
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...fact is that Woody, by his own admission, is "obsessed" with jazz. Not Dixieland, not swing -- definitely not bebop. He is devoted to the pure New Orleans style that developed early in this century and was recorded by his pantheon of clarinetist heroes: Sidney Bechet, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone and George Lewis. Woody is so passionate about jazz, in fact, that he says he would have preferred to be a full-time musician if only he "had been born with a massive talent" for it. "It's the best life I can think of if you're a really talented...
About that time, he heard his first recordings of Lewis and was immediately enthralled by the clarinetist's lyrical, emotional style. To this day, Woody models his own playing on Lewis' and speaks of him with a reverence he accords to only a handful of his culture heroes, including Willie Mays, Groucho Marx and Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. "He was a great, great artist on the clarinet," enthuses Woody. "He had that sort of sweet, soulful, just beautiful, beautiful sound...
...genuinely crude." Another advantage is his ability to reproduce the powerful, wailing tone of the original jazzmen. The biggest compliment he ever got as a musician, Woody says, was when he was jamming in New Orleans and local people told him how "indigenous" his sound was. Jazz clarinetist Kenny Davern agrees: "He has sought to get that New Orleans plaintive sound, and he has really captured the thing...
...instrument Woody uses these days is a patched-together twelve-key Rampone, made in Italy in about 1890. Like many of the horns in Woody's collection, it was supplied by fellow clarinetist Davern, who picked it up in a New York City pawn shop. Davern once offered to lend Woody a horn that had belonged to the great New Orleans clarinetist Albert Burbank, another of Woody's idols. Woody hesitated. "What if somebody steals it?" he said. "So what?" replied Davern. "They'll probably steal it while I'm playing it," said Woody...
That quip was uncharacteristic of a man who scrupulously separates the clarinetist from the comedian and never tells a joke on the bandstand: when Woody is playing jazz, he's all stick and no shtick. Not that funny things haven't happened in connection with Woody's music. When he and his New Orleans Funeral and Ragtime Orchestra first got together in the early '70s, they were summarily ejected from the first few clubs they played in because their music was so noncommercial. At one establishment, the band was fired in the middle of a particularly lugubrious spiritual, after...