Buddy DeFranco — clarinetist a bridge between jazz eras
PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Renowned jazz clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, who helped lead the transition between the swing and bebop eras, has died at 91, his family said Friday.
Mr. DeFranco, whose health had been declining in recent years, died Wednesday evening at a Panama City hospital, his wife, Joyce, said. The couple lived in Panama City.
Mr. DeFranco, who began his professional career as a teenager in the late 1930s, made both concert and recording appearances with many of the top singers and musicians of his era, including Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum.
“We have received condolences from around the world,” Joyce DeFranco said, adding that her husband’s influences on music will last long beyond his lifetime.
Crucial transition
Leading jazz clarinetist Ken Peplowski in an e-mail: “Buddy DeFranco almost single-handedly was the clarinetist who moved the harmonic and rhythmic language forward from where Benny Goodman left off into the much more adventurous territory of bebop and beyond, while never forgetting his roots in swing music,” “He was also unfailingly kind and supportive to every other clarinetist who came after him.”
Born in 1923 in Camden, N.J., Mr. DeFranco was raised in South Philadelphia and began playing the clarinet at age 9. By age 14, he had won a national Tommy Dorsey Swing contest and began his road career in 1939.
Mr. DeFranco said his favorite clarinetist at the time was Artie Shaw, who led his own big band.
In the 1940s, Mr. DeFranco appeared in top swing bands led by Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet and Tommy Dorsey. In 1950, as the big band era was in decline, he joined the Count Basie Septet.
Meanwhile, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were leading a modern jazz revolution, and Mr. DeFranco became excited about the improvisatory freedom in the new style known as bebop after hearing Parker play at Minton’s club in Harlem.
“When I heard Charlie Parker, I knew that that was going to be the new wave, the new way to play jazz,” Mr. DeFranco in a 2007 interview for the National Endowment for the Arts.
In the 1950s, Mr. DeFranco performed with Parker, Gillespie and other bebop legends. He formed his own quartet with drummer Art Blakey, pianist Kenny Drew and bassist Eugene Wright, and toured Europe with Holiday in 1954. Jazz at the Philharmonic producer Norman Granz paired DeFranco with pianists Tatum and Peterson for memorable recordings.
Global recognition
Mr. DeFranco performed at leading venues around the world and was repeatedly recognized as the top jazz clarinetist in magazine polls conducted by Downbeat, Metronome and Playboy.
He never lost his affinity for swing music, and led the Glenn Miller Orchestra from 1966 to 1974. He also worked extensively in the studios and on television, and had his own show, “The Buddy DeFranco Jazz Forum,” on public television.
He formed a lasting musical partnership with vibraphonist Terry Gibbs and they recorded a series of albums in the 1980s and 1990s. Mr. DeFranco made more than 160 recordings.
In 2007, DeFranco was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the nation’s highest jazz honor.
“Charlie Parker and Art Tatum to me were genius, and I’m right below that,” Mr. DeFranco said in the 2007 NEA interview. “I did in my own way do something different on the instrument and that’s the way I’d like to be remembered.”