Kenny Davern put away his soprano saxophone in 1978, vowing to never again play the horn on which he was considered one of the top artists in jazz.
Davern turned instead to his first musical love, the clarinet. The licorice stick is a horn he considers obsolete and hard to play. And for this zany man of jazz, that makes it all the more pleasurable.
'It's sort of like the violin of the woodwinds -- and we're living in the age of the saxophone, the guitar, the screaming trumpet and electronics. It's not the trendy instrument,' Davern says.
'It's the most expressive of all the woodwinds. It has the most dynamics, a 4-octave range (compared to 2-octaves for the soprano saxophone). There is no logic to the instrument in the way it was constructed. For its range, it should be 24-feet-long.
'You have to be fastidious, insane to play it,' Davern explains. 'I've never met a stupid clarinet player, although I've met warped clarinet players.'
Davern's expressiveness is something to relish when he steps out front for a solo. He puts tremendous emotion into his playing, wringing his soul as he forms each note.
That was never clearer than at the Kool Jazz Festival tribute to Ethel Waters last June. Davern moved to the front of the stage and filled Carnegie Hall with an unaccompanied version of 'Am I Blue?' without a microphone. You could have heard a reed drop.
'People have told me they enjoy the emotional aspect of my playing. I don't throw anything away. I try to make everything count,' Davern said. 'What I play is not pre-ordained. I'm a stand-up clarinet player. The expression is more valuable to me than chord changes. There are guys who can play rings around me -- but can't get one note of emotion out of the tune.'
Davern, 51, who lives in Manasquan, N.J., says he gravitated toward music as a youngster but always wanted a piano or trumpet. Fortunately, he got neither before he heard Artie Shaw's 'Clarinet Concerto' on the radio in 1947. He pestered his mother until she bought him a clarinet.
Though he had listened to a lot of classical music as a kid, he got hooked on jazz when he heard a Pee Wee Russell recording of 'Memphis Blues.'
'You can play music and like it, but emotion is something else. Something touched me off when I heard that,' Davern said. 'I try to recapture it every time I play. Every note. You just get in touch with your subconsciousness and go.'
In an interview aboard the S.S. Norway's 'Floating Jazz Festival,' Davern called Russell 'perhaps the most individualistic clarinetist who ever lived, bar none.' Other players who have influenced him stylistically were Irving Fazzola, pre-1930 Benny Goodman, Frank Teschmacher, Jimmy Noone and Barney Bigard.
His favorite songwriters are George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cootie Williams. 'In the history of music, the great composers' songs were written from the 1920s through the 1940s. They were great melodic songs that the average person on the street could sing from the beginning to the end. At no other time in our history has that happened,' Davern said.
Davern made his first recording in 1954 with trombonist Jack Teagarden. Other albums followed with Pee Wee Erwin, Phil Napoleon and Dick Hyman. The '60s were a dry period, record-wise. In the '70s, his saxophone playing drew more attention than his clarinet work.
In 1973, he won Downbeat magazine's International Critics' Poll as new star on the soprano sax. In 1975, he and fellow reedman Bob Wilber formed the group Soprano Summit. The collaboration resulted in nine LPs in which both men alternated between soprano sax and clarinet.
Three years later, Davern decided to scrap the sax. The horn gathered dust until a Frenchman named Olivier Franc showed up at the Village gate in New York one night in 1981, begging to buy the instrument. Franc took it back home and now plays it in Paris subway stations.
Today, Davern splits his performing year evenly between the United States and Europe, where he says his name is better known and his albums are aired more.
'I've made some very nice records. But in this country, if you don't sound like one of the clones: a John Coltrane clone, a Benny Goodman clone, a Charlie Parker clone -- cookie cutters -- you don't get airplay.'
His newest album, 'Hot Clarinet,' is a trio session with pianist Dick Wellstood and drummer Chuck Riggs due for release this winter on the Statiras label.
'It's my crowning achievement,' Davern said. 'If I don't make another trio recording again, I won't have to. I'm that proud of it.
'When things go well, there is nothing on earth as edifying as the music.'
