Artie Shaw, the clarinetist and bandleader who was the last great survivor of the swing era, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 94. Here’s a wire-service obit from NPR.
I profiled Shaw in the New York Times on his ninetieth birthday, and posted the text of that piece on “About Last Night” earlier this year. To read it, go here, where you will also find links to some of his finest recordings. (I’ve been told that Shaw himself liked this piece.)
UPDATE: The Washington Post appears to be the first major newspaper out of the box with a lengthy in-house Shaw obituary on its Web site. (The New York Times is still running Reuters wire-service copy as of this hour.)
MORE: The Times just posted its obit, a blandly institutional piece that was obviously written years ago by the late John S. Wilson and updated only slightly since then. We’ll see how they do tomorrow morning.
MORE: Not at all to my surprise, the Times opted to go with its stockpiled obit, a lame response to the death of a great American musician. I guess he was too old for anyone over there to care….