Pee Wee Russell: The Life of a Jazzman.

Rothenberg, David

Pee Wee Russell remains the most enigmatic jazz clarinetist in the history of the idiom. His growling, crying, immediately emotional sound pushed to the limits the conservative style of New Orleans jazz with which he is nonetheless associated. His position in the annals of jazz history is unique because Russell was an avant-gardist in a tradition-oriented idiom. Robert Hilbert adeptly describes this uniqueness: "All traces of traditional clarinet conventions are gone. Pee Wee employs many different sounds: at times, his tone is rough or shrill, precariously sliding on and off pitch; at other times, the sound is soft and warm, whispering or full. His improvisations are punctuated with rasps and growls". The critic Patrick Scott wrote that "Mr. Russell's tone ... has been described at one time or another as croaking, creaking, sour, tortured, inimitable and incredible--[and] is undoubtedly one of the most maligned in jazz. In reality ... it is a thing of beauty--alternately husky, wispy, full, thin, clean and dirty, but never, for a minute, empty" (quoted in Pee Wee Russell, p. 230).

"Even his feet," said Whitney Balliett, "look sad". Russell was a mournful and sorrowful character, shaking and swaying with emotion when he performed on stage. His greatness seemed to derive from a cool, understated, and strange musical presence: iconoclastic, easy to insult, impossible to imitate. He just may have been the Thelonious Monk of the clarinet, and this book brings out the struggles of his life to reinforce that parallel.

Russell once played with Monk, and the details of this musical meeting of two possibly like minds are amply explored here. Another fascinating convocation to ponder is an eleven-minute duet recorded with Jimmy Giuffre, a clarinetist who took an opposite route from Russell: moving from style to style throughout his life, maintaining a soft freedom in an angular world of change. Russell instead brought anguish and sharp edges to a style that grew outmoded for many. He kept it alive. The meeting of these two clarinetists amounts to an exciting exploration of the blues, one that Hilbert sketches admirably.

The book could have used an index, but, as the only full-length study available on this important figure, it is indispensable all the same.

The discography Pee Wee Speaks proves most comprehensive, but a bit more information would have helped make its structure clearer. All Russell's individual recordings are deftly itemized, but there is no overall catalogue of album tides to make things easier. Also, the lengths of cuts could have been included, so the exact volume of material would be easier of access. Used as a roadmap to a legacy that still remains too little known, and in conjunction with Hilbert's fine monograph, Pee Wee Speaks will serve to remind listeners how jazz thrives and develops most poignantly at its edges. Russell's music deserves more attention, and these books should help to make his role in jazz history more widely understood.

DAVID ROTHENBERG New Jersey Institute of Technology