The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline of Identity

by Artie Shaw

book

Genres: Music, Biography, Autobiography

Paperback

First published December 1, 1979

About the author

Formed in 1937, swing of American clarinetist, leader, composer, and arranger Artie Shaw, originally Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, exemplified the sound of Big Band.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Shaw

Reviews

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although first published in 1952, this narrative is still relevant in its observations of the music entertainment business and the cost of celebrity. There is an introduction by Shaw written in a 1979 edition that adds perspective. When the book was first published it received rave reviews which were well deserved. This is not only the story of a remarkable individual, but a commentary on society and what it does to people. Shaw was an autodidact who wanted to keep learning all of his life. Anyone who can at the age of fifteen teach himself to read music in a month so he can get a job in a band is quite unusual. He dropped out of high school because music became his life for a period of time. When he was living on New York’s Lower East Side, he was not aware of being Jewish until the family moved to New Haven and school bullies beat him up because of it. His family were in the dress making business, but when it failed his father deserted the family and the mother struggled on her own until Artie started making money in his teen years as a musician. He taught himself how to play, he taught himself how to arrange music, he hung around better musicians to learn from them. As an autobiography, this is an account of a remarkable intelligence learning from experience and not from traditional education. You get a deep sense of what music is and what it meant to him. When as a young man in his twenties he became a band leader, he learned the hard way that playing in a band had nothing to do with music, but with what people like. Shaw points out that people who were uneducated about music and about art and about literature were satisfied with the slickness that was part of entertainment. When an entertainer developed something people liked, he couldn’t move beyond it. People paid for their expectations. As an entertainer, he couldn’t develop as a musician. This is part of the trouble with Cinderella. Once you attain the prince, you can’t go any further. This is somewhat the message that Sondheim also suggests in Into the Woods. Besides being the story of an unusual individual who wanted to keep learning, but who got caught up in the treadmill of ambition and trying to prove himself worthy. His description of when Begin the Beguine made him a celebrity explains much of what we need to understand about contemporary celebrities. I am glad I finally got to read this book.

[Jeff Bower · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a producer at KABC in Los Angeles in 1982, I tracked down Mr. Shaw who was teaching music near Santa Barbara and convinced him to join TalkRadio host Ray Briem to talk about his life. Mr. Shaw reluctantly agreed and graciously drove down to L.A. for the overnight broadcast. For four hours into the wee hours of the morning, he and Ray (a huge fan) celebrated his music and legendary contribution to music. The most memorable line in the book, as I recall, was that he'd "climbed to the top of the dung hill of success known as show biz."

[Bradthad Codgeroger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Famously mercurial bandleader gets therapy, writes book. In an effort to examine the modern man's psyche through his own example, he obscures and justifies much.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of a mixed bag but more often very good than not. He mainly writes about his decade or so leading up to his rise to fame in the late 30's. He skims over the next 15 years and doesn't mention by name Lana Turner or Ava Gardner or any of the others, only that he is a failure at marriage. He begins and ends the book trying to put into words his philosophy on life, but comes off like a rambling madman in the process. He talks of his dislike of fame and the music business, but the money was too good. He walked away from his career not long after this book was written in the early 50's, so it would have been nice to read more about him.

[Karin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poor me story by rich Jewish man. I would say to him, We need to be less self-involved to see truth.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find Artie Shaw fascinating. His greatest work was his work in small groups. His final recordings from 1954 are especially memorable. From what I understand, he then laid down his clarinet, never to record again despite living to be 94. This choice to walk away at the height of his artistic achievement probably cemented his legacy as one of jazz's greatest clarinetists: he never suffered the indignity of being trotted out as an "elder statesman" of the swing era, something akin to a wind-up museum piece. He was clearly a musical genius. I place him only behind Pee Wee Russell in my ranking of jazz clarinetists. The next three would be Benny Goodman, Edmond Hall, and Johnny Dodds. Honorable mentions to Frank Teschemacher and Omer Simeon.

As an author, Shaw could have used a more judicious editor. His philosophizing about life and complaining about show business grew tiresome at some points. Granted, some of his complaints were valid, but he was crying all the way to the bank. However, he was an excellent raconteur. I would have enjoyed this book even more had he excised some of the Freudian mumbo-jumbo and included a few more stories about his youth and early career. He told good stories well, which is more than you can say about most celebrities turned memoirists.

[Leo Glowacki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read from the point of a clarinetist and someone interested in how other people think about life in general.

[Nathalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shaw writes of his metamorphosis from "a shy, introspective kid named Arthur Arshawsky into a jazz-band-leading, jitterbug-surrounded Symbol of American Youth."

Along the way we meet other jazz immortals such as Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday as Shaw paints a fascinating picture of the music business he ended up leaving, explaining that "the trouble with Cinderella" is "nobody ever lives happily ever after."