# Unforgettable moments with the gentleman of the clarinet – Buddy Defranco: Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/03/04/unforgettable-moments-with-the-gentleman-of-the-clarinet-buddy-defranco-video-photos/
- Published: 2023-03-04T00:02:08+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**His tone was a pattern of smoothness. And he himself: the elegance in person. 
The American clarinetist Buddy Defranco, one of the very big representatives of 
his instrument in jazz, would have been 100 years old. **

On BR classics you can experience unusual moments with him at the International 
Jazzwoche Burghausen in the “jazztime”.

![Buddy Defranco, Bulls Head, Barnes, London, 1995 | Bildquelle: picture alliance/
National Jazz Archive/Heritage I | Brian Foskett](https://i0.wp.com/www.br-klassik.
de/themen/jazz-und-weltmusik/jazz/buddy-defranco-bulls-head-barnes-london-100~_h-
558_v-img__16__9__xl_w-994_-e1d284d92729d9396a907e303225e0f2d9fa53b4.jpg?w=640&ssl
=1 "Buddy Defranco, Bulls Head, Barnes, London, 1995 | Bildquelle: picture alliance/
National Jazz Archive/Heritage I | Brian Foskett")

**Image source: Picture Alliance / National Jazz Archive / Heritage I | Brian Foskett**

Some jazz moments always remain in the memory. Visitors to the International Jazzwoche
Burghausen were able to experience one of them in 1989. At that time there was a
session with an exceptionally prominent staff in the jazz cellar in the Mautnerschloss.
Pianist Kirk Lightsey, saxophonist Eddie Harris, clarinetist Tony Scott – and his
clarinet colleague Buddy Defranco. A photo of at that time shows these clarinetists,
both of whom were still grew up in the swing era, in a wonderfully contrasting harmony
side by side.

![Tony Scott und Buddy DeFranco | Bildquelle: Ilona Piecha / Aus dem Buch „It has
lines in its face” über die Geschichte der Internationalen Jazzwoche Burghausen.](
https://i0.wp.com/www.br-klassik.de/themen/jazz-und-weltmusik/jazz/tony-scott-und-
buddy-defranco-1989-club-session-jazznight_viertl-100~_h-364_v-img__16__9__xl_w-
648_-be6819cc57a5436fe2e22755fd9495d5c6ac08f6.jpg?resize=640%2C359&ssl=1 "Tony Scott
und Buddy DeFranco | Bildquelle: Ilona Piecha / Aus dem Buch „It has lines in its
face” über die Geschichte der Internationalen Jazzwoche Burghausen.")

Image source: Ilona Piecha / From the book “IT Has Lines in Its Face” about the 
history of the International Jazzwoche Burghausen.Tony Scott, which was moved to
Europe, had now closed with a black, combined hair from the former SCHMEN THE AUTIONS
AND BLIEM A wild jazz anarchist with a white barley beard and long-hanging residual
hair-and so he also stood the stage of the Mautnerschloss in the casual, wide knitting
sweater. And next to him: a man in the highly elegant dark jacket, plus white shirt,
dark tie and well -groomed dark hair, buddy defranco. Two that came from the same
world but had ended up in very different worlds – and which then also played with
completely different tones in this session.

**Historical encounter in the Burghauser Wackerhalle**

The two clarinetists also stood together on the big stage of the Burghauser Festival,
in the Wackerhalle. There Scott did not wear the sweater from the jazz cellar, but
a dark suit and a black, wide -brimmed hat. This concert, together with the top-
class big band of the German musician Erwin Lehn (1919-2010), the Bavarian Radio
cut along at the time. That is why there are still pictures of this, as festival
boss Joe Viera said on stage at the time, first joint concert Buddy Defrancos and
Tony Scotts. Defranco was then the American star guest in Erwin Lehn’s concert on
festival Saturday – and Scott was then added as a surprise guest for some pieces.

Two very different facets of the clarinet game were to be experienced. At that time
Scott at that time his art lashed more and more into the energetic, Defranco captivated
with an aesthetic beauty and consequence that was none.
 In a stage announcement,
Scott also praised his colleagues very respectfully: he called Defranco the “Gentleman
of Jazz”, even the largest gentleman among all jazz musicians. And he said “God 
has deposited three million dollars on earth for the clarinetists – and Benny Goodman
and Artie Shaw have divided this money among themselves.” But, Scott continues, 
he and Buddy Defranco wanted to do something so that the clarinet in jazz gets up
again. Not least because of these two musicians, the instrument had long since had
this update.

Shipment – Friday, February 17th, 11:05 p.m.: Jazz when traveling. For the 100th
birthday of the clarinetist Buddy Defranco. Master of Elegance: Excerpts from Defranco’s
concert at the International Jazzwoche Burghausen in 1989 with the Erwin-Lehn-Big-
Band and a surprise guest. Moderation and selection: Roland Spiegel

![Portrait of Buddy De Franco, New York, N.Y., ca. Sept. 1947. HINWEIS: Das Aufnahmedatum
ist nicht immer bekannt. (Heritage Art/Heritage Images) | Bildquelle: picture alliance/
Heritage Images | William Paul Gottlieb](https://i0.wp.com/www.br-klassik.de/themen/
jazz-und-weltmusik/jazz/portrait-of-buddy-de-franco-100~_h-627_v-img__3__4__brkl_w-
470_-d9610b74b6138446d8bd91d266c7caf3631fc665.jpg?resize=640%2C854&ssl=1 "Portrait
of Buddy De Franco, New York, N.Y., ca. Sept. 1947. HINWEIS: Das Aufnahmedatum ist
nicht immer bekannt. (Heritage Art/Heritage Images) | Bildquelle: picture alliance/
Heritage Images | William Paul Gottlieb")

Image source: Picture Alliance / Heritage Images | William Paul Gottliebtony Scott
had already had his 100th birthday in June 1921 – and the hundredths of Buddy de
Franco are now celebrating the jazz zwelt. Defranco was born in Camden in 1923 in
the Federal Statt New Jersey. It was actually called Boniface Ferdinand Leonard 
Defranco. He started the clarinet game at the age of nine and won an amateur swing
competition, the “Tommy Dorsey Swing Contest”, which took place under the leadership
of the trombonist and big band boss Dorsey. He started his career before he was 
of legal age – at the age of 16, 1939, in the trumpeter and singer Johnny Scat Davis.
Then there were soon engagements at the bands of drummer Gene Krupa, saxophonist
Charlie Barnet, at Tommy Dorsey, with saxophonist Boyd Raeburn and last but not 
least in the septet of the swing star Count Basie. The commitment to Drum superstar
Gene Krupa also started when Defranco was still under 20, in 1941. From the mid-
1940s to the mid-1950s, Defranco was constantly at the head of reader surveys. He
made excellent recordings with the pianists Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson, headed
a quintet in the New York Birdland Club and later took over the management of the
still continued Glenn-Miller orchestra. He remained an important soloist for decades.
In the 1980s he also won the coveted reader survey of the magazine “Down Beat” (
1984). At that time, Defranco was also a soloist at a particularly large number 
of festivals in the USA and Europe. His appearance in Burghausen fell into a time
of his special success.

**The new edge of the former queen of jazz instruments**

When Defranco (like Tony Scott) became an established musician, the popularity of
the big bands led by great clarinetists such as Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw was
already derived – Artie Shaw, for example, dissolved his in 1950. The clarinet was
the queen of jazz instruments in swing style. But when young musicians started to
create a completely new type of jazz in the 1940s, the so -called Bebop, other instruments
crowded to the foreground, not least the old saxophone by such an overwhelming soloist
as Charlie Parker. Buddy Defranco and Tony Scott immediately recorded the new influences
in their game. Scott even belonged to the circle of musicians who, in the early 
1940s, in “Minton’s Playhouse” in the New York district of Harlem in Jam sessions
to the exciting new style. The “Bebop” was so different with hectic interval jumps
and an angular new expressiveness than the tasty tones of the swing. The clarinet
as a musical mouthpiece created for swing and created in this music a marginal existence.
And yet there were two musicians who dominated this new music language early on –
Tony Scott and Buddy Defranco.

**The only apparently unsuitable instrument**

Defranco told himself that he was the first to play this new style on the clarinet.
The time of the emerging modern jazz was the beginning of a dry spell for the clarinet,
the “Los Angeles Times” quotes the clarinetist in her obituary. It is very difficult
to play Bebop on this instrument. The clarinet is not “uncompatible” with the Bebop,
as can often be read in reference works.

**The lightness of the particularly difficult tones**

However, he himself forgot this difficulty in his long career. Defranco played razor-
sharp, elegant lines that had something weightless and also make the leaking intensity
of modern jazz appear naturally. Defranco mastered the deliberately demolished phrases
and the unexpected jumps that BEBOP’s solos of Bebop have been characterized by 
Charlie Parker on the supposedly unsuitable instrument. Defranco also had a remarkable
warmth of the sound in his later phases. All of this – especially in contrast to
the sound of his colleague Tony Scott – can be explained in detail in the recordings
of March 18, 1989 in Burghausen. Buddy Defranco died on Christmas Eve 2014 at the
age of 91.

![Buddy DeFranco obituary | Jazz | The Guardian](https://i0.wp.com/i.guim.co.uk/
img/static/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2014/12/26/1419605155031/Clarinettist-
Buddy-DeFran-012.jpg?resize=640%2C384&ssl=1)

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