Eddie Daniels - Clarinet Master

Hello! Tonight we'll check out an instrument that was used a lot in early jazz and kind of fell out of favor during the bebop era. The clarinet isn't heard as often in jazz as it used to be, but that doesn't mean there aren't great jazz clarinet players anymore.

Eddie Daniels is one of the living masters of the instrument - he's equally at home in the symphony hall as he is in a jazz club. This Youtube video shows Eddie talking about how you "jazz up" a melody, in this case "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

If you're playing a feature solo like a ballad, it's definitely OK to play around a bit with the melody! So if you have trouble hearing what to do, check out great soloists like the players I've been featuring here on the Start Listening blog. You don't have to go all over the horn...in fact, sometimes I think some players do that too much, like a vocalist trying to show off...but it's definitely OK to stretch or compress the melody, or add little phrases here and there like Eddie demonstrates, as long as it works with whatever the rest of the band or rhythm section is doing.

You can find more clips of Eddie on YouTube or at his website.

I saw Eddie Daniels live at Jazz Alley in Seattle many years ago; I took a clarinetist friend who hadn't heard him before. Daniels started the gig by playing an excerpt from a clarinet concerto, which then morphed into a very fast jazz adaptation of the piece. My friend's jaw was literally on the floor - she'd never seen anyone with so much technique, and she hissed at me, "Do you have any idea how hard that is?"