Dave Bennett

For starters, you don’t find many jazz clarinet players who name Alice Cooper, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Chris Isaak among their influences. You won’t find many musicians under 30 who are equally conversant with the music of Benny Goodman (the “King of Swing”) and Roy Orbison (“The Soul of Rock and Roll”). In fact, you may not find even one other clarinet virtuoso who occasionally breaks from his swing era repertoire to sing rockabilly hits while accompanying himself at the piano—where he plays a mean barrelhouse boogie-woogie.

In the early days of jazz, the clarinet joined with trumpet and trombone to create the music’s signature sound and it ruled the roost in the swing era, when jazz was America’s popular music and dance-party soundtrack. If anyone can return the clarinet to its heyday, it’s Dave Bennett, who fuses serious jazz improvisation with a host of modern pop influences.

On his Mack Avenue debut, Don’t Be That Way, he shows that his skills and interests make him perfectly suited for the job. He stays within the mainstream repertoire and even covers several of the most famous hit records of the 1930s (by Goodman and such contemporaneous clarinetists as Woody Herman and Artie Shaw). But Bennett reworks these songs with up-to-date twists and surprising new arrangements. The result is an album that blazes his own path while still acknowledging his predecessors, and spotlights the jazz clarinet for a new generation.

PERSONNEL:

DAVE BENNETT – clarinet,vocals
TAD WEED – piano
REG SCHWAGER – electric and acoustic guitars
SHELLY BERGER - arranger
PAUL KELLER – bass
PETE SIERS – drums

TRACKS:

01. Slipped Disc
02. Begin the Beguine
03. Don't Be That Way
04. Running Wild
05. St. James Infirmary
06. Yesterday
07. Sing, Sing, Sing
08. Woodchopper's Ball
09. My Inspiration
10. Goodbye
11. A Funeral in New Orleans
12. When the Saints Go Marching In