DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Ken Peplowski, the clarinetist and tenor saxophonist whose career spanned from the Benny Goodman Orchestra to decades of his own recordings and appearances, died last week. He was 66 years old, and he died aboard a jazz cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico in the hours between a morning lecture and a scheduled afternoon concert. Today, we remember Ken Peplowski. BBC jazz critic Russell Davies called Peplowski arguably the greatest living jazz clarinetist. Jazz pianist Emmet Cohen described him as a brilliant musician, a pioneer of the clarinet and a gentle soul.
Born in 1959, Peplowski started playing clarinet professionally in Ohio at age 10 as part of a family polka band started by his father, a policeman. He joined the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1980, then switched from clarinet to tenor sax to play with the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1984. After Goodman's death, two years later, Ken Peplowski embarked on a solo career, focusing more on clarinet, working with a wide range of artists and recording more than 400 albums. He worked with Charlie Byrd, Rosemary Clooney, Mel Torme and Leon Redbone.
When Terry Gross spoke with Ken Peplowski in 1999, he had just released a CD featuring songs and arrangements associated with his old band, the Benny Goodman Orchestra. The CD was titled "Last Swing Of The Century." The CD opens with the song Goodman often used to open his concerts, "Let's Dance."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
TERRY GROSS: Ken Peplowski, welcome to FRESH AIR.
KEN PEPLOWSKI: Thank you. Nice to be here.
GROSS: Well, you actually played with Benny Goodman in the last part of Goodman's life. How old were each of you at the time?
PEPLOWSKI: This was about 1986, and I would have been 26 at the time, and Benny was around 80 years old. And I was frightened to death, frankly, working with him because I'd heard all these stories about him, and most of them weren't very good stories. I mean, he was known as kind of a terror on the bandstand, a very tough bandleader. I saw a little bit of that, but I saw mostly a guy who was so obsessed with music that that took up about 98% of his life. And that was probably the sole cause of a lot of the complexities of his personality.
GROSS: Did you play clarinet or tenor?
PEPLOWSKI: No, I played tenor. And, you know, there's a little bit of clarinet doubling. But I gave him some tapes that I'd done playing clarinet, and I guess that was the basis of him telling these people that they should record me. But he never said anything to me about my clarinet playing except, you know, you sound good or, you know, those kind of things.
But the first audition, he auditioned Loren Schoenberg's band, his big band, 'cause he was - he wanted to take a big band back out on the road. So he came to a rehearsal session we had. And an hour went by, and he didn't show up. So we just started playing some charts, and I was playing the clarinet parts. And we're in the middle of an arrangement, and I've got my eyes closed and playing a solo, and I could actually feel the band change and kind of tense up. And without even knowing that he was in the room, I knew he was there. And then, of course, everybody completely fell apart. And - but, you know, he wound up hiring the whole band.
GROSS: What's your attitude toward playing repertory music? Do you try to keep it true to the original recording or use the original arrangement or recording as a jumping-off point?
PEPLOWSKI: Actually, I take kind of a different attitude. I don't want anybody to recreate solos, to try to play specifically in the style of the old records. I may be alone in this 'cause there's this big whole movement of, you know, everybody trying to sound like the old records. But to me, the way to keep the music alive is play it in your own fashion and show the audience that you love this music, but do it in your own way. Otherwise, you're treating the music like a dead music and treating it like a museum piece. And I don't want a concert to turn into a history lesson. I want the people to know that it's still alive. So all we did was use these arrangements as a jumping-off point for us. And this is our way of playing these charts.
BIANCULLI: Ken Peplowski speaking to Terry Gross in 1999. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1999 interview with Ken Peplowski. The jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist died last week at age 66.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: Were you exposed to Benny Goodman records from your father's collection when you were growing up?
PEPLOWSKI: Yeah. My father was an amateur musician. He was very surprisingly open musically 'cause he was a very conservative guy otherwise. But we all in the family listened to everything from Benny Goodman to the Beatles to classical music to polka music, which was my first professional job. And it all kind of goes in and goes into the computer there. And so it was nice. And I still like to listen to all kinds of music, and I wind up playing mostly jazz, but I welcome some changes once in a while. But yeah, Benny was a big early influence.
GROSS: How did you end up playing clarinet?
PEPLOWSKI: It's a funny thing. He - my father brought home a trumpet, tried to play it, gave it up in frustration, gave it to my brother. He became a trumpet player. He next brought home a clarinet, tried it, gave it up, gave it to me. I got stuck with a clarinet, and I actually loved it almost from the beginning. And I always make a joke out of this, and I tell people I'm very lucky, and this is true, because the next instrument he brought home was the accordion.
GROSS: (Laughter).
PEPLOWSKI: And you can get the letters...
GROSS: Did he play that himself?
PEPLOWSKI: Yes, he did. You can get the letters from the accordion players.
GROSS: (Laughter) So you started playing clarinet. Your brother was playing trumpet, and then you played in polka bands together when you were kids.
PEPLOWSKI: Yeah. We played - we had a Polish polka band called the Harmony Kings. And I was, I think, around 10, and he was around 12. And we were like this little kids novelty act around Cleveland, Ohio, and we used to go on the local TV and radio shows. There was a TV show called "Polka Varieties." And if you ever remember the SCTV show with the Shmenge brothers...
GROSS: (Laughter).
PEPLOWSKI: It was so close to this show it's frightening. But - and - but that - it's like learning how to swim by being thrown into the water. That's how I learned how to play. You know, there we were having to play these long weddings and learn a lot of old standards in addition to the polkas. And the clarinet's function in that music is to improvise. So I kind of learned just by doing it on the job.
GROSS: Now, I imagine playing clarinet excluded you from playing in a lot of rock 'n' roll bands.
PEPLOWSKI: Yeah, although we did do our version of "Proud Mary" with accordion and drums and clarinet. That was a killer with the audience.
GROSS: (Laughter).
PEPLOWSKI: But yeah, it did exclude me from that. But I took up saxophone a few years after the clarinet because of that, actually, because it fit in more with rock music and with more of the old standards. So I did my share of different kinds of jobs around Cleveland when I was coming up.
GROSS: Ken Peplowski, you've studied classical music, and before we talk about studying classical music, I want to feature you playing a classical piece. So let's listen to something from your CD, "The Other Portrait." And this features you with the Bulgarian National Symphony. We'll hear you playing the first movement of "Dance Preludes" by the composer Witold Lutoslawski.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEN PEPLOWSKI AND BULGARIAN NATIONAL RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PERFORMANCE OF WITOLD LUTOSLAWSKI'S "DANCE PRELUDES")
GROSS: Clarinet is Ken Peplowski from his CD, "The Other Portrait." Ken, did you study classical music because you planned on playing classical music, or did you do it just for help with your technique?
PEPLOWSKI: A little bit of both. I had a great teacher early on in Cleveland, a man named Al Blazer, who really impressed upon me the need to learn a lot of the classical approach to playing and how it would help everything I did. And it does. It helps with the breathing, with the phrasing, with the articulation of notes. And I always admired the - even the jazz players I admired had that classical side to them. Benny did. Jimmy Hamilton from the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Buster Bailey, people like that. So I started studying all of that, the supposed legit stuff.
And because I was studying that, I decided to go on into college and go for a degree on the clarinet with the classical thing. Even though I knew - I always knew I would just play jazz, but I mainly went to college just to keep studying with the same man 'cause he was teaching at Cleveland State. And I wound up going there for a year and a half, and then I got a job on the road with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, then that was it. Then it all went to pot.
GROSS: How do you think studying classical technique helped you playing jazz?
PEPLOWSKI: Because, again, to - it comes back to what I said before about Benny impressing upon us that sense of melodicism. You have to do the same thing - if you're playing a piece that is all written out that somebody wrote a long time ago, you have to put your personality into that piece of music. And you have to first learn the technique. And then the trick is to forget about the technique and just put some music into it. And if you can do that with classical music, that's a big stepping stone to doing it with jazz. And I love that kind of a classical, dark, round sound of the clarinet. It's such a beautiful sound that, for me, that's what I strive to get, even if I'm playing something that's not classical.
GROSS: There's a piece of yours I want to play from an earlier CD called "The Natural Touch," and this is a clarinet-bass duet. And the song is "How Deep Is The Ocean?" And I want to play this 'cause I suspect that it really shows off some of the things that you learned with the help of studying classical technique, like the beautiful tone that you have. And also, some of the embellishments in your improvisation here sound like they might be inspired in part by some of the classical technique that you learned. Do you want to say anything about this before we hear it?
PEPLOWSKI: Just that - well, you're absolutely right. Even now when I practice, it's mostly étude, classical études, and it all is information that goes into everything you do. So those little embellishments that you're speaking of do come right out of classical technique.
GROSS: Let's hear it. This is clarinetist Ken Peplowski.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEN PEPLOWSKI'S "HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN? ")
GROSS: That's my guest, Ken Peplowski, on clarinet with Murray Wall on bass from Peplowski's 1992 CD, "The Natural Touch." And with your own band, a lot of the repertoire that you play is songs, you know, old standards, and it's almost wrong to call them standards 'cause they're - a lot of them are songs that not that many people know. But they're real songs. They're not just, like, riff-based things...
PEPLOWSKI: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Or heads that people play just to improvise on. And I'm wondering what attracts you to song.
PEPLOWSKI: Well, I have a very low boredom threshold.
GROSS: (Laughter).
PEPLOWSKI: Honestly. And...
GROSS: Yeah.
PEPLOWSKI: For me, if I'm bored standing up there playing, the audience has got to be asleep. So I want to - the kind of records I like - you know, it's - there's something about all those old writers. They constructed these beautiful pieces of music that told a whole story in 32 bars, and they're very interesting harmonically. They go to all these different places. And there's so much material out there to draw on. And I'm not a composer, you know, so what I do is interpret other people's material. So I love to dig up old songs. You're absolutely right.
GROSS: Do you like to learn the lyrics of a song when you're going to play it so you can think about that?
PEPLOWSKI: Yes, I really do. You know, it doesn't mean you have to memorize every word, but I think it's important to learn what was meant when they wrote the song, and then you can take what you want from it. But if you're playing a ballad, it's nice to know what kind of a ballad it is, if it's a really haunting ballad or if it's a - you know, just a song to try to woo some young lady, you know. And my goal - ultimate goal is to accomplish without words what the great singers accomplish using the words.
GROSS: Well, Ken Peplowski, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
PEPLOWSKI: Oh, it's been a pleasure.
BIANCULLI: Ken Peplowski speaking to Terry Gross in 1999. The jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist died February 2. He was 66 years old. His final studio album was titled "Unheard Bird" and featured him on tenor sax with string arrangements written for but never recorded by Charlie Parker.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEN PEPLOWSKI'S "YOU GO TO MY HEAD)
BIANCULLI: Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new film version of "Wuthering Heights." This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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