Id hear a scream and tell some of the boys off.

There was no drinking on the bandstand; nothing else on the bandstand and the boys really listened. Public adored him; male and female. When he played people went crazy. Well they screamed and they yelled got histerical. We played 8 shows a day 8 one-hour shows and we couldnt change a note because if you did a man would come and say you cant change it, these kids will be here all day. The board of education complained to the theatre; kids didnt show up in school. I remember I wanted to go out one time and the cops standing on the door said: you cant go out of here; youll be killed, youll be mobbed. He opened the door, let me peek up and there mustve been 5 thousand 8 thousand kids around the street. I had a brand new car. They had scrolled their names all over the top, some of them carved their names with keys into the hood into the painting. They carved their names or initials or their phone numbers. It was mad, absolutely insane. It was nothing unusual that while leading a band, turn around and giving a signal to somebody and suddenly feeling a sharp stab in your leg, where somebody got a pen stabbing you to get your attention so that you could sign a crumpled up piece of toilet paper, damp usually, or a piece of napkin . Try signing that with a pen. Its incredible. People stop thinking. Youre no longer a human being. You are an object to be celebrated. Thats why later on when someone asked me what do I think of jitterbugs, my natural response was theyre morons. That came right after a bunch of kids would jump up to the stage of the theatre where we were playing. One kid jumped from the box, broke his leg. Nobody heard what I said. I went to the mike and said: john Wilkes Booths home. Nobody laughed. Nobody even knew who he was. In case you dont, hes the guy who killed Lincoln and jumped out of the box, broke his leg and made a getaway. I was making a bad joke. Just to try to get pass it. Meanwhile retreated to the bandstand start playing and some kids starting jitterbugging on the stage. One of them swinged his girl around and her heels hit the end of my horn. I thought she had knocked my teeth out. Right after that show, somebody came backstage and interviewed me what do you think of jitterbugs and I said theyre a pack of morons. Well thats all he needed. Jitterbugs are morons. Headline in a particular newspaper. And all of a sudden people plackage marching up and down Artie Shaw. It was madness. Totally insanity. Press resented the fact the he was selling the people off. And he just didnt wanna be annoyed. He wanted to play, he wanted people to listen. All they did was scream. But that was the thing to do. Let the performers know that they were appreciated. Kids used to scream. Playing one-nigthers, having the screaming jitterbugs, we after all did make it, theres no doubt about that. But Artie is far too intellectual, hes far too pragmatic a man, far too serious a musician of those days. Schizophrenia may be the only rational response to an insane society. So I formed a kind of schizophrenia of my own at that point. The society in which I lived was irrational. The only response to that was to try to be kinda crazy to try to live with it. Well I could not do that for so long.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen Artie Shaw on the air on the beautiful cafe room of the hotel Transylvania in new York city. Nbc presents the band of Artie Shaw and his orchestra. The king of the clarinet together with songs by lovely Helen Forrest and blue skies singing by Johnny Barstow. When I got to this place where this pressure was building up and building up and read a commercial and people at you everywhere do this, do that, give me that, etc. Finally, I got to a place where I thought: I remembere I almost died and if I had died I wouldntve been able to do anything I wanted to do. All this I started to do it to make 25,000 dollars to be a writer? Look at this insanity I made 2 and a half million, 25 thousand I dont know how much money I made. By that time if it ever gets that bad Im gonna leave. And at certain point it did get that bad. I hit the Pennsylvania Hotel and I dont know what triggered it. Some idiot on the dancefloor doing something stupid. Thouthgless, I cant say stupid, thoughtless. And it triggered it off and I said: enough. I dont want this anymore. So I just quit in the middle of the evening, went upstairs to my room, called my band manager and told him tell the band I wanna see them after the show. They came up and I said fellows Im leaving and they looked at me stunned. Nobody believed it. I think he gave up contracts worth over two million dollars that had already been signed. He just walked out. He said: I dont wanna play for people who wont listen to me. I wasnt where I wanted to be. I was where I once thought I wanted to be and it was not at all how I thought it was gonna be. If theres something you wished for in your youth you may be so unfortunate to get it. I got it and I found it was not what I wanted and I had to re-think it. The Cinderella man of swing who climbed from nowhere to the top in less than two years retreated to Mexico. It was November 1939 and he was 29 years old.