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I remember when I saw this guy's name on the Mercury Jazz collection, I thought it was a pseudonym (I even tried to puzzle it out thinking it was an anagram.)

Well, apparently not . . . if we can trust the source.

The article below from NYTimes.com

Has Clarinet, Will Swing Till Wee Hours

March 15, 2004

By COREY KILGANNON

The swing era is not over. It is stashed away in Sol

Yaged's clarinet case, which he still opens nightly in a

dark corner of a quiet Upper East Side restaurant.

"I bought this baby in 1938 for $125" at a store on West

48th Street, Mr. Yaged, 82, said recently as he flipped

open his worn case and took out his Conn clarinet at the

restaurant, Il Valentino, on East 56th Street.

The purchase turned out to be a long-term investment. He

began playing professionally while still a teenager and has

had few nights off since. Back then he had plenty of work

on 52nd Street at clubs like the Onyx, the Three Deuces and

Jimmy Ryan's.

Those days are long gone, but Mr. Yaged is as busy as ever.

Since 2001 he has been playing at Il Valentino, which is in

the Hotel Sutton and was once a club run by the bandleader

Eddie Condon. For a handful of diners each night Mr. Yaged

turns back time, playing the same songs the same way he did

a half-century ago.

This is the Sol Yaged who hired the saxophonist Coleman

Hawkins and the drummer Cozy Cole as sidemen and who wrote

music for the film "The Benny Goodman Story," teaching

Steve Allen to play the clarinet for the title role. Even

now Mr. Yaged routinely plays into the wee hours; his

business card includes his home phone number and the

directive "Call after 1 p.m."

Born in Coney Island, Mr. Yaged became a Goodman disciple

in 1935 when he was 12. Early in his career he imitated

Goodman's runs and phrasing and even mimicked his

mannerisms and speaking style. He showed up so faithfully

at Goodman's engagements and recording dates that Goodman

called him "my shadow" and would jokingly reprimand him if

he showed up late.

"If it hadn't been for Benny Goodman I'd have been a

juvenile delinquent," Mr. Yaged said.

The jazz historian and radio-show host Phil Schaap said,

"Sol Yaged has always been a solid musician," and noted

that Mr. Yaged had played in Max Kaminsky's band on the

opening night of the original Birdland. "That his fame has

evaporated says more about the state of jazz than it does

about him. He's still an employed musician in New York, a

city with 600 hard-bop bands without work."

The owner of Il Valentino, Mirso Lekic, said, "The man's a

living legend and nobody knows he's still around."

Mr. Lekic hired him to play quiet, classy music to dine by,

and during the dinner hour he does just that, taking a back

seat to chatting diners and to waiters reciting nightly

specials. But as the evening progresses he seems to grow

younger, swinging his group harder, until patrons put down

their dessert forks and the dignified northern Italian

restaurant turns into a festive jazz club.

The musicians in his group sit in a corner in chairs backed

against the wall, Dixieland style. They play their share of

stompers, but their sets generally begin by invoking

Goodman's spirit. Like Goodman's small-group ensembles, Mr.

Yaged's band plays straight-ahead standards with simple

melodies and a series of riffing choruses.

Mr. Yaged plays with a steady, unsyncopated 4/4 beat with a

guitar and bass backing. His usual group is Rick Stone on

the guitar and Bob Arkin (the younger brother of the actor

Alan Arkin) on bass, but he often invites friends to sit

in.

On a recent Saturday night there was a trumpet player and

trombonist waiting for him when he arrived at the

restaurant, sweating and puffing from the walk across town

from his apartment in west Midtown.

Mr. Yaged is built like a linebacker, and with his shaved

head he looks like a cross between Yul Brynner and Knute

Rockne. He wore a wide tie with a fat knot and had a

threadbare fake rose in his lapel. The gold ring on his

beefy pinkie shimmered as his fingers fluttered over the

clarinet keys while the group began to play "Smoke Gets in

Your Eyes."

He plays with a creamy, elegant tone that evokes Goodman's

lyricism. On "Embraceable You" he treated the melody like a

fat balloon that he nonchalantly thwacked into the air.

"I first heard him play this song 50 years ago," said a man

gripping a glass of Scotch.

Neither Mr. Yaged nor the group does much creative

improvising. On "Lover Man" they played several choruses

with no soloist deviating much from the melody, except Mr.

Stone. But their tight, swinging ensemble playing is

infectious. They did tidy, catchy arrangements of songs

like "I Can't Give You Anything but Love" and "Love Is Here

to Stay" with tailgating trombone obbligato and brassy

offbeat trumpet punches.

Mr. Yaged's best improvising is as a showman. He is an

unabashed ham, whether delivering borscht belt one-liners

while fixing his reed or fake-clobbering a diner with his

clarinet. He often plays with one hand and pours wine for

patrons with the other. At one point he joined a discussion

at a side table, but leapt up in time to play an ornamental

run on the final chorus of "How Deep Is the Ocean?" He

finished the song leaning against a dessert cart.

"So easy when you know how," he chuckled as the diners

applauded.

At around midnight the place seems like a speak-easy and

Mr. Yaged swings the band like a lariat, spurring the

musicians on with shouts and comments. When backing up

soloists he comes up with simple, floating riffs. He

applauds his sidemen's solos, clarinet tucked like an

umbrella under his arm. Sometimes, when he particularly

likes the way his bandmates end a tune, he will start them

up again and have them play it several more times,

guffawing gleefully each time.

Late on that recent Saturday night a man from the bar

wobbled over and stuffed a $5 bill into the tip jar. Mr.

Yaged started the band off on a stomping "St. Louis Blues"

and then "Flying Home" and "King Porter Stomp."

During "Alexander's Ragtime Band" a man leaned over and

said, "When you write your article, say the food's terrible

and the waiters are nasty so us old-timers can come and not

be swamped with people."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/15/arts/mus...2195efd0a021965

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My wife and I saw Yaged and his then sextet thirty or so years ago as the second group along with some much more famous group we've now forgotten. Sol worshiped Goodman but always played in his shadow. He was a pretty good musician but never made it to the front rank. But he sure loved to play. We were seated toward the back of the hall, and when it came time for the other band to take the stand, Sol stood behind us behind an airconditioner or something, playing softly along with the other group. I too was amazed to find him still at it.

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  • 15 years later...

He sat in with this band I was playing in, and on the break, he went up to anyone in the band who was near him and said, "You sounded pretty good; how did I sound?"

The last time I saw him was about ten years ago. He was playing a small group concert outside a library, on one of those stages on wheels, and he was trying to play the tenor sax for some reason. He sounded so bad, I had to leave. He could probably still play the clarinet, but I couldn't handle his tenor playing. RIP, Sol...

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