Music Pick: Irving Fazola

Who won the 1939, 1940 and 1941 Downbeat Magazine poll as the best jazz clarinetist? If you guessed Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman or Jimmy Dorsey, guess again. It was the incomparable Irving Fazola (191...2-1949). This New Orleans clarinet great was
born Irving Prestopnik, a non jazz sounding name changed to the more mellifluous Fazola, after the fourth, fifth and sixth notes of the music scale. Whether Prestopnik or Fazola, he never became the household celebrity of the aforementioned big band clarinet leaders, but he was revered in jazz circles for his marvelous 'woody' clarinet tone. He mainly toiled in numerous jazz and big bands such as Bob Crosby, Phil Harris, Horace Heidt, Gus Arnheim and Ben Pollock. Life on the road wrecked his health and he died at age 36 in 1949 at his New Orleans home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM7nBR7UISU