Buddy DeFranco obituary

Jazz clarinettist who developed a flawless technique for bebop The role of the clarinet in jazz changed from vital to marginal in little more than a decade, between the last hurrahs of the big swing bands at the end of the 1930s, and the rise of the unsentimentally byzantine style of bebop. The traditionally woody-toned instrument turned out to be no match for the fiercer saxophone on bop's edgy melodies, except in the hands of a rare exception in the American musician Buddy DeFranco, who has di...