Autumn Leaves – 1966
Tony Scott
The clarinetist is featured in excellent form during a period when he made few records
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Tony Scott (1921-2007) was one of the top bop-oriented clarinetists of the 1950s, displaying a tone a lot cooler than that of the pacesetting Buddy DeFranco along with a thoughtful style.
In 1959 he left the United States and became a world traveler, playing music throughout Asia (including Japan), Europe, Africa, and South America.
While he recorded an early New Age album in 1964 (Music for Zen Meditation) and sometimes played in freer settings, re-emerging now and then, he made relatively few recordings during the remainder of his long career.
This clip from 1966 features Tony Scott in energetic form during a hard-swinging version of “Autumn Leaves,” performed in Prague, Czechoslovakia with a fine local rhythm section, showing that he not lost a thing during his travels.
-Scott Yanow
Ella Fitzgerald