Albert
System: The Jazz Clarinet
Compiled, wrritten and constructed by Oscar
Font (trombone
and clarinet player). E-MAIL
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About
New Orleans & Clarinet Players
"...Those
were happy days, man, happy days. Buy a keg of beer for one dollar and a bag
full of food for another..." "...There were two thousand registered
girls and must have been ten thousand unregistered. And all crazy about clarinet
players..."
Alphonse Picou.
WELCOME
Well, dear reader, if you are on this web-site, I'm sure that you know perfectly
about differences among
the Boehm System and Albert System clarinets. Then, as you know, our old and
uncomfortable Albert System clarinet was the choice of the whole family of
(old too) first clarinets jazz players. Maybe for economical reasons or maybe
because they could have had some teacher who played this kind of clarinet,
nobody knows exactly the reason, (well, the history of jazz is plenty of shadows
and "nobody knows").
As I told you, in fact, all clarinet players
played Albert System and this special clarinet and his special sound became
a kind of "myth" or "legend" from the early New Orleans
jazz. Actually, the Albert System "disease"
is not extinct yet, in this big world there's a rare family of Albert System
players, maybe "jazz romantics", "New Orleans jazz nostalgics"
or just respectuous
to the old jazz clarinet tradition (I'm in this
last group).
Albert
System Roots
Through
the years, or even maybe centuries, the clarinet has gradually been perfected.
Since it's appearance
in 1690, invention of the german constructor Johann Christoph Denner,
and fruit of the evolution of the early "Chalumeau" (a stright flute
with seven holes and two brass keys), the clarinet has not stopped evolving.
The arrangement of the keys has been varied
in search or superior playing
comfort, the body of the instrument has also changed shape and size to find
proper tuning throughout the range of sound produced by the instrument, from
the lowest to the highest notes. It was in 1811 when Iwan Müller,
through the addition of three new keys, achieved what was considered the first
perfectly tuned clarinet. This model was used throughout the nineteen century.
H.Klosé and Auguste Buffet adapted the mechanics of the
clarinet to the new system created by Theobald Boehm. This system increased
the playing comfort by using a greater number of keys on the instrument. However,
Iwan Müller system subsisted giving way to the Oehler and ALBERT systems,
the latter commonly used in Germany and in the South of the United States.
Old
clarinet in Bb by Robert Wolf & Co. (London, 1840/45)
The history of jazz tells us how at the end of the nineteen century and beginning
of the twentieth century, African-Americans obtained acces to the purchase
of musical instruments. They were usually second or third hand, or even came
from the consignment of remaining instruments used by military bands during
the American Civil War (1861-1865). The purchased clarinets were often German
or French patented, and were primarily, if not always, Albert system. Other
available instruments were cornets, trombones, flutes, flugelhorn, tubas,
drums, bass drums, mellophone, euphonium, and other typical marching band
instruments.
Albert
System Players Gallery
When
I began to play this kind of clarinet, there was some musicians who tried
to understand my choice, they told me too that there are in the Jazz history
a lot of clarinet players who played Boehm, or others like Albert Nicholas
who switched from Albert to Boehm System. It is true but is true too that
there were really important clarinet players like Barney Bigard who could
switch to Boehm and never did it. Before to continue my explanation I'd like
to show you and give you some names of old Albert System clarinet players:
Louis “Big Eye” Nelson, William Warner, Alcide “Yellow”
Nuñez, Sidney Bechet, George Lewis, Larry Shields, George Baquet, Leon Ropollo,
Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, Barney Bigard, Edmund Hall, Omer Simeon, Raymond
Burke, Lawrence Duhé, Emile Barnes, Albert Burbank, John Casimir, Louis Cottrell,
Joe Darensbourg, Sam Dutrey Jr., Irving Fazola, Gene Sedric, Tony Giardina,
Willie Humphrey, Manuel Perez, Alphonse Picou, Wade Whaley, Charles McCurdy,
Earl Fouché, Andrew Morgan, Johnny Fischer, Martin Kirsch, Dennis Harris,
Charlie Cordilla, among many others
From
left to right: Pic1 Barney Bigard (cl: SELMER
improved), Pic2 Barney Bigard (cl: SELMER improved / Register key
stright), Pic3 L to R: Darnell Howard (cl: Boehm System), Albert
Nicholas (cl: Still Albert System) and Barney Bigard again (cl:
Albert System), Pic4 Jimmy Dorsey (cl: Albert
System too / Register key straight)
From
left to right: Pic1 Sidney Bechet (cl: Albert System from Buffet +
rollers), Pic2 Sidney Bechet mouthpiece detail (Mouthpiece: SELMER
Goldentone. Ligature: Art Deco from SELMER), Pic3 George Lewis (cl:
SELMER improved), Pic4 Omer Simeon (cl: SELMER /
Register key straight),
Pic5 Joe Darensbourg (cl: BUFFET without rollers)
From
left to right: Pic1 Louis Cottrell (cl: SELMER /
Register key straight),
Pic2 Irving Fazola (cl: SELMER), Pic3: Albert Burbank (cl: Albert
System /
Register key straight)
Albert
System Brands. Wood and Metal clarinets
In conversation to some actual Albert System players, they say more or less
the same:
The Albert System clarinet has a "special"
sound.
Well, I think that it could be true but finally all depends of the player.
The mouthpiece is important too, and, of course, the "Albert System"
clarinet construction makes easy to reach that "special" sound easily
than a Boehm System clarinet. Recently, in conversation to Eberhard
Kraut (a Metal clarinet expert), he find out to me that a Boehm player
can get that "special" sound playing a Silver Metal Boehm clarinet.
If you want to check it, try to hear some music from a Boehm System clarinet
player called Brian
Carrick
There are a lot of Albert System clarinet brands, you can find some of them
checkin' often their E-Bay
page. Normally there's brands like CONN, BUESCHER, VITO, NOBLET, REYNOLDS,
LEBLANC, DUPONT, TRIEBERT. Some of this instruments, depending their general
shape (oiled wood, keys adjustement , new pads, no cracks) can result playable
instruments. But if you are interested in some good item, then you have to
begin a "hard way". The
best Albert System clarinet brands are SELMER and BUFFET on wood clarinets,
and SELMER, BUFFET, CUNDY-BETTONEY, SILVER-KING and HARRY
PEDLER on metal clarinets.
This is
a picture of one of my Albert System clarinets, a nice SELMER Bb K serial
This is
a picture of a Bb Albert System clarinet from BUFFET
This is a picture of my "Boston Wonder" from Cundy-Bettoney (c.1930)
Personally,
I began to play an old and awful Albert System from DUPONT (maybe there's
some good clarinet from this brand, not mine), it was a Bb High Picht*. After
some months (of savings) I decided to investigate to find some other best
clarinet from BUFFET or SELMER. If you want to take this way too, try to find
other sources than E-Bay store, normally the best ones never appear on E-Bay
(there are exceptions).
*If you are a beginner as I was, be careful because there are
clarinets tunned in Low Pitch (A440) and High Pitch (not playable in a band)
SOME
GREAT ALBERT SYSTEM PLAYERS
Jimmie
Noone, "The Great Technic"
There's
no doubt, Jimmie Noone has been the most technic Albert System player of the
Jazz history. There's no clarinet player with such great technic yet. Jimmie
Noone is perfect, a player full of feeling, soul, swing, elegance and that
great technic. Jimmie can say all what he wants to say.
Listen
to Jimmie playing a virtuoso solo in I
Know That You Know
Jimmie played a SELMER
improved clarinet.
In this picture of my SELMER
improved we can see a detail of the typical "three pads in a row"
This is the kind of clarinet (sometimes with two or three rings in the high
and lower sections)
played by Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, George Lewis and some other great clarinet
legends.
The great Jimmie Noone
playing his, great too, SELMER improved
clarinet
Johnny
Dodds, "Mr.Sound"
Yes,
Jimmie Noone has been the "Great Beast" of the traditional jazz
clarinet players, but Johnny Dodds... When a clarinet player buy an Albert
System there's a reason on it, basically because he's trying to reach a specific
sound. In the New Orleans Style the clarinet sound has a name: JOHNNY DODDS
Johnny Dodds is a great player, as well as Jimmie Noone, in some technical
aspects maybe
less virtuoso, but his sound is absolutly incomparable, the hottest clarinet
sound in the Jazz history. Any clarinet player could sell his soul to the
Devil to reach the Johnny Dodds sound, ...me included
(if the Devil is reading this last sentence,
please, contact me by e-mail)
Listen
the Johnny Dodds sound in Clarinet Wobble
Johnny played different kinds of Albert System clarinets from SELMER.
Actually there's a young Albert System clarinet player called
Matthias Seuffert
who, ocasionally, reaches a sound near to the Johnny Dodds way of playing.
Johnny Dodds is one of
the best Albert System players from the Early Jazz Era,
in this picture he's playing a nice SELMER
improved Albert System clarinet.
George
Lewis, the Bing Crosby's "effect"
Sometimes,
when the Bing Crosby manager was asked about the tremendous Bing succes, he
used to answer: "...Well, he (Bing Crosby) makes so easy his way of sing,
that seems that he's shaving." George Lewis makes the same "effect",
George plays so easily that seems to be easy to imitate him. That's wrong!.
For a clarinet player can be hard to reach a technic on a high level, play
fast all scales and arpeggios or to have the best sound in all registers,
but can be impossible to play in the George Lewis way. To play in that way
you have to "feel", to be a "sensitive" player, to have
"someting to explain". George
was a really "sensitive" player, he wasn't a great technic player,
but he replaced it with rhythm, soul and feelings.
Listen
to George playing his own composition "Burgundy
Street Blues"
George
normally played with Albert System clarinets from SELMER, CONN and BUFFET.
Beautiful
picture of the original George Lewis french SELMER clarinet L serie, 4 rings
/ 4 rollers / 3 pads in a row.
Clarinet owned actually by the clarinet player Ryoichi
Kawai. (Courtesy of Ryoichi Kawai)
Since 1943 until 1944/5, George played with a metal clarinet from HARRY PEDLER.
This is
a HARRY PEDLER Albert system metal clarinet, the same exact model that George
Lewis played. (Courtesy of Eberhard
Kraut)
..
.
Two nice
pictures of George Lewis playing his Albert System improved from SELMER, and
a historic picture
of George lewis holding the famous HARRY PEDLER metal clarinet.
Edmond
Hall, a German Seduction
As
I told before, there are a big number of great Albert System players. They
played with the best horn that they could get, normally SELMER or BUFFET.
Sometimes, in a European tour some Albert System players found out that in
Germany there's a clarinet called "Oehler" with the same fingering
that the old Albert System, this is the case of Edmond Hall, who bought a
nice "Oehler System" from KARL
HAMMERSCHMIDT. This is a very good clarinet, but the sound is absolutely
"classic" in the Bohem way. Try to listen to his sound in his early
recordings, then listen to some record from
the "All Stars" late years.
Actually there's a young clarinet player called Evan
Christopher who's playing a near kind of clarinet that Edmond Hall played,
Evan plays a FRANK HAMMERSCHMIDT
(If you are interested to deepen in that kind of German System clarinets you
can visit LIST OF MANUFACTURERS
OF GERMAN SYSTEM CLARINETS . There's a manufacturer that not appear on
that list, I'm talking about Bernd Mossmann,
he's the successor of the famous KOHLERT Co., actually he's working basically
on bassons but he can do very good clarinets too.)
..
Left. Edmond
Hall playing his Oehler System clarinet from KARL HAMMERSCHMIDT
Right: Evan Christopher playing his Oehler System clarinet from FRANK HAMMERSCHMIDT
(Differences that we can see on this kind of clarinet: Different disposition
of the keys with rollers
and register key that close the hole on the left side).
Actually Evan plays this horn just a few times, normally when he has to play
other music than jazz.
Some comments from several Albert System players
Some extracts are from the interesting and recommendable book "NEW
ORLEANS STYLE" (Bill Russell)
Edmond Hall: " ...The tone of an Albert is different
for a band. Playin' with a combination (a six piece dixieland band), I don't
think a Boehm clarinet fits as there. The tone is beautiful and rich and everything,
but it hasn't got the Albert big tone, especially when you get in the low
register. You get a bigger tone out of the Albert than you do a Boehm."
"...I got this six-ring Albert in Boston, have you ever heard of a six-ring
Albert? A guy just came up to me and asked 50 dollars for it. I wasn't interested.
Later he said: Give me 25 dollars, I said: Now you're talking. It's agood
instrument. I've used it ever since"
Omer Simeon:
"...Almost everyone was using Albert system
at that time, all through the early twenties. The tone holes are a little
farther apart than the Boehm. It's a little farther strech. The bore seems
a little larger too. You can hold an Albert system at the end of the bell
and look through it from the bell to barrel and notice the difference in the
bore of the instrument. I guess that's what makes the tone a little broader.
The Boehm has keys that simplify the intrincate passages but speaking for
myself, the Albert, well I can handle it better."
" ...I'm using, now, a Selmer. Improved Selmer. Jimmie Noone used that
too. Noone, Barney Bigard and Albert Nicholas. I think, Albert, he changed
to a Boehm but Barney still uses an Albert."
Barney
Bigard :
" ...I always played an Albert system clarinet,
and when the Boehm systems came out I just stayed with that Albert. Even today
I prefer it. The Albert seems like it has a better tone to me."
George
Lewis : "...I
like a wood clarinet best, but once I used a rubber one, hard rubber. And
i got the same thing out of the rubber clarinet as I did the wood. Now, about
metal clarinets, a lot of fellows say the tone is different from wooden ones,
but I didn't find any difference in tone. I did Burgundy Street Blues, the
original Burgundy Street Blues we made for Bill Russell, with a metal clarinet.
It is at the Jazz Museum on Bourbon Street now, it was a HARRY PEDLER make.
The only way the tone is different is if the clarinet is a cheap one, wood
or metal. Of course, a metal clarinet won't crack like wood ones..."
"...When I starting in New Orleans, all clarinetists played Albert systems.
All of them. I never saw a Boehm. Sometimes I played a Boehm when I was younger,
but I never did like it. I playan Albert system
clarinet, a French SELMER. I didn't like the tone of the Boehm system, it
was too keen. If you listen to the radio and you hear a clarinet you can tell
it's a Boehm system because the tone is so light, you know. It doesn't have
the body. It's not as deep as the Albert, but the Boehm system is faster.
They're much heavier in weight, of course, Boehms, they have more keys, more
mechanical, and it helps you make so many things where with the Albert system
you've got to do it with your tonge or with your fork finguering..."
Raymond
Burke:
" ...As for my clarinet, I don't like the Boehm
system. I think the Albert has a much better tone. I never did play the Boehm
system. I don't know why they make them. Why have all those keys on there,
and halfe a dozen ways of making a note? I think the less keys and holes you
have on a clarinet the better. The 13-hole clarinet is plenty. Sometimes I
take the key off a clarinet and stop up the hole"
Albert
Nicholas :
" ...I changed over in Egypt. My Albert needed
overhauling and I had to send it to France. A clarinet player in the Symphony
lent me his Boehm and taught me the fingering. I practised on that Boehm,
and when the Albert came back I'd forgotten the fingering for it..."
"...Omer Simeon and Barney and Edmond Hall are still on their Alberts,
but I prefer the sound of that Boehm. It's a true clarinet. That experience
helped me a lot when I got back to the States..."
Joe
Darensbourg :
" ...My dad paid ten dollars for an old Albert
system clarinet that he bought from my teacher. That was my first clarinet:
Then, after that, seeing that I was going to learn, he bought me a new one,
a C.G.CONN, for 25 dollars. That was an Albert system too. In fact I didn't
change to Boehm until 1950, when I was playing with kid Ory, because I thought
I wanted to teach. A guy had offered me a good deal to go with him in his
music school. Hell I should have better.
That's why I had a spare BUFFET Albert system clarinet."
Woody
Allen :
" ...It ocurred to me that all the guys I like
played the Albert, and that maybe if I played it, two things would happen:
one is that the sound would be slightly close to the sound I'd want to get,
and two, that my clichés would fall more in the New Orleans idiom,
because the fingering system must influence the phrases or something..."
The
Eberhard Kraut's Definitive Collection
Eberhard
Kraut from Leonberg (Stuttgart, GERMANY) is one of the best Albert System
clarinets collector. His nice and wide collection is, there's no doubt on
it, the best European collection of this kind of horns.
The Eberhard collection is basically dedicate to the metal Albert
System clarinets, but actually he owns a large collection of Boehm too. Nowadays
Eberhard complete his collection with some superb and splendid wood clarinets.
In the next two pictures we can see good examples of the Eberhard's collection.
On the left there are several Albert System from SELMER, on the right there
are the whole different kind of clarinets that George Lewis played during
his career (same model, not originals)
. 
1------2------3-------4-------5-------6------7----------1-------2-------3------4------5-------6------7
First
Picture (Left)
ALL SELMER
1 & 7 Two rare metal Albert System
2 Model played by George Lewis
3 Model played by Barney Bigard
4, 5 & 6 Full Albert System clarinets played
by Johnny Dodds and Jimmie Noone
Second
Picture (Right)
Bb CLARINETS PLAYED BY GEORGE LEWIS
(commented
by Eberhard Kraut)
1 Very simple wooden Albert System clarinet
by KOHLERT, Bohemia
(see cover photo of AMCD-4; George Lewis didn't play this clarinet on the
AM sessions)
2 PEDLER metal Albert (Climax / AM Sessions 1943/44)
3 CONN ebonite Albert clarinet (AM Session with
Bunk Johnson 1945)
4 BUFFET wooden Albert (AM Trio Session 1945;
Herb Otto's Party 1949)
5 FONTAINE (by NOBLET) ebonite Albert clarinet
fitted with a BRILHART "Ebolin" mouthpiece (Jam Session 1950, Delmark
1953, Riverside "Vesper" Session 1954)
6 SELMER wooden Albert clarinet fitted with a
screw adjustable barrel joint and a mouthpiece with a LEBLANC ligature (George
played this type of clarinet in the last decade of his life)
7 PENZEL-MUELLER wooden Full-Albert clarinet.
George did his las job at Preservation Hall with this type of clarinet he
once bought from Bill Russell and used a white RUNYON "Swing Bore"
mouthpiece
Actual
Albert System clarinet players
On the beginning of this web site I've been talking about actual Albert
System players like a "disease". Well, it is, of course, a joke,
but I like to consider this little group of players (maybe a hundred) like
a strange, peculiar or rare family. Normally, among jazz musicians, is not
common to know about this special kind of clarinet, but is less common to
find anyone who play it in a professional way. Some of them are:
Evan Christopher / Matthias
Seuffert / Thomas
Sancton / Reimer
Von Essen / Eberhard
Kraut / Butch Thompson / Chris
Tyle / Paul Cosentino
/ Woody Allen
/ Sammy Rimington
/ Chris
Burke / Ryoichi Kawai
/ Barry
Wratten / Alexander Stellio / Jake
McMahon / Norrie Cox / Tom Sharpsteen
/ Jeff Beaumont / Ron
Going / Dan Block
/ Walter Sereth / Oscar Font
/ Paul
Furniss / Norman Field
Albert
System & Boehm System: Differences
Since his disappearance, the Albert System clarinets are involved in a
foggy mystery
(in a coherent old jazz tradition). As I told before, the Albert System has
a "peculiar sound" perfetc to play Jazz or other traditional music
like Klezmer or greek music. Obviously you can play the same music stuff with
a Boehm System clarinet, but if you are looking for some specific sound you
have to play an Albert System clarinet. WHY?!!. Well, there are three basic
differences:
- The ALBERT SYSTEM makes easy to bend notes, to make glissandos as a trombone
slide does.
-The BOEHM SYSTEM block to bend notes so easyly.
-The ALBERT SYSTEM has a big "wood" sound on the low register and
a shine "funky" sound on the high register.
-The
BOEHM SYSTEM has the same classic and perfect sound in all registers.
-
The ALBERT SYSTEM fingering construction makes hard a fast playing.
-The BOEHM SYSTEM fingering construction makes easy
a fast playing.
If you want to know more about fingering differences, you can visit:
ALBERT & BOEHM
System FINGERINGS
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