Artie Shaw advises: "Don't look back"

Now, A Jazz Moment...

MUSIC: Temptation, CD: The Essential Artie Shaw, Legacy C2K-69239 (disc 2, cut12)

NEA Jazz Master Artie Shaw remembers 1940....

Artie Shaw: I had broken up my band and quit the music business and gone to Mexico to try and figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I did not want to stand up there and be an entertainment personality, it embarrasses me.

Shaw always turned adversity to his advantage.

Playing jazz is a very strange business. It makes you reach out to do things, to make it fit in, that you wouldn't have done otherwise and sometimes better that you've ever thought of. It's an interesting idea. Don't look back, Keep looking straight ahead, cause if you look back, you're going to screw up.

MUSIC POST: "Scuttlebutt," CD: The Essential Artie Shaw, Legacy C2K-69239 (disc 1, cut 6)

Artie Shaw was one of the most innovative and outrageous figures in jazz. He once wrote an epitaph for himself which read, He did the best he could with the material at hand . He later revised it to two simple words: go away. This Jazz Moment was produced by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Artie Shaw advises: "Don't look back"