Michael Doyle’s title is striking but also misleading. Ostensibly about the adventures (and misadventures) of Artie Shaw’s Navy Band 501, popularly known as Shaw’s Rangers, which saw active service in the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, it adds little to the putative title. Curiously, Shaw devotes only a few pages to his wartime musical experiences in his autobiography The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline Of Identity (1952). He did, however, provide some reflections on his naval years in two short stories that he included in his collection The Best Of Intentions And Other Stories (1989). More recently, several commentators have supplied additional details (and conjectures) about the Navy Band – notably Vladimir Simosko in Artie Shaw: A Musical Biography And Discography (2000), Edmund L. Blandford in Artie Shaw: The Man & His Music (1974) and my own (unacknowledged) Artie Shaw: His Life And Music (2004). Shaw himself did appraise my book in a letter which included the statement that “I read through your book rather rapidly, since I already know most of what you were writing about.”
Even the most omnivorous Shavians will not find much (if anything) to bite on in this repetitive and meandering monograph. The first four chapters summarise his early life, musical tastes and overnight success with the recordings of Begin The Beguine, followed by his melodramatic composition Nightmare. Doyle correctly stresses Artie’s strong connections with the talented trumpeter Max Kaminsky, drummer Dave Tough, pianist and arranger Claude Thornhill, saxophonist Sam Donahue and trumpeter Conrad Gozzo, all of whom he “enlisted” or smuggled into the Navy Band 501. Shaw himself received the rank of chief petty officer. By all accounts, including his own, once the (all-white) band began touring and playing to US soldiers and sailors, they were rapturously received. They were also subject to attacks by Japanese aircraft, ships and submarines, and exhausted by travel on a variety of transports. Also, cracks soon began to appear in the band. Claude Thornhill quickly tired of Shaw’s abrasive personality and trombonist Tasso Harris remembered that “Shaw was the most disliked guy by everybody, including the band.”
The Rangers’ packed and hectic schedules included a visit to Guadalcanal where they were attacked by Japanese fighter planes. But the ever-present dangers came from rodents, unsanitary living conditions and what later came to be called “war neuroses,” “combat fatigue” and “traumatic neuroses”. Shaw himself suffered what was then called a “nervous breakdown”, but managed to take his Rangers to both New Zealand and Australia where they received rapturous receptions. In Australia a doctor reported that Shaw was “suffering from loss of appetite and appeared to be under tremendous tension, overcome with countless fears and worries”. He concluded that his patient had a “basically unstable emotional makeup”. The stark fact that Shaw went through eight marriages and divorces might help justify this verdict.
The remaining chapters summarise Shaw’s post-war activities and achievements up to his death aged 94 on 30 December 2004. Characterising him as “a self-made intellectual, adamant as only an autodidact can be”, Doyle judges The Trouble With Cinderella as an “eccentric autobiography” and “a hot mess, congested with various musings, but lacking essential facts, coherent chronology and clear narrative among other shortcomings”. Unfortunately, much the same could be said of Nightmare In The Pacific.
Nightmare In The Pacific: The World War II Saga Of Artie Shaw And His Navy Band, by Michael Doyle. University of North Texas Press, 2025. 278pp. ISBN 9781574419467
