Stan Hasselgård

Greatly influenced simply by Benny Goodman, Stan Hasselgård was an ill-fated Swedish clarinetist who centered on swing in the later ’30s and ’40s, yet started exploring bebop toward the finish of his life. Actually, he was one of the primary musicians to try out bop in the clarinet. The jazzman was created Ake Hasselgård in Sundsvall, Sweden, but was raised in the tiny city of Bollnas. Hasselgård was presented with a clarinet for his 16th birthday. At 19, while he was participating in the College or university of Uppsala in Uppsala, Sweden, he became a member of a little group known as the Royal Swingers. Hasselgård became a member of bassist Arthur Osterwall’s quintet in 1945, that was also the entire year where he helped type a fresh Royal Swingers lineup. With the middle-’40s, the clarinetist got become well-known in Swedish jazz circles, and 1946-1947 discovered him being highlighted prominently on recordings with the Swingers, along with the sextet of bassist Simon Brehm. By July 1947, Hasselgård was surviving in NY, where he sat along with Jack port Teagarden on the Famous Door around the famous 52nd Street shortly after his introduction. After that in 1948, Hasselgård got an opportunity to play and record along with his idol, Benny Goodman, who used the Swede inside a two-clarinet septet that also included Mary Lou Williams and Wardell Grey. It had been also in 1948 that Hasselgård used American music artists on some small-group recordings of his personal and headlined the 52nd Road club known as the Three Deuces, where he previously a quintet that boasted Maximum Roach on drums. Around the opening nights his Deuces engagement in Oct 1948, he was billed as “the Bebop Ruler of Sweden” and discovered that none apart from Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had been in the target audience. Hasselgård’s last documenting sessions arrived on November 18, 1948. Four times later on, on November 22, he was wiped out in an car crash in Decatur, IL, at age 26.