I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead! Variations on a Theme by Artie Shaw

New York: Fleet, 1965. First Edition. From the library of the great jazz musician, composer, and bandleader Artie Shaw with his bookplate. Fine copy in a very good bright dust jacket with a hint of dust soiling and a few small chips and tears. Arthur Jacob Arshawsky (1910 - 2004), better known as Artie Shaw, started out his career in music at thirteen as a saxophone player and switched to the clarinet at sixteen. He gained experience and skill while on the road at a young age which lead to steady work in the 30s as a session musician and performing with various bands and orchestras and on radio. His first critical acclaim came with his performance of “Interlude in B-flat" at a swing concert at the Imperial Theater in New York in 1935. And during the swing era, Shaw's big band enjoyed such enduring hits like Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" and Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust," "Back Bay Shuffle,” "Moonglow,” "Rosalie," "Frenesi," and "Summit Ridge Drive." He was known for his innovation both in his musical arrangements and for becoming the first white bandleader to hire a full-time black female singer, Billie Holiday, in 1938 to tour the then segregated southern United States. Throughout his career he worked with many of the great jazz musicians and vocalists of his day, including Helen Forrest, Mel Torme, drummers Buddy Rich and Dave Tough, guitarists Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney, and Tal Farlow and trombonist-arranger Ray Conniff. A charismatic and complicated man, Shaw was married eight times, most notably to actresses Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Doris Dowling, and Evelyn Keyes, Betty Kern, the daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern, and ‘Forever Amber’ author Kathleen Winsor. In 2004, he was presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his musical career and accomplishments, he is the author of an autobiography, ‘The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline of Identity,’ three short novels; ‘I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead!,’ a collection of short stories, ‘The Best of Intentions and Other Stories,’ and an autobiographical novel titled ‘The Education of Albie Snow,’ which, sadly never made it to publication.