Biography
Clarinetist Sidney Arodin owes his lasting reputation chiefly to having composed “Lazy River,” yet available evidence hints that the nickname “lazy writer” would suit him equally well. Born Arnondrin, he routinely shed consonants from his surname in the same offhand manner that marked his approach to songwriting, possibly discarding several valuable pieces in the process. The melody for “Lazy River” arrived in a single casual sitting yet proved durable enough for later recordings by Bobby Darin, Nat King Cole, Brenda Lee, the Platters, and Gene Vincent, although Arodin himself never cut the tune. His professional life opened in Louisiana during the early 1920s, placing him squarely inside the New Orleans jazz orbit, yet the material he created reached well beyond that setting into 1950s pop and the first stirrings of rock and roll, prompting the label “rock and row.”
Arodin acquired his initial clarinet at fifteen and studied for just eight weeks; that brief period represented his only formal instruction until, years afterward, he mastered music theory in seven days after losing a job for being unable to read notation. From his sixteenth birthday forward he seldom remained in Westwego, Louisiana. His debut engagement occurred at a Saturday-night dance there when a New Orleans group arrived without its ailing clarinetist; Arodin sprinted barefoot across a mixture of mud and oyster shells to fetch his instrument and was promptly hired. Subsequent work on Mississippi riverboats led him to New York City, where he joined Johnny Stein’s New Orleans Jazz Band in 1922. During the middle twenties he performed alongside a youthful Jimmy Durante before returning south to play with one-armed trumpeter Wingy Manone and the indefatigable Sharkey Bonano.
In the thirties Arodin appeared with Louis Prima’s New Orleans-styled ensemble and continued to record with Manone in a later incarnation of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. Beginning in 1941 declining health sharply curtailed his activity. Throughout his performing years he participated in sessions by Johnnie Miller’s New Orleans Frolickers, Albert Brunies & His Halfway House Orchestra, Monk Hazel & His Bienville Roof Orchestra, and the Jones & Collins Astoria Hot Eight, frequently serving as the sole white musician present. Certain sides issued without personnel listings on the Banner label may feature him, while other attributions occasionally granted to Arodin actually belong to Charlie Cordella, whose markedly different clarinet style should have precluded the confusion. Years before avant-garde ensembles such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago explored toy instruments, Arodin played a tonette on the recording “Sizzling the Blues,” an early instance of his inventive outlook.
Royalties from “Lazy River” provided modest comfort, yet greater earnings might have accrued. Some pressings list joint authorship with Hoagy Carmichael, while others credit Carmichael alone, lending weight to claims that Arodin relinquished additional standards for negligible sums, occasionally a single bottle of wine. Any composition whose title invokes a river invites scrutiny, given Arodin’s longstanding fixation on the subject. Every piece he is known to have written concerns flowing water, including “Drifting on a River,” which employs the identical harmonic sequence Arodin used as a daily clarinet warm-up. “Lazy River” essentially presents that same sequence at a reduced tempo, paired with lyrics that Arodin may have retrieved from a riverbank and Carmichael subsequently polished.
Arodin acquired his initial clarinet at fifteen and studied for just eight weeks; that brief period represented his only formal instruction until, years afterward, he mastered music theory in seven days after losing a job for being unable to read notation. From his sixteenth birthday forward he seldom remained in Westwego, Louisiana. His debut engagement occurred at a Saturday-night dance there when a New Orleans group arrived without its ailing clarinetist; Arodin sprinted barefoot across a mixture of mud and oyster shells to fetch his instrument and was promptly hired. Subsequent work on Mississippi riverboats led him to New York City, where he joined Johnny Stein’s New Orleans Jazz Band in 1922. During the middle twenties he performed alongside a youthful Jimmy Durante before returning south to play with one-armed trumpeter Wingy Manone and the indefatigable Sharkey Bonano.
In the thirties Arodin appeared with Louis Prima’s New Orleans-styled ensemble and continued to record with Manone in a later incarnation of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. Beginning in 1941 declining health sharply curtailed his activity. Throughout his performing years he participated in sessions by Johnnie Miller’s New Orleans Frolickers, Albert Brunies & His Halfway House Orchestra, Monk Hazel & His Bienville Roof Orchestra, and the Jones & Collins Astoria Hot Eight, frequently serving as the sole white musician present. Certain sides issued without personnel listings on the Banner label may feature him, while other attributions occasionally granted to Arodin actually belong to Charlie Cordella, whose markedly different clarinet style should have precluded the confusion. Years before avant-garde ensembles such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago explored toy instruments, Arodin played a tonette on the recording “Sizzling the Blues,” an early instance of his inventive outlook.
Royalties from “Lazy River” provided modest comfort, yet greater earnings might have accrued. Some pressings list joint authorship with Hoagy Carmichael, while others credit Carmichael alone, lending weight to claims that Arodin relinquished additional standards for negligible sums, occasionally a single bottle of wine. Any composition whose title invokes a river invites scrutiny, given Arodin’s longstanding fixation on the subject. Every piece he is known to have written concerns flowing water, including “Drifting on a River,” which employs the identical harmonic sequence Arodin used as a daily clarinet warm-up. “Lazy River” essentially presents that same sequence at a reduced tempo, paired with lyrics that Arodin may have retrieved from a riverbank and Carmichael subsequently polished.
Albums
