Artie Shaw, one of the most innovative and important bandleaders of his era, and considered by many the greatest clarinetist in jazz history, has rarely played his clarinet in fifty years. His music is still adored, but Shaw himself, as he puts it, is "out of the Artie Shaw business." Being a superstar was never what he set out to do.

A brilliant musician and an exceptional man, Shaw writes with candour and eloquence of his metamorphosis from "a shy, introspective kid named Arthur Arshawsky into a sort of weird, jazz-band-leading, clarinet-tooting, jitterbug-surrounded Symbol of American Youth." Along the way we meet such other jazz immortals as Willie The Lion Smith, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke and Billie Holiday. Shaw paints a profoundly revealing picture of the music business and the singular milieu of popular entertaiment, explaining that "the trouble with Cinderella" is "nobody ever lives happily ever after," and gives the reasons behind his decision to leave that world.

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