[78-L] Total Recall: Artie Shaw

[Geoffrey Wheeler]

Re: "Artie spends his life being angry at someone or other," Dan said.

In 1998, the IAJRC held its annual Convention in Redondo Beach, Calif. 
Artie Shaw was a guest speaker. He spoke for a bit more than an hour 
and was quite impressive. Obviously, he had made this presentation 
before. Immediately at the end of his presentation, I rushed up to the 
podium and asked him to autograph the cover of the latest IAJRC 
Journal, which had a photograph of Shaw’s 1950s group. Shaw refused, 
saying he had not given an autograph since he left music back in the 
Fifties and he wasn’t going to start again.  Others came up and asked 
him the same thing. He refused all of them. Finally, he blurted out 
angrily: “What are you—a bunch of savages? Do you also collect 
toenails?”  To a guy standing next to me I said: “Well if he won’t give 
autographs, ask for his toenails.”
Geoffrey Wheeler