Irving Fazola

Irving Fazola (December 10, 1912 – March 20, 1949) was an American jazz clarinetist.

Fazola or Faz was born in New Orleans, Louisiana as Irving Henry Prestopnik. He got the nickname Fazola . He decided to use the nickname as his family name, and many fellow musicians were unaware that Fazola was not his birth name. Many people feel that he adopted the name "Fazola" from Louis Prima, when Faz toured with him. Prima would tell Faz that he was "Fazola" Italian for "Beans." That being Jazz talk for being cool.

Influenced early on by Leon Roppolo, who Fazola continued to idolize throughout his life, Fazola was playing professionally by age 15. In his home city of New Orleans he worked with such bandleaders as Candy Candido, Louis Prima, Sharkey Bonano, Armand Hug, and Ellis Stratakos.

When the touring Ben Pollack band came through New Orleans in 1935 Fazola joined the band and toured the country and played residencies in New York City and Chicago with them. After brief stints with Gus Arnheim, Glenn Miller and time back in New Orleans he joined the Bob Crosby band in 1938. His work with Crosby brought him national fame. He ranked first in the Down Beat polls of 1940 and 1941 as the top hot clarinetist, winning out over such other greats as Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Edmond Hall.

It is clear, listening to Fazola's mature style in the late 1930s (My Inspiration with the Bob Crosby Orchestra, for instance), that his main influence by then was Jimmie Noone. He played on the Glenn Miller composition Doin' the Jive which was released on Brunswick and Vocalion in 1938 by the first Glenn Miller Orchestra.

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