Remembering Ken Peplowski — a Jazz Artist Who Had ‘Big Ears’

A lot of people were quick to categorize Ken Peplowski as one thing, and too often that was a thing of the past. Some described him as a traditional or “neo-swing” player, saying he worked in jazz styles that were considered archaic even before he was born.Nothing could be further from the truth: when my friend Jack Lewin called me from the Jazz Cruise on Monday evening, and I had the unfortunate task of alerting jazz fans in my immediate circle to the sad news, the first phrase that leapt to mind was the “contemporary saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Peplowski.”Peplowski was much more than any one thing. At the very least, there was a duality to his music, starting with the two instruments that he carted from gig to gig for close to 50 years, and the role models he had for each: Lester Young, Ben Webster, and Zoot Sims on tenor saxophone; Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Buddy DeFranco on clarinet. He had clearly listened to all of them, but there was never a point when he was anything other than his own man, no matter what he was playing.The title of his first album as a leader, “Double Exposure,” clearly pointed to his facility on both horns. In fact, although tenor and clarinet have been a standard “double” for virtually the entire history of jazz, it’s hard to think of another musician from any generation who was equally great and equally prolific on both.Lester Young was a compelling clarinetist, as were many of his disciples, but he hardly gave equal time to the instrument. Peplowski was very fond of Jimmy Hamilton’s work on tenor, but he was and is primarily known for his clarinet solos. Yet virtually all of Peplowski’s 70 or so albums as a leader give equal time to both.For an artist who was too often pigeonholed as just one thing, Peplowski was amazingly wide-ranging in his purview. The four albums that he made for Capri Records in the 2010s — “Noir Blue” (2010), “In Search Of…” (2011), “Maybe September” (2013), and “Enrapture” (2016) — reflect his wide-ranging tastes. It was nothing for Peplowski to start with a century-old tune like Irving Berlin’s “All Alone” — precisely the same number that a staunch traditionalist would play — but update it and play it in a way that was completely modern.“Maybe September” is an especially diverse program. The closest thing to a jazz standard is “Main Stem,” which speaks to Peplowski’s perennial fascination with Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, by far the most represented composers in his catalog, and among the few who rated a full-on songbook album. (That was “Ellingtonian Tales,” recorded in London in 2001; he also did a full Ellington songbook with the fine singer Carol Sloane.)Ken Peplowski, on tenor saxophone, performs at New York’s Mezzrow in 2021. Photo by Tom BuckleyThe title song “Maybe September” is a Tony Bennett signature, which he renders lovingly on tenor, and there’s also a classical piece on clarinet, “Romanza,” by the 20th century French composer Francis Poulenc. Many of the others derive from the larger world that Mel Torme, Peplowski’s frequent collaborator/employer, described as the “RRP” — the relatively recent past, or relatively recent pop music.Many jazz musicians have played Lennon & McCartney, although few as eloquently as Peplowski does when he transforms “For No One” into a probing clarinet lament. But far fewer have tackled the Beach Boys (Brian Wilson’s “Caroline, No” from “Pet Sounds”) and Harry Nilsson (“Without Her”). There’s a lesser-heard Harry Warren movie musical song, “I’ll String Along with You,” and also a country classic that became an early Elvis hit, “A Fool Such as I.” “Peps,” as his fellow musicians liked to say, “has big ears.”It’s also rather amazing the way he dealt with the giant shadow of his one-time employer, the legendary Benny Goodman. Perhaps because the clarinet is so underutilized in the jazz of the post-WW2 era, Goodman dominates that instrument to a vastly disproportionate degree — even more, for instance, than Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis dominates the trumpet. Virtually every one who elects to play the clarinet will invariably face comparison with Goodman, usually sooner rather than later. Peplowski dealt with that fact by meeting it head on, by absorbing everything Goodman had to teach him, both in person and by recorded example, and moving beyond it. If you listen to BG’s evolution over the decades, you’ll find that he played one way in 1930 and almost completely differently in 1940, almost unrecognizably as the same person. Then listen to the way Goodman played in 1950 and 1960, and then into the ‘70s and even in his final band, in which Peplowski served in the reed section, shortly before his death in 1986.The Benny Goodman who played “That’s a Plenty” in 1928 was a very different musician from the one who played “Send in the Clowns” in 1975. If you can move beyond that, and extrapolate the way Goodman might have played in 1990 or even into the 21st century, you will arrive at something that sounds like Ken Peplowski. It’s not that Peplowski was emulating Benny, but that Goodman would have come to the same conclusions that Peplowski did.The ultimate duality, which he shared with such idols as Ben Webster, is how Peplowski could be such a terror on high-energy uptempo tunes — a veritable font of unlimited improvisatory ideas, much like Sonny Stitt, another inspiration — but be such a pussycat on love songs and ballads. He could switch from kicking your butt to breaking your heart in less than a heartbeat.As I reported here in December, I had the pleasure of attending the Suncoast Jazz Festival in 2025 and made a point to be there at all 10 or so sets in which Peplowski played as either the bandleader or a featured sideman.He could fit into any setting; “Maybe September” doesn’t even include any examples of him playing sambas, bossa novas, rhumbas, mambos, or calypsos, all of which he excelled at. He also was a master at playing obligatos behind great singers, from Torme and Sloane to Leon Redbone and Peggy Lee. As I have observed many times while hearing him at such events over the last four decades, Ken Peplowski is — or, rather, was — an entire jazz festival all by himself.Ken Peplowski grabbed the attention of the jazz world at large with those first Concord Jazz albums starting in 1988, and I wrote about him for the first of many occasions in the New York Times in 1991. For all this time, I always thought of him as one of the greatest living recipients of more than 100 years of jazz history. He’s part of that history now, and that will take some getting used to.

Remembering Ken Peplowski — a Jazz Artist Who Had ‘Big Ears’

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