Hutchenrider, Clarence (Behrens)
Hutchenrider, Clarence (Behrens)
Hutchenrider, Clarence (Behrens), jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, flutist; b. Waco, Tex., June 13, 1908; d. N.Y., Aug. 18, 1991. He took up sax at the age of 14, and led his own band at high school, then played at the Adolphus Hotel (Dallas), in a band led by Jack Gardner, and was subsequently with Dick Richardson and the Claiborne Bryson Bands in Shreveport, La., before joining Ross German in 1928. He was with Tommy Tucker (1929), then with Merle Jacobs in Cleveland (ca. 1930). After a spell with Austin Wylie, he joined the Casa Loma Orch. (directed by Glen Gray) in autumn of 1931. He was featured mainly on clarinet with Casa Loma (occasionally on tenor: “No Name Jive,” etc.) until 1943. He suffered an illness in the spring of 1943, but returned to the band until December of that year. He did radio shows and tours with Jimmy Lytell’s Band for three years, then illness enforced temporary retirement from full-time music. He returned to regular playing, worked with the Glen Moore Band and Walter Davidson, then formed a highly successful trio which, through the late 1950s to the early 1970s, played long residencies in N.Y. In the later 1970s, he played with Vince Girodano’s New Calif. Ramblers and also the New Orleans Nighthawks, but was then inactive for the last decade of his life.
—John Chilton, Who’s Who of Jazz/Lewis Porter