Buddy DeFranco obituary (John Fordham, 26 December 2014 12, The Guardian)

The role of the clarinet in jazz changed from vital to marginal in little more than a decade, between the last hurrahs of the big swing bands at the end of the 1930s, and the rise of the unsentimentally byzantine style of bebop. The traditionally woody-toned instrument turned out to be no match for the fiercer saxophone on bop's edgy melodies, except in the hands of a rare exception in the American musician Buddy DeFranco, who has died aged 91.

In the 21st century, the instrument's unique personality has reappeared in contemporary jazz through the work of artists including the Americans Don Byron, Joe Lovano and Anat Cohen, and the UK's Shabaka Hutchings - but during the first wave of the bebop revolution, the prodigious DeFranco was almost alone.