Ken Peplowski, whose exceptional fluency on clarinet and tenor saxophone made him a prominent voice in acoustic jazz across five decades, died on Monday aboard the Jazz Cruise, off the coast of Florida.
His girlfriend, Pam Stark, confirmed his death. Peplowski had been living with a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, for the last five years.
Largely unknown to the broader public but a star among the jazz faithful, Peplowski played on more than 400 albums, working meaningfully with legends like Hank Jones, Charlie Byrd, Rosemary Clooney, and Mel Tormé. He was hailed by Russell Davies of the BBC as “the greatest living jazz clarinetist,” and often associated, by comparison or in repertory tribute, with Benny Goodman, who also had occasion to employ him.
On the weeklong Jazz Cruise, whose tagline is “Straight-Ahead Jazz Heaven,” Peplowski took part in a whirlwind of performances, panels and other presentations — including a late-night jam session chronicled on social media by pianist Emmet Cohen, and several events with his fellow clarinetists Paquito D’Rivera and Anat Cohen.
“We did a bunch of three-clarinet things this week, and he sounded amazing,” Cohen tells WRTI. “Then on Monday morning, he and I had what they call a Coffee Talk. So basically at 9:45 in the morning, we sat down on the stage and about 100 people came out of their rooms to ask us questions, just chit-chatting about life and the clarinet. Then he said, ‘I have a gig this afternoon,’ and went to his cabin to rest. He never made it to the gig.”
Peplowski made his first album as a leader almost 40 years ago, for Concord Records, his label home from the late-1980s through the ‘90s. He released more than 70 albums as a leader. One of his last was Live at Mezzrow, a warmly assured set with three close associates: Ted Rosenthal on piano, Martin Wind on bass and Willie Jones III on drums.
The album, featuring a mix of songbook chestnuts and less familiar fare, faithfully captures Peplowski’s deceptive ease with phrasing and intonation, and the absolute harmonic understanding that he deployed to lyrical ends.
“He had that rare combination of virtuosity and velocity and outright swing that really made him unique,” says Loren Schoenberg, the senior scholar at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and a friend and colleague for more than 40 years. “No one did what he did. He was such a natural showman that it was as much fun to watch him as it was to listen to him, like Sid Catlett or Herlin Riley.”
Schoenberg, a tenor saxophonist, hails Peplowski’s voice on that instrument as underappreciated. “His tenor playing, emotionally and sonically, was veiled,” he explains. “Because his tone was a dark, soft tone — and nine out of 10 tenor players, at some point, wail. Ken didn’t do that. It was always intensely controlled, but within that control he was very inspired, at least as much as on clarinet. He loved Zoot Sims, but he also loved Lucky Thompson. He was a chromatic improviser.”
But there can be no question that Peplowski’s primary contribution was on clarinet, an instrument he stamped with boundless personality as well as unbeatable proficiency. “His sound is full, rich and warm in all registers,” attests musicologist Jerry Rife in The Clarinet, a periodical published by the International Clarinet Association. “When students come to him with an interest in learning how to become jazz players, he starts with the importance of breath and air support and works with them on the rudiments of a pure classic sound and even finger technique.”
Kenneth Joseph Peplowski was born in Garfield Heights, Ohio on May 23, 1959, to Norbert and Estelle Peplowski. Music was a shared enthusiasm in their household: his older brother, Ted, played trumpet, and their father got them up and running as a polka band called the Harmony Kings. Throughout Ken’s teenage years, they played extensively around Cleveland at Polish weddings and other social functions.
Peplowski briefly attended Cleveland State before catching the ear of trombonist Buddy Morrow, who heard him at a local jazz festival and promptly hired him to play lead alto saxophone and clarinet in a legacy edition of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, which Morrow was leading at the time.
Peplowski toured with the band for two years, 1978 to 1980, honing his skills as a section player and learning the rigors of the road. While working with the band, Peplowski met and studied with Sonny Stitt, an imposing saxophonist in the bebop mold, and an influence he later celebrated with the 1989 album Sonny Side.
“Ken arrived in New York in the early ‘80s and word had already spread that there was this phenomenal clarinet player,” Schoenberg recalls. “I don’t think most of us were prepared for the kind of clarinet player that he was. He always talked about how he wanted to hear the wood in the instrument. If there was one predecessor, much more than Benny Goodman it was Jimmy Hamilton. He played a clarinet like a clarinet, whereas a lot of jazz clarinet is played like a saxophone. There’s a certain kind of embouchure and sound, and a certain attention to dynamics, that come from playing the clarinet like that.”
“He comes from the classical tradition of the clarinet,” says Cohen. “His sound is just so warm and beautiful and inviting and caressing. When we talked Monday morning in front of the public, I actually asked him: Is it true that you practice classical clarinet mostly, and he said that he did. That’s what I adored: he had an impeccable technique, but he never played for the sake of technique. He used it for the expression.”
Peplowski’s versatility and sheer musicality brought him to a range of musical settings, including sideman work with pop stars and pops orchestras. He served as Music Director for the Oregon Coast Jazz Party, and as Music Director for the Oregon Festival of American Music in Eugene from 2007 through 2014.
In the 1990s and early aughts, he had a notable affiliation with the singer-songwriter Leon Redbone, appearing on albums including Up a Lazy River, which met with acclaim. But Peplowski was most visible and prolific among fellow virtuosos in a swinging mode, like pianist Dick Hyman, guitarist Howard Alden, and trumpeter Randy Sandke. Those proclivities served to pigeonhole him as a traditionalist, which was truer in terms of material than in terms of temperament or outlook.
In addition to Stark and his brother, Ted, survivors include a son and daughter, both residing in Sweden: Marty Peplowski and Juliana Peplowski.
Peplowski’s final release is Unheard Bird, featuring music from the Charlie Parker with Strings concept, largely featuring his tenor saxophone playing. It was recorded during a weeklong run at Birdland, with Schoenberg conducting the strings. “It was the first time I really got to hear him play two sets a night for five nights in a row,” Schoenberg says. “I realized what a complete master he was.”
Health issues had plagued Peplowski since at least 2020, when he suffered a serious bout of COVID. The following year he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare and debilitating disease. His subsequent musical outpourings, up to the eve of his passing, belied the seriousness of his condition.
“He was technically in remission but in very poor health,” explains Stark. “He was public about his diagnosis, but I think he tried to keep his suffering private. When he played, he could forget about his illness. So if people saw him playing, he might have seemed fine. But he was suffering.”
