He studied the work of his early jazz idols, including Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and Louis Armstrong, before moving to New York where he would find fame as a brilliant and innovative musician.

In the late 1930s, he hired the then unknown blues singer Billie Holiday as his band's vocalist, becoming the first white bandleader to hire a black woman as a full-time singer.

Off to the army band

But he shunned his huge commercial success, and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the always unpredictable Shaw left music for the second time and joined the US Navy to fight World War II.

Top brass soon asked him to form a service band and he spent the 18 months performing on aircraft carriers and bases across the Pacific.

An exhausted Shaw returned home and resumed his still sizzling career as a civilian bandleader, but was still ambivalent to his fame and career, turning to writing his first semi-autobiographical book in 1951.

In 1954, he made his last public performance with his band, the Gramercy Five before a self-exile in Spain.

Shunning fame

He returned to the United States in 1960 and later moved to California, where he spent the rest of his life.

Following the breakup of his last marriage, he acquired a dog for company. "I guess that after eight wives he thought he'd better have something other than a woman," Curtis quipped.

But while walking the pet several years ago, he fell and broke his leg and hip. While he recovered, the painful effects of the accident returned to haunt him in his final years.

In 2002, Shaw released a compact disc set called 'Self Portrait' that included some never released recordings.

Earlier this year, he was presented with a lifetime achievement Grammy Award and was to receive the Jazz Masters award in California on January 7.

When asked a few years ago to provide his own epitaph for an entry in 'Who's Who in America', the ever-pithy Shaw suggested: "He did the best he could with the material at hand." Page: 2 of 2 - back