The alto clarinet has been treated like the creepy middle sister of the girls down the block if their family name was clarinet, ignored and eventually in need of extra protection in order to not be banished forever. The so-called protection comes not in the form of fortified ramparts but in bits of information, the detail of most relevance here being that Rudy Rutherford played the alto clarinet so much during several years with the Count Basie band that some aficionados of reed instruments whose curvy designs suggest the anatomy of geese have dared to suggest that such an unpretentious bandleader as the Count would have employed a full-time alto clarinetist. Timid jazz biographers have backed off this claim; for example, John Chilton describes Rutherford as only "mainly on alto clarinet" in the 1946 and 1947 massed army of Basie.

This player originally established himself much more on the baritone saxophone side of the bandstand, working through the late '30s on his local Detroit music scene prior to a series of top-drawer big-band credits: Lionel Hampton off and on till 1943, Basie in the aforementioned period, sandwiched by his first two-year stint on baritone sax plus some regular clarinet and the final chase with Basie in the early '50s, not to mention the energetic Earl Hines group of the '70s in which youngsters such as bassist Wes Brown prowled the rhythm section.

Rutherford also had a mild-mannered career as a leader of his own groups, usually settling into house gigs at nightclubs, including one named after his former boss, Basie's. Even when these jobs put him in a country-club setting, this solid jazzman never abandoned the essence of his music. He performed in fine form with tenor saxophone giant Buddy Tate in a 1964 tour. Two decades later, Rutherford had lost not a bit of his form, keeping the spirits of timeless music flowing with another great tenor frontman, Illinois Jacquet. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi