Most people who grew up in the rock era viewed clarinetist Pete Fountain the same way they did Al Hirt—a bearded New Orleans traditional jazz player who turned up on lots of variety shows in the late 1960s and '70s, and whose pop and honky-tonk albums were marketed largely to older folks who enjoyed bland jazzy music. All of which, of course, is terribly unfair.
As the following 1980 documentary sent along by reader Les Johnston shows, Fountain, who died in August at 86, was quite a musical tiger and a beautiful player, though, sadly, he never recorded in the modern jazz idiom.
Here's Pete!, a PBS special narrated by Phil Harris that aired in 1980 (with cameos and sharp insights by Doug Ramsey)...
