Trombone Playing Lesson 78

 

Playing trombone was always easy – until it wasn’t. I started at age 10 in fifth grade, and by sixth grade I got a superior rating at solo/ensemble contest. Onward and upward, until finally bad habits I didn’t know I had caught up with me. I discovered Body Mapping through an accident of fate and good luck.

My journey through learning Body Mapping has been enlightening, to say the least. Learning how to breathe, sit and stand and hold my head correctly has been an adventure. My teacher has been terrific, knowledgeable and patient, and I’ve had additional help along the way. This has led to self-exploration, of course, and the most important discoveries recently have been related to my head and neck. Years of marching bands and military training had taught me to stand/sit “at attention,” head/chin up, shoulders back. Over time, this posture negatively affected my breathing/blowing and tongue movement. This led to the discovery that what I’ve always thought was the center of my aperture wasn’t; through an accidental encounter when I was discussing it with a friend, I found that to get my air to go through the middle – the center of my lips, where they open fully and most naturally when I blow air between them – I have to move my jaw slightly to the right. Then and only then, do I get a perfectly round, efficient aperture. And then things start to work: my sound and accuracy and flexibility improve, and my tonguing frees up (as long as I don’t tilt my head back like I habitually did before). This also sheds light on why the muscles on the right aways seemed weak, leading to an occasional air pocket in my cheek; once I make that adjustment, the right side falls into line and my embouchure is balanced (probably for the first time ever!). It’s an ongoing process, developing new habits to replace the old, but it’s working. Curiously, in brass quintet rehearsal, my trumpeter friend suggested that that setting might be why I have a somewhat extraordinary high range, and he asked me to slur from low to high while he watched. Sure enough, he could see my chin moving to the right as I ascended. So my job now is to train the middle and low registers to be comfortable with this “new” setting.

Source material:

What Every Musician Needs To Know About The Body by Barbara Conable

What Every Trombonist Needs To Know About The Body by David Vining

The Breathing Book (for various instruments) by David Vining

Saga of the Gong

I joined the Disneyland Band in 1982, and stuck it out until 1994. The band was legendary in many ways, but internally it was a hotbed for practical jokes. One of our favorite targets was our drummer, Joe, who seemed to take it very well when he was the recipient of such frivolity.

One memorable, long-running gag began when Show Services delivered a new gong for Joe to use when we did a show calling for that sound. But Joe drove everyone crazy, testing out different mallets and sounds within the confines of the band room, which was sacrosanct. Band members used it for reading, study, napping; it was personal time and time for recovery from the rigor of performing. After Joe had been asked numerous to "cool it" with the gong, one of the band members (who shall remain anonymous) took it upon himself to "confiscate" the gong and remove it from the room. He took it upstairs, where wardrobe ladies were happy to be in on the joke and secrete it among the costumes.

When Joe was otherwise occupied (like taking a nap), the gong would magically reappear, the bashing of which would wake him up, but not quickly enough for him to catch the perpetrator. Once, when he was at a convention in Las Vegas, band members called his hotel, had him paged, and gonged him over the phone,

Disneyland hosted the "Circus At Disneyland," featuring acts from Ringling Brothers, including the turn-of-the-century wagon pulled by six magnificent Percheron horses. The band rode in the wagon and played appropriate circus-related music. The highlight, though, after the Human Cannonball, was Ricky Wallenda, tight-wire walking over Main Street. The anonymous gong thief talked Ricky into bashing the gong at the beginning of his show. The band was playing below, and Joe remarked, "Hey, he's got my gong!"

The coup de gras occurred when the band was taking their daily cruise on the Mark Twain on the Rivers of America. The band spent part of their day in "break down groups," splitting up the big band into smaller units. One was called the Frontierland Brass, and the members wore 1800s western garb: cavalry uniforms, sheriff's outfit with badge, etc. -- and one lone Indian. The one who shall remain anonymous hung back as the band assembled to march to the river, and then changed into his Indian outfit. He had access to a car, and drove himself and the gong to Videopolis, which conveniently abutted the Indian village on the river. He situated himself among the animatronic Indians and waited for the riverboat to arrive, with the band sitting on the prow. As the boat passed by, the analog Indian slowly raised his arm, and bashed the gong into the silence, just as the band stopped playing. As the boat disappeared around the bend, so did the Indian, and the gong was never heard again.

Super Nova

What better title to honor an important person in my distant past -- Nova Hudson. Nova was the proprietor of the Midway Restaurant, a favorite hang for music majors of my era at Tennessee Tech, namely the early to mid '60s. I don't know, and never asked, where the restaurant name came from, but it was located adjacent to the Tech campus, behind the women's dorms and a short walk across the street from the music department. Ignoring its rather pedestrian title, we simply referred to it as "Nova's."

What made the Midway unique, at least in the eyes of the musicians from Tech, was that Nova was a music lover, and as such, had jazz recordings on the juke box. Each booth had its own coin-operated controller, so you could sit and pump nickels into the remote box, with its flip-around menus, and pick your favorites. I remember that her offerings included Dave Brubeck; memory doesn't serve up much else, but it was the time when "Take Five" was a big hit, so it included tracks from that album. Nova loved to hang around and talk music with us, unfortunately to the point of boredom sometimes, so rather than be rude, we had a secret weapon. Nova seemed unable to tap her foot to "Blue Rondo Ala Turk," so we would drop in a quarter and opt for five plays of that arrangement in 9/8 meter, each bar repeating 2/8-2/8-2/8-3/8, relentlessly attacking the sensibilities of any decent Tennessean who loved a good two-and-four feel. About halfway through the second playing, Nova would surrender and disappear into the kitchen, presumably to help her husband, Pop.

Nova had the last laugh, even though she was probably more disgusted than anthing else. She approached our table one day and announced a "sad day in music:" Jack Teagarden had passed. We were too naive and unknowledgable to be very impressed, and she just turned around and went into her kitchen refuge. Of course we should have been embarrassed that we either didn't know enough about who Jack Teagarden was, or his stature and importance in the world of jazz history and trombone playing. Now, of course, we do, and that just elevates Nova into superstardom in our memories, that she was even privy to that kind of knowledge in our little world, our mountain town of 3,000 residents and our school of some 2,000 students, and our tiny music department of 23 majors. As it turns out, Nova's brother was Tommy Thomas, drummer on Don McNeill's Breakfast Club out of Chicago, for twenty years. No wonder Nova knew about music and jazz! Tommy taught at Tech for a year or two after his retirement, then moved on to Florida. Much later, he moved back to Cookeville and rode his bicycle around and played drums for other older folks until he was about 100.

Nova and her Midway Restaurant invoke happy memories of my time at Tech, of which there were many.

Capital Pun-ishment

I'm fond of a good joke, but I find a great pun irresistible. One of my favorites concerns Roy Rogers going for a ride on Trigger. Roy had gotten a new wardrobe, and was particularly proud of his spiffy boots. As he was riding through an arroyo, he was leaped upon by a puma that tore his boots to shreds. He escaped and returned home, where he told Dale what happened, grabbed his rifle, and headed out seeking retribution. He found and dispatched the lion and returned home. When Dale saw him ride in with the couger over his saddle, she sang (apologies to Glenn Miller--oh, maybe not), "Pardon me, Roy, is that the cat who chewed your new shoes?"

My nephew Nonda and I have been exchanging stories of this ilk since he was a wee lad, one of the earliest of which dealt with toilet paper and...well, we won't go there. But I fear he has had the last word. His tale:

Ghandi walked all over India, preaching peace and love, and since he was barefoot or wore very thin sandals, the bottoms of his feet became very tough. As he grew older and his health started to fail, he ate lots of curry to try to slow the aging process, which gave him bad breath. So he became a -- wait for it --

-- Super-calloused-fragile-mystic-hexed-by-halitosis. Take that, Mary Poppins!

Man of Brass

Larry Minick

Arguably one of the greatest brass instrument repairmen of all time, Larry Minick was also an innovative designer and craftsman, who created specialty and unusual instruments. He designed and built a contrabass French horn for Los Angeles Philharmonic tubist, Roger Bobo, and a valve trombone with a gigantic, French-horn-sized bell for the great Bob Brookmeyer. He had a reputation for being a crusty bastard, or a curmudgeon at best, but he had a soft heart and would go out of his way to help players he respected or who were in need. I was in his shop once, watching him do some work for me, when the light from the door went dim. Larry didn't look up to see who it was; he just said, “What the f*ck do you want? The stranger responded, “What the f*ck's it to you? The result? Instant friendship.

Larry's instruments and mouthpieces have achieved cult status since his untimely death, and are widely sought after and copied. My first encounter with Larry was when I was still living in Hawaii. I had traveled to Los Angeles to look for a new trombone, a commercial horn to use in my increasingly commercial career. I called Charlie Loper on a referral from a friend in Hawaii to get a recommendation, and took my old faithful Conn 8H to Larry at a store called Musicians Supply, also on a recommendation, to have it worked on – slide balancing and lightening up the bell and braces. I watched Larry align the slide – he held it up to the light, eyeballed it, and put it across his leg and bent the hell out of it, scaring me crazy. When he finished it, he put it on his marble leveling block and checked it, and it lined up perfectly. (As an aside, while I was there, George Roberts came in and asked Larry if he could put new corks on his mutes!)

After we moved to L.A., I became a regular at Larry's new shop on Sepulveda Boulevard. He started making custom horns, leadpipes and mouthpieces, and his reputation grew as the word spread about his creativity and prowess in instrument repair and design. He was approached by Conn to design a new commercial trombone for them, a specialty .500 bore instrument that came to be called the 100H. It had a distinctive curved hand grip and curved counter weights on the tuning slide. Larry eventually had a falling out with Conn (he told me that he had designed three different but interchangeable lead pipes and sent the prototypes to the factory in Texas. They lost two of them, or messed them up trying to copy them, and asked him to replace them, and he was bugged at their incompetence and refused to do so), and started making his own line of similar instruments, with an improved hand brace and hand-turned and hand-hammered bells.

I was privileged to have had him make two tenor trombones for me, .500 bore horns with 8-inch bells. They were terrific instruments. At one point, though, I decided I wanted a smaller bell for one, to make it more of a jazz horn and visited Larry's shop—by then he had moved to Cambria, California and had set up shop in an industrial complex. When I told him I wanted him to make me a 7 ½-inch bell, he said he thought he might have something similar already made. He climbed a ladder up to an exposed “attic” area and came down with a bell that measured at about 7 ¼ inches. He replaced the 8-inch bell I already had, and let me keep it for a spare.

Larry had a sense of humor which came to light in interesting ways. I was teaching at home, and propped my foot up on my piano bench and put my trombone on my knee. The bench toppled over, my horn went straight down onto the floor slide-first, and my chin hit the mouthpiece. It gave me quite a whiplash, and bent the slide into a rainbow. I took it to Larry in a bag, and when I took it out, he nearly fell off his stool laughing. When he finally was able to catch a breath and speak, he said, “I can fix it.” And he did.

Larry had other interests and skills, like cars. He had some antique cars that he restored (his wife, Doreen, drove a classic T-Bird that he had restored). We went to see him once at his shop in Cambria, and as we were parking, we heard a terrific metallic banging noise coming from inside. Wondering what-on-earth kind of instrument he was building now, we walked in and found that he had a Model A Ford fender in his vise and was banging dents out. He had found a pickup in a haystack near Morro Bay and bought it. He said it was a mess; besides the usual aging issues, rust and so forth, kids had been plinking at it with their .22s. He restored the body and replaced the engine, drive train and suspension and brakes with parts from a 1955 Chevy, and painted it canary yellow. He and Doreen drove it to San Luis Obispo for a car show there, and as they were walking around admiring all the beautiful restorations, amid unending announcements on the P.A. system, Doreen suddenly elbowed him and told him to go pick up his trophy. He asked “for what,” and she said they has just announced he had won best-in-show. He responded, “But I didn't enter.” They had found his truck in the parking lot and given him the top award.

Larry deserved a top award for many of his creations, and for all the good he did for musicians everywhere. He was an innovator, a top craftsman, and a caring, helping person. He unfortunately died at age 55. His legacy is that of exploration and creativity in brass instrument making. He is sadly missed, and now a legend among brass players world-wide.

Here is a link to an article from the Cambrian, quoted on the trombone.org website:

http://trombone.org/articles/library/larryminick.asp

R.I.P. Bronze Buckaroo

The Bronze Buckaroo has passed.

Herb Jeffries has moved on after one hundred years on this plane. Herb made a name for himself by creating and starring in (as The Bronze Buckaroo) a genre of cowboy movies with all-black casts, so that young blacks could have role models like the whites did in Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and others. He was the first black “singing cowboy,” and as such, attracted the attention of band leader Edward “Duke” Ellington, who asked Herb to sing with his band. According to Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times (Memorial Day, May 26, 2014), “Jeffries, who began singing with what has been described as a luscious tenor, followed the advice of Ellington's composer-arranger Billy Strayhorn and lowered his range to what music critic Jonny Whiteside later called a 'silken, lusty baritone.'”

I worked with Herb on several occasions, and he always proved to be a consummate gentleman. Most recently, I played in the band at Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood for a celebration of his 95^th birthday. He announced he had already booked an appearance in Las Vegas for his 100^th birthday. He appeared in a wheelchair, but otherwise seemed to have all his faculties intact. One striking and memorable moment occurred when he recited his favorite poem, a rather lengthy tome, from memory.

Of course, he sang his biggest hit, “Flamingo,” which he recorded in the early 1940s with the Ellington band; it sold in the millions. Which brings me to a recording session I was doing with a Dixieland band: at one point Herb's name came up. The trombonist (I was playing tuba) inexplicably had no idea who Herb Jeffries was. We were puzzled, what with Herb's fame and the trombone player's extensive background in jazz; so we were trying to explain to him who Herb was, when the banjo player chimed in with, “You can count all of his hits on one leg.” (Thanks, Jon, for that memory.)

R.I.P. Herb Jeffries, 1913-2014
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Jeffries

Look sharp! Feel sharp! B...Natural??

A practical joke is...well, anything but practical, especially to the victim, but the term apparently applies to a gag played on someone that involves something physical, rather than verbal. I've been a victim of a practical joke on occasion, and have been on the sending end as well.

Since my life more or less revolves around the trombone, it seems natural that "the true head of that family of wind instruments" (Berlioz) would be involved somehow in one of my favorites. Somewhere along the line I acquired an antique Conn 5H tenor trombone, a smallish silver-plated instrument with a beautiful sound. I was curious enough to write the C.G. Conn Corporation to inquire about it, and they responded in detail about the horn (this was before they inexplicably destroyed their historical records). It left the factory in 1914 (the exact date escapes me, but I have the letter somewhere, being of the opposite disposition of Conn regarding destroying or getting rid of anything). It was made before "A" was standardized at 440 Hz (or wherever the oboe wants to put itself that day), so it was outfitted with two tuning slides, "high pitch," defined by Conn as A 459, and "low pitch," A 440. The A 459 slide, pushed all the way in, effectively made it "Trombone in B Natural" (in contrast to B Flat, the standard).

There was certainly no practical use for a Trombone in B (it might. of itself, be considered a joke), but it occurred to me that it might be put to use in a practical joke. And lo and behold, an ideal situation presented itself. I was playing in my college marching band, a requirement for instrumental music education majors, and the band director approached me to say he wanted to feature the jazz band on a number in the upcoming half-time performance at Saturday's football game. This was before battery amps made electric basses possible on the field, and he wanted me to play the bass lines on Sousaphone for that one number.

We worked it out with one of the Sousy players who also played trombone, so that as we passed each other on the way to the formation featuring the jazz band, we would swap instruments; he played trombone on the one "big band" number, and I played the bass lines on Sousaphone. We then swapped back on the way to the next formation.

You can guess what happened next: we rehearsed all week and got the instrument swap really down, then on game day I took the Trombone in B on the field and transposed all my parts (I have a pretty good ear for that stuff). After handing off the trombone and taking the Sousaphone, I could hardly keep from cracking up, listening to my friend try to figure out what I had done to him, or probably more to the point, what was wrong with the horn. We subsequently switched back, and I continued to transpose so that my parts sounded normal. I never let on what I had done to him.

The trombone has been the butt of many a musical joke (What do you call ten trombones on the bottom of the ocean? A good start...), but I bet it hasn't been used that much on the other end of a joke. Trombone naysayers beware...