Oh Clare

A Giant of the Music World has left us. Clare Fischer passed from this plane yesterday, and was heralded in the Los Angeles Times this morning (  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-me-clare-fischer-20120128,0,7091789.story ). All things Clare can be read elsewhere, except personal stories, so I'll share some of mine.

I received a call from Morris Repass, who contracted musicians for Clare at the time (until Clare's son, Brent, took over). Morris and Clare were old army buddies and had been friends for all those many years. Morris related that Clare had become enamored of bugles after hearing a corps performance, and purchased umpteen-thousand dollars-worth of bugles of all sizes. Bugles come in the keys of G and D, and are largely unfamiliar to players of more traditional orchestral brass instruments, like trumpets, trombones, French horns and tubas. As a result, Clare had run into a wall finding someone to play the contrabass bugle, which is pitched in the key of G, below the tuba, which is tuned mostly in either BBb, CC, EEb or F. Moreover, the contra is heavy and unwieldy, since it has to be somewhat delicately balanced on one's shoulder, protruding fore and aft, and still manipulated in a way to be able to find the mouthpiece with one's lips and somehow make music. Morris knew that I "doubled" on various brass instruments, including tuba, and asked if I would like to give it a try. I'm always game for a musical adventure, and it would additionally give me a chance to meet Clare, whom I had admired since I discovered the Hi-Lo's while in college in the '60s (they recruited him out of college to be their musical director).

I met Morris at Clare's house in Studio City, California, and we met Clare inside. After the usual pleasantries, we got down to business, and I was introduced to the bugle. Morris had designed and built an amazing contraption to hold the instrument so the player would not have to, but it was clumsy and bothersome, and I ended up discarding it at some point. I hefted the clumsy beast, found a fundamental pitch and fooled around with it for a couple of minutes, orienting myself to the strange tonality, then embarked on a tune which Clare had composed and which the Hi-Lo's had recorded while Clare was their Music Director. Clare smiled, and I became his contrabass bugler. I played it on some recordings, including with Prince (for whom Clare orchestrated compositions). Then one day, I had to be out of town when Clare had a session, and I recommended my friend, Rod Mathews, who was a much better bugler than I, since he had played in a corps in high school. After my return, I played "real" tuba on a recording of Clare's symphonic works ("After The Rain"). (An aside: Clare was notorious for having a temper, and yelling at players and others. During this recording, he made one of his famous off-the-wall remarks, and the orchestra went silent, until Rod and I looked at one another and laughed out loud. Clare smiled down at us from the podium, as if we were the only ones who "got it.") When he formed and recorded his "Jazz Corps," a hodgepodge of some twenty various brass instruments (some players refused to play the bugles) and woodwinds, I played Eb helicon tuba, Eb alto flugelhorn, and Eb cornet.

All this time, Clare had never heard me play trombone. I had a trio gig (with Frank Marocco on Accordian and Larry Klein on drums), and emailed announcements. I included Clare on the list, but didn't expect to see him. He surprised me; he and his wife, Donna, showed up and apologized for being late, and stayed for two sets. On the break, we talked about my influences on trombone, including Lawrence Brown, Duke Ellington's wonderful trombonist for many years. At one point, Clare asked if we could play "Yesterdays" as a ballad, which we did, after which I told Clare I had never played it before (but I knew it from having heard it so many times), and Clare responded, "You tell me you've never played it before, and I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes?" Soon after that night, Brent, who was contracting for his dad by then, called to ask if I could play on an upcoming recording. It turned out to be a solo feature on a tune that Lawrence Brown had recorded with Duke in 1947, for Clare's Clarinet Choir (eight clarinets, trumpet, trombone and rhythm). He subsequently did another recording with that group on which I had several solos. (Another aside: when we were doing the first recording, lots of things were not going well, like the recording equipment failing to lock up in order to do overdubs--this at a major studio in Hollywood; and the cartage company bringing the wrong keyboard and Brent trying to get them to go the Clare's house and bring his keyboard. Clare was understandably upset. He was rehearsing the clarinets on a passage, and Brent started quietly tuning his bass. Clare yelled, "Brent, stop tuning! I'm rehearsing the clarinets right now! Brent moved further away, turned down his volume, and continued tuning. Clare again yelled, "Brent, stop tuning! I said I'm doing something else right now!" Gentle Gary Foster, Clare's long-time friend and lead alto sax/clarinet player, said, "Clare, I can't believe you're yelling at your son like that." Clare responded, "I'm not yelling at my son! I love my son, and I couldn't get anything done without him. I'm JUST YELLING!)

We'll miss the true genius of Clare, the breadth of his music and musicianship, the love and respect he showed those he admired, and yes, even his yelling. You always knew where you stood with him. He was praised and lauded, damned and condemned, but he lived life to its fullest. His home abutted an elementary school, and I asked him once if the noise the kids made bothered him, and he said that was one of the things he loved about living there: the sound of the kids playing. He was separated from the love of his life while in his high school years by objections from her family, but they managed to find each other later in life and spent their last years together. Thank you, Donna, for the love and care you gave him; I know that made him better for all of us. Long live the legacy and the memories of Douglas Clare Fischer!

               Clare and Donna in the booth at a recording session.

The Longest Day

July 31, 2006. 40 hours long. 'Nuff said.

Well, I guess a little explanation is called for. That was the last day of my tour with the Billy Vaughn Orchestra in Japan, nearly three weeks of traveling all over, on bullet trains and locals, buses and taxis, and even one plane trip to save time over the ferry. We finished the tour in Osaka, and the morning after our last performance began early, a 6 AM departure from our hotel. We had an early flight to Narita (Tokyo), a long layover, then a flight back to the States. I had arranged with the contractor and the promoter to fly separately from the orchestra, to San Francisco instead of Los Angeles, because I had a very special event lined up -- a live Blue Note recording with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra and jazz guitar great, Kenny Burrell, in celebration of Kenny's 75th birthday. Other luminaries were to include Hubert Laws and Joey DeFrancesco.

I caught the flight to San Francisco International Airport, where I was met my my wonderful sister, Mikie, and her husband Charles. They drove me to Oakland, where the recording was to take place that evening at Yoshi's Jazz Club. In the course of the flight, I had crossed the International Date Line, where it was still July 31 on the eastern side, so the date didn't change after 24 hours; it remained July 31. We got to Oakland, had lunch, and then I went on to a sound check, dinner and a change of clothes, and two sets that evening which were recorded with a live audience. By the time we finished at midnight, my day had lasted 40 hours! By the end of the evening, I was fighting sleep and trying to keep from falling off my chair, but I wouldn't have missed that event for anything.

I definitely slept well that night, but the next day had to bum a ride to Santa Cruz, where we recorded an additional night at Kuumbwa, a local jazz club. From there I rented a car and drove home to Los Angeles, where I repacked my suitcase and headed off to Hawaii for another trombone adventure. Whatta life!

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Kenny Burrell turned 75 on July 31, 2006. That night he finished a five-day run at Yoshi's in Oakland and then the next day played with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra in Santa Cruz. This CD commemorates the occasion with performances from both nights, presenting Burrell’s sparkling guitar in settings that range from an intimate trio to fronting Wilson's 17 –piece band. The material reflects Burrell's long career and broad associations. Among the small group tracks, there's a beautiful quartet sequence of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints," J.J. Johnson's "Lament," and Miles Davis's "All Blues," each demonstrating Burrell's consummate lyricism and absolute mastery of the mainstream modern. The big-band tracks pick up on associations with Duke Ellington, including the elegant "Sophisticated Lady" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," with the 88-year-old Wilson providing a sparkling foundation that has Burrell and company soaring. Best of all is the extended "A Night in Tunisia" with a septet that has organist Joey DeFrancesco and flutist Hubert Laws. --Stuart Broomer

What's The Best?

We all have favorite "things" -- those of us who cook have favorite pots, pans, or utensils, like our old plastic  stirring spoon with a chunk out of the tip, or our wooden salad fork with a tine missing. Musicians have a favorite edition of some special music, or a favorite recording, or some accessory to our instrument of choice. With us brass players, mouthpieces come to mind. They sometimes take on legendary proportions in our perception of greatness; some players will hang onto a particular piece forever, guarding it jealously against loss or damage. We'll have our favorite mouthpiece maker copy it so that we have a backup, even though we know the copy can't hold a candle to the original.

Which brings me to the meeting of one of jazz's most memorable and wonderful trombonists, Frank Rosolino, and his collaboration with Terry Warburton, one of the premier makers of brass mouthpieces. Terry told me the story when I saw him at the International Trombone Workshop in Nashville in June 2011. Frank spent a day in Terry's shop, trying variations that Terry would make for him, until the end of the day, when Frank declared that Terry had made the greatest mouthpiece. And to prove he meant it, he gave Terry his old favorite mouthpiece that he had been playing for decades. Terry had the actual mouthpiece in his pocket, and showed it to me as he was telling the story. Sometime after that momentous meeting, Terry's shop was destroyed by fire. As he was sifting through the ashes afterward, he found the mouthpiece Rosolino had given him -- the only thing to survive the fire!

Someone sent me a link to a YouTube video a few days ago, which was really a slide show of covers of albums Frank had headlined or appeared on. Near the end was his last, appropriately titled "The Last Recording." It features a photo of Frank playing his trombone, and I noticed that he was playing what is obviously (to me, at least) his Warburton mouthpiece. I forwarded it to Terry; that's a great feather in his cap to have provided a "favorite" mouthpiece for one of the world's greatest players. I'm glad to have been able to find that, on a number of planes: first, I play Warburton mouthpieces on my various brass instruments; I think they are the greatest for sound, versatility and ease of playing. And I promote them; I tell others about them, and have influenced a number of people to switch. Terry is very creative and inventive, and he seems to just have a special touch. And he's an all-around good guy, funny and pleasant, and generous to a fault. His wife, Ann, is much the same, and I've enjoyed my relationship with the two of them. And I'll have the pleasure of seeing them again in a couple of days at the NAMM show in Anaheim, where they'll be extolling the virtues of TW mouthpieces, and his new invention, a custom saxophone gooseneck. I told another legend, Plas Johnson (the original tenor sax voice of "The Pink Panther"), about them, and he is now playing one, and going on and on about how great it is (fodder for another tome, I guess).

Frank, and his Warburton Mouthpiece

Yours Truly, with Ann & Terry Warburton

John Madrid

Best trumpet high note of all time? Might have been played by John Madrid, arguably one of the greatest trumpeters of all time, based on his versatility and work history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Madrid). I worked with John when we lived in Hawaii, in big bands, combos and shows. The high note? We worked Icecapades, the last show I did before leaving the Islands. It was a workhorse situation, playing along with pre-recorded tapes, but challenging musically and physically, many shows in only a few days. The last show, when most of us were feeling the strain and relieved to be at the end of the run, John absolutely nailed the highest note I have ever heard on trumpet. Trumpeters striving to develop a high register pretty much cut it off if they are able to develop a "double C," the concert (or sounding) B-flat two octaves and a seventh above middle C. And those able to play that note strongly and consistently are few and far between.

John had consistently demonstrated prowess and consistancy well above that range, but he outdid himself on this occasion. The last note of the last show, a fairly long held-out note for emphasis at the show's end, John played (get ready...) a TRIPLE D! That's fully a ninth above the vaunted double C. Not only did he play it, and loudly, he held it out several seconds after the tape ended and the conductor cut us off. Normally, playing in that register has the possibility of cutting off the blood flow to the brain from the internal pressure require to achieve that, and players have been known to pass out from playing not even as high as a double C. So I turned around, fully expecting to see John falling off his chair from lack of oxygen. Instead, I was treated to the usual jovial John, his trumpet resting on his knee, and smiling like the cat who just ate the canary.

Around ten years later, John and I were touring together with Frank Sinatra. I asked John if he remembered that event, and he replied that of course he did. I asked him why he held the note as long as he did, and he replied, "It was the first one I ever played, and I didn't want to let it go."

It wasn't a fluke with John. When he worked with Wayne Newton, Wayne would feature John on a jazz solo, and John would play chorus after chorus, staying in the "super" register above double C. But that wasn't the extent of his talent; he could play equally well in the low- and mid-registers, with a big, warm, beautiful tone, or execute a funky, bluesy plunger solo. But most of all, John was a warm, big-hearted person who could be a good friend. He's missed by those of us who knew him. He always seemed to be giving, but as the end neared, when he was ill, we could feel the energy flowing back the other way. It was sad to see him declining, but he left a legacy that will always be talked about and highly regarded. RIP, Johnny Madrid, 1948-1990, trumpeter and human being extroidinaire.

International Trombone Festival 2011

Now that makes the trombone sound really important, doesn't it? A lot of people probably don't even know what a trombone is, or have a vague idea, like holding one hand up to their mouth and moving the other one in and out, in and out, miming moving the slide back and forth. I played a touring show for about five years, a recreation of an 1890s era town band called "Mr. Jack Daniel's Original Silver Cornet Band." One of my favorite lines from the show was, "...after all, what's a circus without a couple of clowns and a couple of trombones." The versatile trombone sound can portray the clown, the villain, the hero, or just about anything else in music, depending on how it is played or how it is written for.

One thing the trombone is, is important to those of us who play it. Thus hundreds of trombonists from all around the world turned up in Nashville, Tennessee last week for the ITF. The festival ran for four days of solo and ensemble concerts, competitions, lectures and demonstrations, and even a panel discussion of the history of the festival, which was started in Nashville more than thirty years ago by one Henry Romersa, then the trombone instructor at Vanderbilt University. Instrument and accessory manufacturers and vendors set up booths to show, and hopefully sell their wares in two exceedingly noisy venues, with players young and old, good and bad, creating an ear-splitting din. This year the fest returned to Nashville for the first time in thirty years and was held at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt. In attendance were such luminaries as Joseph Alessi, Principal Trombonist of the New York Philharmonic, and Dr. John Marcellus, Professor of Trombone at Eastman School of Music. Representatives of the jazz world included the legendary Bill Watrous and Wycliffe Gordon.

My intention was to attend as a "fly on the wall" to observe and root for two former students who were participating, one as a student finalist in a solo competiton, and one as an instructor with students participating as solo and ensemble competitors. But somehow the word got out that I would be in attendance, and I ended up performing three times, including  "headlining" the closing night jazz session along with my former student, Conrad Herwig, Director of  Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, and adjunct jazz trombone instructor at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music (see www.ConradHerwig.com).

But back to the "fly on the wall" aspect: Conrad's jazz trombone ensemble won the Kai Winding competition, and his students, one from Rutgers and one from Juilliard, won their respective jazz solo competitions. And my more recent student, Christopher Hernacki, a recent Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Michigan, won the Yaxley Bass Trombone Solo Competition. I think seeing such success in one's students gives the greatest feeling of satisfaction one can experience. I say that all I did was show up, and they did all the work, but I must have said something that resonated with them over the years that they studied with me. I do know that I feel like a proud father with the extraordinary accompishments of my "adopted" sons, Conrad and Chris. Congrats, guys, and keep making me look good!

The Music Goes Round And Round...

Whoa-oh-oh-oh... and it comes out...

...at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

When I was in college, little Tennessee Tech (about 2,500 students in those days, and only 23 music majors when I started), some of my friends and I would huddle in the music library, don our earphones, and listen to recordings of the great University of Michigan Concert Band. Those were the days when William Revelli was the director. We would marvel at how clean and musical that organization sounded, and I'm sure more than a few of us dreamed of playing in such an ensemble.

I went on to play in a number of bands, including the U. S. Air Force bands, Mr. Jack Daniel's Original Silver Cornet Band, The Disneyland Band, my own California Gold Rush Band, and more recently, the historic Royal Hawaiian Band, founded in 1836. All were great in their own way, but there has always been something about that U. of M. Band...

Tonight the circle closed, when my long-time student, Chris, performed at said Disney Hall with the famed University of Michigan Symphony Band, their homecoming concert after a successful three week tour in China. Chris is the principal bass trombonist, and just graduated summa cum laude from U.M. The performance was everything I hoped for and more, everything I remembered about the band of yore, but with loads of new experiences, a diverse presentation of old and new music and sounds. And even though it wasn't me on that stage, I couldn't have been more proud and happy that my student and friend has grown from a young lad to a world-class musician. Yo Chris! And long live the University of Michigan Band.

Here the band, under the current conductor, Michael Haithcock, performs an excerpt from Bach's "Toccata and Fugue In D Minor." Chris is the bass trombonist.

Big Bands Are Back!

Actually, they never left. Big bands abound in the greater Los Angeles area, and elsewhere around the country, including my friend Jim's wonderful Nashville Jazz Orchestra. Now working big bands, that's another issue. And for the ones that work, the pay is another issue--sign of the times, I guess. But musicians love to play, and at least in SoCal there is no shortage of opportunities.

Big bands rehearse regularly and prolifically at the musicians union facility in Hollywood, several different ones each day. And many additional bands rehearse at various places all over Southern California (or "The Southland," as the news hounds call it, not to be confused with "The South"). Many of them are excellent, but most perform in public sporadically, if at all. But some are excellent, and have leaders who are hard working and persistent, and get the band booked at one of the very few venues to showcase such an ensemble.

One such is Steve Huffsteter, with whose band I performed tonight at Typhoon, an Asian-style restaurant located at Santa Monica Airport. Glenn Miller it ain't, and it isn't even your typical big band in the traditional sense. With songs like "3 1/2" (not content to write in 7/8, Steve composed a funk tune with three-and-a-half beats in each measure), "Hispania" (conjures up pictures of El Cid) and "Melancholia" (says Steve, "...the only big band tune named for a disease" and perhaps appropriately featuring one of the trombonists), the entire library is very eclectic, and, perhaps strangely, contains a lot of waltzes, but definitely not in the style one might be accustomed to hearing from a big band. One such is the very bombastic "A Waltz And Battery," heard here on YouTube, courtesy of AIX Records.

Great band, great sounds, great time. And the food is good too! Steve tries to give everyone a chance to blow, and he picks some wonderful players to do so. Typhoon podcasts all the performances (www.typhoon.biz), so it's worth checking out. And check out the other tracks on YouTube of the Steve Huffsteter Big Band from the AIX video. Or better yet, buy the DVD, which was recorded in 5.1 surround sound. You'll be amazed!