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...

Chameleon

The Chameleon...

I started on piano as a kid, but for some reason it never held the allure for me that it did for others. Evidently my parents had made my sister practice piano (and she became quite an accomplished pianist and teacher), so maybe that's why they didn't have the patience or wherewithal to force me to spend hours of servitude.

But when the trombone came along, the magic hit. I started playing in fifth grade, and by sixth grade had gotten a superior rating at Solo and Ensemble competition. And the game was on. I don't recall being much interested in anything else but music, at least for very long, but I played, and sang in church, glee club, barbershop chorus, and even started my own barbershop quartet. When I asked my high school band director about starting a dance band, because nearby Harriman High School had one, he said he wasn't interested but pointed me toward a file cabinet in his office that had dance band music in it, and said I could start one myself. So I did.

I recruited three trumpeters and another bone player, three saxes and a rhythm section (Alvin Grisham on piano and Doug Henry on drums--there was no bass, and no one to play it if there had been one). The school had no dance-type drum kit, so Doug jury rigged one from what was available in the band room. We rehearsed, and before long had some gigs.

But I digress. My coat started adding many colors when I decided to play clarinet in summer band. I don't remember how that went, but the following summer I played sousaphone (the school had no upright or concert tubas). Then I started at Tennessee Tech as a music education/ trombone major, and somehow one of the other trombone players, Charlie Kirkpatrick, found out I played tuba and asked if I would play in the Dixieland band he was forming. And I was off and running, listening to Dukes Of Dixieland recordings and learning tunes and how to play bass lines. And that first year we won first place in the spring talent show!

Dr. W. J. Julian, the very popular band director at Tech, had left for greener pastures at the University of Tennessee, and most of the upperclassmen followed him. So we 23 music majors endured a disjunct department with an interim Chairperson whom we adored, but who had a commitment for the following year and couldn't stay on. My sophomore year saw the arrival of Dr. James Albert Wattenbarger, a Tech alumnus and graduate of Northwestern University. He had the unenviable task of rebuilding the broken department, and set about doing so by emphasizing performance. He began hiring accomplished players for the vacant faculty positions, including Patrick McGuffey on trumpet. Pat had been in the Army Band and Louisville Symphony and brought a high level of expertise to the department.

Shortly after the beginning of the school year, Mr. McGuffey approached me by my locker and said, and I quote (even after all these many years), "I hear you're the trombone player." And he proceeded to ask me if I was interested in playing trombone in the "faculty" brass quintet he was forming (there were only two brass players on the faculty at the time, Pat and the horn instructor). He planned to augment the group with student instrumentalists. Of course I quickly agreed. Then he asked whom I would recommend for the tuba chair, and after I quickly ran down the list of available players in my mind, I responded, "Well, me," honestly believing I would be the best choice. He said, well then who would you recommend for trombone? I suggested my pal and classmate, Horton Monroe. Kelly Bussell was the best "legit" student trumpeter, and we had our quintet.

The school owned a few tubas, old King recording tubas with front-facing bells, not exactly top pro quality, but miraculously a Mirafone CC and a DuPrins/Walter Sear CC appeared, and they were mine for the duration! Four years of playing with a premier group, rehearsing three days a week and playing for MENC conventions and more, and even a TV series for the Nashville PBS affiliate on the history of brass instruments. When I was ready to graduate, I was prepared to take a local junior high band director job and keep playing with the quintet, but instead I got drafted, joined the USAF band program and went back to being primarily a trombone player. Dr. Wattenbarger hired Winston Morris for tuba faculty, and he has proceeded to create a tuba dynasty at a Tech, with his tuba ensemble having seven Carnegie Hall performances under their belts!

But back to diversity: besides tuba in the quintet, I played tuba or principal trombone in the symphony, depending on which was needed; first trombone in the concert band and jazz "Troubadours;" euphonium in the symphonic wind ensemble, and even drums with a "pop" vocal group.

I have, along the way, delved into strange arenas: E flat cornet, E flat alto flugelhorn, E flat helicon bass, marching trombone and G contrabass bugle with Clare Fischer. E flat valve trombone with the California Gold Rush Band. E flat Alto horn on the soundtrack to the movie Glory. Marching baritone with the Disneyland Band. Alto trombone on the Mozart Requiem. And even trumpet once on a Power Rangers cartoon episode (along with tenor & bass trombone & tuba).

With my partner, Steve, and two friends,
alto valve trombone

Opening Day at Dodger Stadium,
with my E flat helicon

I continue, some fifty-odd years after my little experiments began, to wear many hats. This year alone (2014) I've played first trombone with the Glendale Pops Orchestra, 2nd with the San Fernando Valley Symphony, bass trombone with the New Valley Symphony, and tuba with the Thousand Oaks Philharmonic. I've recorded Dixieland trombone for the Disney Company, played euphonium with the Royal Hawaiian Band (America's only full-time municipal band), and I regularly play bass trombone or tuba (or tenor trombone) with the orchestra or brass ensemble at Grace Community Church. I played polka band tuba for a convention in Las Vegas, several Dixie gigs on helicon tuba with the Angel City Dixieland Band, trombone with the Smithsonian Masterworks Jazz Orchestra and a high school production of Cabaret, and bass trombone on American Idol backing Harry Connick, Jr. I've played lead trombone with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra for 19 years, and at age 95, he's still going. Amid all that chaos, I found time to play with various big bands and small groups, and try to keep up with the few "rehearsal" ensembles I play in, and find time to practice in between. And in the interest of further diversity, I've applied for instructor certification training in Body Mapping, a system for musicians based on the Alexander Technique. I'll travel to Flagstaff, Arizona later this month for training.

Besides nurturing my sanity, all this diversity has kept me working, in a time when many musicians are complaining about business being very slow. I guess I always wanted to do it all, rather than stick with one instrument and wish I could have some of the fun I saw others having. I’m not setting the world on fire, but those seeds I planted so long ago have definitely born fruit, of many varieties and colors. And it's still fun and challenging. Winnie the Pooh asked Piglet, "What day is it?" "It's today," squeaked Piglet. "My favorite day," said Pooh.

What It's All About

"You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out...

Not exactly what I'm thinking all about. I'm thinking about my attention, and where I should direct it, namely to alleviate stress. St. Paul, in 1st Corinthians 3:16, said (variously translated, but the meaning isn't lost) Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? To me, I see this as meaning to look inward or inside myself, for God, whatever God is. God, most likely, if there is one, is so far beyond our ability to understand or comprehend that we might as well not look, at least "out there somewhere." Science keeps looking more and more inward, at smaller and smaller things, for "the meaning of life," leading to the discovery of atoms and their components, then  quantum mechanics, quarks, Higgs boson, and wherever all this takes us. But it seems to be taking us to smaller and smaller places, more and more "inward."

Where it takes me is back to my discovery, in a time of need, of Transcendental Meditation. I was feeling very stressed, and finding no solution in exercise, yoga, nature, or other places I looked. I was working in Hilo, Hawaii, and wandered into a bookstore and discovered a small book on TM. I purchased and read it, and decided it was exactly what I needed. So as soon as I got back home to Honolulu, I sought and found the local TM center and signed up. It involved classes so that I would know exactly what I was  getting into and what to expect. Then I was assigned a teacher who sat with me and taught me the actual technique. And I was hooked. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi spoke of a "field of all possibilities," a place where there was at once nothing and the potential for everything, all at the same time. And I went there, an absolutely indescribable place of not quite nothingness, but of infinite peace. It was as if I was all alone in the entire universe. And that is what is hoped for all who learn it, although I found later that not everyone achieves that. But my teacher(s) said that is the magnet for continuing the practice, to keep trying to get back to that place.

Let me regress: I had a lateral lisp for most of my life. All my "S" sounds came out of my side teeth, not my front ones. I had speech therapy as a child, and continued to try to figure out how to get rid of it into adulthood, even going to the U. H. speech therapy center when I was in graduate school at the University of Hawaii. And nothing worked, until about a week after learning TM, I noticed (without thinking about it or trying to do anything about it) that it was GONE. I was speaking normally for the first time, then and forevermore. The only thing that had changed was that I was looking inward twice a day for twenty minutes.

Coincidentally, I once worked with a show conductor who had a similar experience: he stuttered, and his stutter disappeared when he learned TM. When he stopped practicing for a while, it came back, but disappeared again when he returned to meditating. Stress therapy? Looking for God? Shutting out the outside world? Just relaxing by closing one's eyes? Who knows? There is lots of information about research that has been done on the benefits of practicing TM, but I have my own story, and it's a good one. You put your right brain in, and your left brain, and your whole consciousness, and look what happens. And that's what it's all about...

Imposters...

...are rampant. At least, that appears to be the case, in the music world, if not permeating our entire world. Many musicians, for example (and where I'm headed with this observation), are universally praised, frequently when they are nowhere near the elite status they are generally afforded. The question arises whether they are really thought of as being that good, or if their public (frequently other musicians) is simply being polite, or (ahem!) if the listeners really don't know, or are being fooled, or hoodwinked, or are fooling themselves, or are just going along with the crowd. In my experience, many musicians who are lauded in public and private do not deserve to be included in that elite top-tier of the truly great. That leads me to think that the majority of listeners are not sophisticated enough or knowledgeable enough to really know the difference between technical prowess and true artistry.

The creation of music involves many facets, but foremost of these is the ability to communicate with the listener. Some have been well educated, have spent countless hours in the practice room developing and honing their craft, many more hours listening and learning from the ones who came before, and so forth and so on. But sometimes (and perhaps frequently) someone comes along who is lacking in one or more of the elements we think of as being a requirement, such as having a pleasant voice (or sound on an instrument), or a knowledge of theory, or other things, but they have a gift for communicating with an audience, of "clicking" within a certain genre, and they become stars. So all of those elements taken together are not necessarily the answer. Indeed, sometimes the elements have been studied, practiced to perfection, but that one special talent, the ability to communicate, is missing. But too often, to my way of thinking, the listener is not sophisticated or learned enough to know the difference. A friend of mine long ago had business cards made up that read, "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit." So many listeners (and critics) seem to be baffled, or at least fooled. Maybe they are just trying to be, or seem, sophisticated or knowledgeable. Maybe it's a matter of intelligence; after all, half of us are at or below average intelligence. Maybe IQ has something to do with it; I don't know. I do know that I am sometimes impressed with the technical prowess of someone I hear, but hearing them once is enough. I don't seek out further opportunities to listen to them, live or on recordings. They don't move me. But then someone will come along who says things in the simplest way, but it strikes at my heartstrings, and a bond is formed.

There is an emotional element in true communication between artist and observer, in music and art, in poetry and prose. Of course we all have our own interests, and we tend to pursue the genres that do interest us, but sometimes something from outside our experience will intrude on our consciousness and pique our interest, and we experience, well, expansion. Our world has just gotten larger.

"What color is he, anyway?"

That was reportedly the response George Shearing gave an interviewer who asked Shearing, "How come you're using a colored drummer?" "I never really thought about it. What color is he, anyway?" Shearing, you see, was legally blind, so "what color is he" might have been an appropriate response, if he didn't have any other of his six senses. I suspect that Shearing's tongue was planted firmly in his cheek, and that was his way of not responding in the nasty way he might have been entitled to. He was also British, where black and white seem to be colors more than separatist races.

The color of one's skin has long been an issue in the music world (and elsewhere, obviously), and this opining and sometimes outright discrimination on both sides deserves some pondering. Jazz bands were segregated for many years, but in the '30s some white bandleaders, notably Benny Goodman, realized what they were missing by not simply hiring the best players available, regardless of color, and began hiring black artists. Tommy Dorsey, wanting to expand the musical scope of his very popular orchestra, famously hired the great arranger Sy Oliver away from the also popular Jimmy Lunceford (black) band. Producer Norman Granz (Jazz At The Philharmonic) was a noted anti-racist and hired whites and blacks and treated them equally.

But from my experience in the jazz world in Los Angeles, there seems to be an undercurrent of separatism that I've been at a loss to understand. White bandleaders seem, almost without exception, to put together all-white bands. But the "why" is what I don't get; I played in a band led by a white drummer who had put together an all-white band that was working clubs around L.A. He once called me and said he was desperate to get a tenor sax sub for the following day's rehearsal. I suggested he call a black player who happened to be my friend and co-worker in another band (led by a black), and he replied, after a small hesitation, "Do you think he'd want to do it?" Meaning, I think, that he had a  great deal of respect for my friend, but he might have thought there was a racial divide that doesn't really exist. He did call Carl, who not only agreed to rehearse that day, but became an important, no, an integral, part of the band. (Carl has passed away since I started writing this, and some measure of respect and the high regard in which he was held could be seen in the attendance and participation in a fund-raiser that was held to help with his funeral and related expenses. It was attended by people of all races, who gladly performed to help his family in their time of need.)

I more recently played a rehearsal with a "white" band, and another black saxophonist friend was subbing that day. I welcomed him to the band, and he said he'd been trying to get into that band for years. I know that some, maybe many, maybe all, of the white band leaders work with black musicians in other venues, and have friends who are black, and respect them on both counts, so I don't get what's going on. It certainly and obviously has nothing to do neither with musicianship nor racism, as far as I can tell.

On the other hand, the black bandleaders seem to always have a healthy mix of players. I played and recorded with Buddy Collette at the Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C. for the Library of Congress, and Buddy's band had blacks, whites, hispanics and even women. Buddy was definitely an equal opportunity employer, and hired on basis of musical ability and personality. Color never entered into it. I've played with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra for some seventeen years, and he has the same mix in his band. John Stephens does the same. There seems to be something like reverse non-discrimination here somewhere. Other players I've talked to have observed the same thing but don't seem to have an answer. Perhaps it's simply tradition, status quo, or not thinking about it.

Perhaps I'm seeing a problem where none exists; I do see and perform with blacks in other venues. I have black friends that I'm as close to as my white friends (and hispanic, and women, and even redheads -- take that, Conan Doyle!). I've spent a lot of time writing this in a way that makes sense to me, and have hesitated posting it out of concern for offending someone, so maybe it speaks more of me than the situation I've put forth. I was, after all, raised in a segregated community in the south, and only went to school with (a few) blacks late in my college career. My parents taught me to not be prejudiced, and when I enlisted in the U.S.Air Force, I worked with blacks on a daily basis and had the greatest respect for them and their wonderful musicianship (as well as for my white co-workers). But I still saw racism on some level, even there.

So what was the question?? More important, what is the answer??

Who's The Leader Of The Band?

Not THAT band. We all (of my generation) know that that would be Mickey. I had that revelation reinforced during my eleven+ years working/playing with the Disneyland Band, with Mickey frequently leading us down Main Street, USA.

No, the band I'm referring to -- well, let me backtrack a little. When we first moved to Los Angeles, I found I had dived headfirst into a huge melange of music. There were numerous big bands, small bands of every ilk, brass and woodwind groups, orchestras seemingly in every community large and small, and on and on. One of the first bands I hooked up with, for a week of work, was led by the inimitable Bill Berry, the cornetist who played with the great Duke Ellington from 1961-1964, a rare example of a white player in a black band. Bill later led his own band, and I was called to join the group for this outing.

We played three or four nights at a theater in Oxnard, California, northwest of L.A. Then we did a couple of nights at what was then the jazz mecca of Los Angeles, Carmelo's Jazz Club in Sherman Oaks (Bob Florence famously dedicated a song to it, the title a nice play on the famous "Carmel By The Sea" -- Carmelo's By The Freeway). The amazing trumpeter, Cat Anderson, sat behind me, and played with such intensity that I wondered if I would ever hear again. There were other luminaries in the band as well, such as lead alto saxophonist Med Flory, the founder and leader of the amazing group, Supersax.


Which brings me to the title of this tome: Who's The Leader Of The Band? After our nights in Oxnard, we went into Carmelo's. Med Flory was replaced by the great Marshall Royal, who had just left relative stardom with the Count Basie Orchestra. And things changed. Marshall was such a domineering (and I mean that in a good way) player, such a natural, strong leader, that the entire feel of the band hand changed. It amazed me that one player, who was not the lead trumpeter or the drummer, could effect such a change (and for the better, I thought). It just somehow added something to the cohesiveness of the band. Med is a great player, and I certainly don't mean to disparage him or his musicality, but it was just...different. It was quite a music lesson for me.

I had the distinct pleasure of working and hanging out with Marshall many times, as he became the lead alto saxophonist with the Ray Anthony band, with which I played for ten years.

********

While I'm on the subject of leading, I am reminded of when I played lead trombone with the Toshiko Akioshi/Lew Tabackin Band for a while in the early 1980s. My first gig was three nights at the Chicago Jazz Showcase, followed by a concert at the Boston Globe Jazz Festival, held at the Berklee School of Music. The first night, I thought I should kind of lay low and see how the bone section did things. And it was a relative disaster! Starting the second night, I just played lead the way I know how, and everything was fine from then on. I coincidentally learned about dedication: when we hit the hotel in Boston, I think I hadn't even opened my suitcase when I heard Lew practicing down the hall. Lesson noted.