Moto Perpetuo-Wynton

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Bill

http://youtu.be/NOu1wwAaGqY

This was my aha moment–the moment I knew Wynton Marsalis was a musical genius walking among us.  This piece was written by Niccolo Paganini for violin and transcribed for trumpet.  Wynton recorded this in 1987 with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, and I first bought the record, then the cd years later.

Rafael Mendez and Sergei Nakariakov have recorded the same piece, and I have heard their version, too.  They can be found on YouTube. They double tongue the whole thing, while Wynton slurs everything.

The piece is impossible to play for normal humans.  First, you have to play four and a half minutes straight, which can potentially damage the lip.   I have heard that Wynton has had two lip surgeries, and this piece would be why.  The lip is a muscle, and cutting off blood flow that long to a muscle can cause damage.  Imagine the hours of practice runs before the recording!

Next problem for normal humans— you have to learn to circular breath because there is no place for a rest to get air.  It gives you one more thing to think about other than the notes that are flying by.  Keeping the pitch right is also compromised when circular breathing.

The last problem may be the hardest.  You have to have intense concentration for four and a half minutes.  What kind of mind does it take to do that?  Genius level, in my book.

So, that briefly describes the problems for a classically trained trumpet player to over come in order to play this piece.  I’m thinking it could take years to master, and quite a few recording sessions to get it just right.

That’s where my theory that maybe it is possible for a great classical player to play this piece falls apart when I listen to this recording.  Wynton is one of the great jazz masters, and has spent the majority of his life listening to and playing jazz compositions.  To record this, he took a few months off from his jazz schedule, worked this up, recorded it live, and went back into jazz clubs.  Rafael and Sergei never spent little, if any, time listening to, or playing jazz.  If they did, it wasn’t at a high level.  Wynton lived in both worlds!

Here’s what I came up with on Wynton.  There aren’t enough hours in a day to learn both styles of music.  As a jazz player, he would have had to practice twice as much as everyone else to do both, and the physical requirements to do that are impossible.  Most jazz and classical musicians spend all day doing just one style.  His lip would have been shot all the time to that much practice.  Even if he could do it, there’s no guarantee he could mentally play this piece.

He is a musical genius.  There’s no other explanation as to how he worked this piece up so fast while working as a full time jazz musician. Then, to play it so well is another miracle.  One small mistake and you have to go back to the beginning of this piece.  There is no place to edit.

There is no other jazz player who ever lived who could have done this as well.  Maybe Harry James, but we’ll never know.  He never took the time to try like Wynton did.  The first time I ever met Wynton, I thanked him for doing this album.  Not because it was a great album, but for what it did for jazz.  Jazz musicians could no longer be looked down upon by classical musicians.  Not until a great classical trumpet player comes out with a great jazz album.  It hasn’t happened, yet, and I doubt it ever will.

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Mural

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Bill

image

 

The Caravan of Dreams performing arts center in Ft. Worth, TX existed from 1983 to 2001 when a restaurant replaced the club.  I just happened to play there in a rehearsal band the week they were closing, so I thought I might take a picture of the mural that spread along a long wall on the south side of the club.  I had always liked it, and I was thinking I would never see it again, nor would anyone else.

After I packed up my horn and mutes, I went over to take a few pictures.  I must have taken the camera with me that night for that reason.  This was before I had a digital camera, too. It never entered my mind not to do it since there were no signs saying “no photos”.

Everyone in the audience had already left, so Susan and I were just making ourselves at home posing for pictures, and trying to get the flash just right.  The club was dark, and I couldn’t get a good shot of Susan with the mural in the background properly.

Before we could get more than three shots taken, a waitress came over to us and told us they had a policy of no photographs of the mural.  My first thought was that she was going to remove the film from the camera, but she didn’t.  We agreed not to take any more, but I got out with this one, which may be one of the few ever taken of the mural.  It may be that because the club was going out of business and because she would be out of a job, she didn’t really care if I got out with a picture, or not.  She couldn’t be fired any more than she already was!

There was one other reason I felt like I could take pictures that night, even if it was not right, and I sure didn’t bother to ask anyone first.  I  had just finished playing with some of the top jazz musicians in the area for three hours for free. I knew the club was not going out of business out of bankrupcy.

Ed Bass, the billionaire, owned the club, and it was all about making more money with a restaurant.  I had just played for free for a billionaire, and it didn’t seem right to me that he wasn’t at least there to thank the musicians.  I wanted the picture to remind me of the night I worked for a billionaire and helped his club bring in some money.  If the billionaires in our society won’t respect and appreciate the artists in a community, then our arts future is bleak.  We won’t have any depth of quality artists who can survive.

Since the closing of Caravan of Dreams, we have seen the Fort Worth Symphony forced to cut back on several weeks of service, in spite of several billionaires living in Fort Worth, while TCU and the Cowboys raised more than they needed for a new football stadium during the same period.  That night in Fort Worth I knew we were at the beginning of a downward spiral for the arts community. The money has been diverted to sports, which means great football stadiums these days, but the city is without a world class arts club, or a full time symphony.  Live music is on the way out, and bigger sports arenas are in. This picture is my reminder of the week when the money started to flow out of the arts community in Ft. Worth.

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Leonard Belota records Wynton in Ft. Worth

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Bill

 

https://youtu.be/jnWt1JvVkeY

My good friend I met in 1974, Leonard Belota, taught me a lot about jazz playing.  He was a jazz historian, trumpet player, private teacher, music store expert, and a good salesman when needed, as when he sold suits at J.C. Penney.  Our minds thought as one, although on opposite ends of the spectrum.  He was always making me appreciate things I needed to appreciate as a jazz musician.  He and I almost agreed on one thing, however, and that was that Wynton Marsalis was the best trumpet player in the history of music.  To him, Miles Davis was THE ONLY genius to achieve that rank on trumpet, and I thought Wynton filled that role.  We may both be right.  Miles was the genius innovator, and Wynton is the best mind to ever play the instrument.  Leonard died last year, and his widow (Betsy) gave me these tapes for the museum a few weeks ago. I have been transferring them to cd from cassette tapes as I get time.  The swimming pool has been calling my name lately!

Leonard met Wynton when he moved to New York in the early 80s, and began working at Giardinelli’s, the top brass store in town.  Leonard would go hear Wynton play at night every chance he got, and Wynton would come in the store and visit.  Wynton saw in Leonard what most of us saw–a highly evolved soul who you could trust as a true friend.  A really good guy. Leonard always had Wynton’s phone number if he needed it, and Wynton loved to see Leonard when he was in town.  The guys from New York always called him Lenny, for some reason.

Leonard knew early on that Wynton would go on to be one of the greatest musicians of all time, genius always shows up early in life.  That’s why Leonard thought it was important to record a young Wynton whenever possible, at the same time I was recording Doc Severinsen.  The great ones need to have a microphone in front of them every time they play a note. That was our philosophy.

This tape is Wynton playing at the Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth in August of 1988.  Wynton was 26 years old, playing “Cherokee”, the Ray Nobel jazz standard from 1938, only you won’t recognize it because Wynton had a pattern of never actually playing the melody on this piece.  For jazz fans, he doesn’t need to–they listen to the chord changes in music mostly.  For the mainstream public, the chord changes are never heard, so they would not recognize the tune.

Wynton plays a pretty fast tempo, and keeps going for a bit.  There are two problems with that, if it’s me playing, not to mention endurance.  One, is that you have to improvise really fast and create lines that I have trouble listening to that speed, much less improvising.  Second, is that you always have to know where you are in the structure of the piece, which is 64 bars long and AABA.  The three A sections in a row can get you lost real fast while you are improvising.  It can turn you around very easily. One more thing, the B section is in an ungodly key that will stop you in your tracks.  It throws most amateur jazz players like me under the bus.  I was simply a lead and section player, not a great jazz player.  See if you can hear the bridge when it rolls around.  That’s the only guidepost I found.

Finally, I believe the great Marcus Roberts is on piano. He was with Wynton during those years, and although blind, plays like one of the best.  When listening to his solo, I have no idea, at times, where he is in the piece of music. He even plays with the time. These guys make me feel really dumb when I hear them play such intricate passages.  It’s nice to know they are some of the best ever.

If you ever hear anyone say jazz is a simple music, have them play this piece at this tempo and see how they sound.  Jazz is a very intellectual art form that has been misunderstood for years, mainly by people thinking you need a college degree to play difficult music.  Just because Wynton only had one year of college at Julliard means nothing.  He is one of the greatest musicians ever and it’s great that Leonard knew this and thought to record him at an early age.  Thank you Leonard!  You continue to teach us all, even though you aren’t here anymore.  These tapes have been in a box for 27 years, and Wynton is now 53.  Enjoy this rare tape from my friend.

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Original “Ole” by Maynard Ferguson

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Bill

http://youtu.be/iPACrVFD5DI

Here is the original “Ole” on Maynard ’63.  He completely stopped playing this song in 1970 when MF Horn 1 came out in 1970.  Notice the Conn Connstellation trumpet he always played in the early 80’s on the cover.  My dad got me a used one I played in high school. They played very easy in the high register, but not this easy!

It was in 1970 that Maynard changed his equipment and direction in music.  In fact, by the late 60’s the big bands were dying and Maynard was going to have to shut down his big jazz band.  He signed a deal with Columbia to start playing music the younger generation liked and was new, rock music.  Most rock music didn’t incorporate much soft music, so Maynard’s beautiful, soft high and low playing basically disappeared.  It was all loud and louder from then on, with a larger bore horn that would help him do that.  It worked and the band survived, but Maynard had to reinvent himself and the band.  The jazz critics hated it, but the younger generation loved it.

Maynard has said that the music he put out in the early 60’s on the Roulette label was his best playing. The hardest thing to do on a trumpet is to play soft with control, and Maynard could do it in any register, as this piece shows.  Most high note trumpet players don’t have a very good low register because playing high every day tends to tighten up the lip muscles too much.  Wille Maiden, the great music writer and sax player on the albums of this era, once said that Maynard was the greatest low note player of all time because he could play so high!  On this piece, Maynard puts on a clinic on what is possible on the trumpet.

 

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OK City Concert–Last Song of the Night

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Bill

https://youtu.be/47kZIIbOq6I

From that same Oklahoma City concert in 1963, this is “Ole”.  This was the last tune of the night, after a hard two hour concert.  Can you imaging doing these tunes night after night?

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Maynard Ferguson playing the 1st half of “Ole”

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Bill

http://youtu.be/nEwe5xak_Ig

This would have been in Europe in the late 60’s.

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Maynard Ferguson Plays “Maria” Live, 1963

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Bill

https://youtu.be/LX6KFNCDMO0

We were at a Maynard Ferguson tribute concert in Allen, TX a couple of years ago showing some of Maynard’s things we had brought down from the museum in Sherman.  A lot of people who went to the concert had Maynard stories, and when and where they had heard him play, etc. I have to admit I only heard him play about four times in my life, yet some people had heard him hundreds of times.  He was, after all, one of the greatest trumpet players of all time!

Imagine my surprise when an older man (I say that while I still can) approached me saying he had a live tape of Maynard playing in 1963.  I really didn’t believe much of the story until he sent me a cd of the concert.  He had to go home and transfer the tape he had made to cd, so it took a few weeks.  When it came, I realized I was hearing music history and a tape almost no one had ever heard before.

As the man told me that night in Allen, the professional musicians union would not allow any taping of a live concert, for the protection of the musicians.  So taping of any kind was forbidden.  Because of that, these kind of tapes don’t exist, except that I was listening to one and you are, too, now. This is a buried treasure he had saved for about 50 years before he gave it to me.  I think he wanted me to preserve and share it, which is what I’m doing.

In order to get the recording, the man had to climb up into the attic of the auditorium and drop down a microphone enough that it would record, but not be seen.  He also had to haul up a reel to reel tape deck, which was very heavy in those days.  Portable tape decks weren’t very available in 1963, or very good.  This was a pretty good recording, although the distortion you hear at times is because his record level was set too low for Maynard and the band.  Maynard and the band kept overblowing the recording levels he had set.  That’s how much power the band and Maynard had that night.  I did a little bit of editing to take out the distortion so you can hear Maynard, but just remember how far away the microphone must have been in a large auditorium.  It’s not a bad recording, considering the location of the microphone.

Here’s what I think about when I hear this rare recording: Maynard was only 35 at the time, he was playing this hard every night on the road, this was just one tune on a two hour concert, it was the last tune of the first half, he was playing for his wife’s family, since they were from Oklahoma, and it was a normal Wednesday night. And there is a guy in the auditorium attic trying not to be seen, arrested, or thrown out!  Think of what might have been up there watching and listening along with him. What a sacrifice he made so that we might have this music today.

Finally, some people may think Maynard’s studio or produced live recordings might be edited to make him sound better.  Even though the musicians who have worked him say he could do this every night, this tape is proof of that.  When you listen to his playing on this piece of music, he takes no short cuts, and never cuts a note short due to endurance issues.  It’s all about the music, not his chops.  That, to me, is the main difference I hear in Maynard compared to every other trumpet player who has attempted this piece, and there aren’t many who want to try it!  Maynard was as good as you think, and he was really better than most all of us think.  As a great studio musician once said to me, “The tape doesn’t lie.” This was how Maynard Ferguson sounded on a random night in Oklahoma in October, 1963, seven weeks before a tragic day in Dallas.

 

 

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A Rare Recording of a Leon Breeden Jazz Clinic at TMEA in 1975

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Bill

https://youtu.be/cdmbGxSQdko

Leon Breeden and The One O’Clock Lab Band presented a jazz clinic at TMEA in 1975. They made it into a record and I only heard of this album about a year ago.  My friend, Roger Dismore, who was playing lead alto, remembers it well.  This was the band with Lyle Mays on piano, and this band was the first college band in history to be nominated for a Grammy.

I heard a rough, unedited tape of Lab ’75 at Roger’s house in May of 1975, and that album (which was still months away from coming out) convinced me to go to North Texas and try out for the One O’Clock.  There were going to be four out of five trumpet openings the next year, so I thought it was now or never for me to try it.  I made second chair, 40 years ago this month, and was very glad I went.  We went on to play the music from Lab ’75 most of the next year when I was there.  The music on Lab ’75 was written entirely by one student, Lyle  Mays.  The band would get to vote on what music to put on their albums and that’s how good everyone thought he was.  This is a great, historic college band on this record.

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Classical

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Bill

http://youtu.be/HlL3DR2dG-Q

One of our greatest jazz musicians is heard playing classical music rather than jazz every Sunday morning.

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The Greatest Jazz Photograph in History Was Taken Aug. 12, 1958

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Bill

Roy Eldridge had his head turned to say something to Dizzy just when the picture was taken.  He felt terrible about that.  Roy is over on the right side of the picture.

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