Carol Jarvis

       Once again I’ve found myself overtaken by sloth. I started this post a few weeks ago while in the States, laying around my mother-in-law’s, waiting for the UPS truck while she and Cynthia shopped.  I thought it’d be a good time for a Trombone Hero so it’s about time I finished it. 

Back in July, 2015, I was lucky enough to be able to go to the International Trombone Festival in Valencia, Spain. Even luckier, I got to sit next to Abbie Conant during a performance by British trombonists Mark Nightingale and Carol Jarvis, this post’s Hero. The ITF is one of the few opportunities trombone hacks like me get to rub elbow more or less on a even footing with the masters.

My Tribe

    This blog’s been neglected for months now, mainly because there wasn’t much I felt like writing about and coincided with an acute case of who-gives-a-shit-what-I-think-anyway. Last month, I hauled my wife and trombone to Valencia, Spain, to hang with my sister and brother trombone players at the International Trombone Festival, put on every year by, not coincidentally, the International Trombone Association, of which I’m a member and a part of the staff of it’s quarterly Journal. (That could be the longest sentence I’ve ever written.) This festival has been held every summer since 1971 and I’ve been to three of them. The first was in New Orleans in 2005, which was particularly special, coming right before Katrina and I made it to Austin in 2010. For four days it’s all trombones, all the time and now I’ve got something to write about (though the jury’s still out on the gives-a-shit part)

    For me, one of the perks, come to think of it the only perk, of being able to write for the Journal is that I get to freely associate, even if only by email or telephone, with some of the finest, most well-known trombone players in the world. At the festival this year I got to do that in person and (allow me to name-drop) my hang-mates included Abbie Conant, Branimir Slokar, Andrea Conti and Bart van Lier. If these names are unfamiliar, all I can say is that these folks are on bass clef Mt. Olympus.

Harold Betters

            

            Not only is it about time I wrote something but way past time for another Trombone Hero. I might have mentioned before that Pittsburgh was a great place to grow up for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that it was such a great place for jazz. Just off the top of my head I can recite the names of Roy Eldridge, Mary Lou Williams, Slide Hampton, George Benson, Stanley Turrentine, Billy Eckstine, Errol Garner, Dodo Marmarosa and Billy Strayhorn as all being from the Pittsburgh. And if you played trombone, Matty Shiner, the low brass teacher at Duquesne University was world famous and a lot of his former students ended up teaching in the area. I was lucky enough to have been taught by one of them, Jack Lapato.  When Maynard Ferguson started touring the States again in the early '70s he came to Pittsburgh a lot, possibly because one of his trombonists was a local, Randy Purcell - a fabulous player who, sadly, died fairly young a couple of years ago. But one of the undisputed kings of the local Pittsburgh jazz scene was a guy named Harold Betters whose trombone could be heard for 17 years at a club in Shadyside called "The Encore." Like most jazz clubs it's long been closed and I read it's now a lingerie shop, which eases the pain somewhat.

Steve Turre

           

           When we lived in New Jersey in the early '90s, I got to hear Steve Turre a lot since he played all the time at a club in Montclair. Being around New York and all the jazz clubs was one of the big reasons I starting thinking about getting back into my horn and Steve was a big part of that. It wasn't just that I dug his playing or that he's, to me, a direct descendant of J.J. and Curtis Fuller. Possibly because of his gig on Saturday Night Live, he was pretty visible at the time and was always being interviewed. In one of these he talked about the history of the instrument and how important players like Vic Dickenson, Lawrence Brown and Dicky Wells were. These were guys I'd never heard of before so I started checking them out which sparked an interest in the trombone's place in jazz that hasn't diminished.

Dick Nash

                                                                           

            Not long ago, the Facebook group "Jazz Trombonists" had a thread going about early influences. I hesitate to get involved in these things mainly because most of these players are way beyond me in abilities and knowledge. But it made me think about the trombonists who had an impact on me when I was young - one whose name I didn't even know.

            Like most kids who take up the trombone and show any ability, the hardest thing I had to do was reach 6th position, near the bottom of the slide. Grade school band music is, by necessity, not particularly difficult - everyone is a beginner. At this stage, your main goal is just trying to make the thing sound halfway decent. But trombone players find out pretty quickly that they never, and I mean never, play the melody let alone solos. Your role is always in support of someone else. The trombone parts from grade school on were generally boring,  rarely a challenge and I became indifferent to practicing. The parts were just too easy.

LAWRENCE BROWN

            While writing the post about "Tricky Sam" a few weeks ago, I was looking something up in "Duke's Bones", Kurt Dietrich's book about Ellington's trombonists, and got sidetracked rereading the section on Lawrence Brown. That made for a further sidetrack to listen to some recordings that reminded me of what an amazing player Lawrence Brown was.  

            One of the first CD's I remember buying was a trombone compilation that I'm too lazy to go and find the title of right now. Anyway, one of my favorite cuts was Lawrence Brown's "Blues for Duke" from his album, "Slide Trombone", which was out of print at the time. I played whatever it is you can play instead of grooves off that CD. Sometime later, I read an article about Steve Turré in which he talked about the importance of some of the swing era masters like Lawrence Brown and Vic Dickenson. When I discovered the album "Everybody Knows Johnny Hodges" had the entire contents of "Inspired Abandon", Lawrence Brown's only other album as a leader, I picked up a copy and played the shit out of that one, too.

Tricky Sam

              Well, summer is over here and the local bands are starting to rehearse again. A new friend hooked me up with another big band, so now I'll have two groups to play in. What I like about the new band is the challenge of some of the charts (Mingus and Frank Zappa for a start) and some classic Ellington, Ko-Ko and Oclupaca.

Curtis Fuller

            Even at a jazz Mecca like Marciac, trombone players are seriously under represented at the CD tables. Even so, I found a Curtis Fuller album that wasn't in my collection (Blues-ette) and as I listened to it thought, "Damn, I've got to put Curtis on more often." I probably have more of his recordings than anyone except J.J., even Urbie Green, but I hadn't had them out in a while.

 

            Curtis Fuller is another one of the people I've been trying to hear in person for years. He must have played in New York during the time I worked there but I can't remember ever seeing an ad for him. Back then, Steve Turré was about the only guy you could hear with any degree of regularity, at least as far as I knew. If you wanted to hear trombones, you had to catch them playing with somebody else, as usual.

         

Fred Wesley

Photo by Ray Ellis

            Having missed him, not only at Marciac but also during his recent European tour, it might be appropriate to do a Trombone Hero post on Fred Wesley whose autobiography, "Hit Me, Fred!", I just finished. This could be the best, most honest book about a musician's life that I ever read.  Anyone who wants to know what that life is like and every musician who's ever supported a "star" at any level (and that's most of us) ought to read this book. Fred, who made his name and reputation by working for James Brown, then George Clinton and Bootsie Collins, tells his story with humor and candor.

Jimmy Knepper

           

Cover photo of Cunningbird

  

            While practicing the other day I got a look at myself in the mirror and thought, "Jesus, I'm starting to look like Jimmy Knepper."  The cover photo of Cunningbird, the only CD of his I have, could easily be me, if the hair was grayer. And he's dressed as I would if left to my own devices. Now, if I could just play like him.           

            Jimmy Knepper is another trombone player who ought to be a household name. I learned about him only after moving to New York and, sometime in 1989, playing hooky from work by going to a concert at nearby Pace University. The performance, dedicated to the great Ellington trombones, was led by Art Baron and included people like Craig Harris and Doug Purviance. As I remember it, a guy named Jimmy Knepper was supposed to have played as well but some sort of health problem prevented it. So when I ran across Cunningbird (an import from Denmark), probably in J&R Music or Tower Records on Broadway (where I spent a considerable amount of time and money) I remembered the name and bought it.

How I Got Jack Teagarden's Autograph

My father, George Gunia, is on the left. Damned if I know the others.

       My father's 96th birthday was the other day so I guess it's fitting to post this today. He died in 1998 and about a year later my mother moved permanently into assisted living. After my sisters and I realized Mum was never going to be able to live in the house again, we made plans to sell and it fell to me to start cleaning it out. One of the many benefits of working for Uncle Sam is the Employee Assistance Program and through this, I was temporarily reassigned from New York to Pittsburgh, near my hometown.

Phil Wilson

            In the category of Famous Trombone Players I've Had On Speed Dial, there's only one. My gig with the ITA, writing about the folks to whom they've given awards, sometimes means that I get to spend time talking to some of the world's best musicians. This can be a bit intimidating for me, especially in the case of someone like Phil Wilson. 

 

            When I write these Journal pieces, I usually start by sending emails and sometimes the subjects will send me their numbers and suggest a phone call. On the day I called Phil, for some reason he asked to call back and when he did, my phone captured the caller ID. We talked for over an hour and he turned out to be such a nice guy that what I had planned as kind of interview ended up being a really loose bull session.  Most trombone players, even great ones are really just regular, unpretentious kinds of people.  Fortunately, I had a recorder going so got all I needed for the article and after it was all over, I saved Phil's number to my phone. Anytime another musician came to the house I'd casually say something like, "Hey, know anyone with Phil Wilson on speed dial?" Unfortunately, that phone didn't make the trip over here.

J.J. Johnson

            No less an authority than Robin Eubanks thinks modern trombonists owe J.J. Johnson a share of every dollar they've ever made.  J.J. was the guy who proved that the trombone's inherent limitations could be overcome and adapted to the language and tempos of post-swing era jazz.  He made it possible for everyone after him to actually earn a living with this thing. 

 

            J.J. didn't just play fast. For me, he's always been an unreachable goal of apparent effortlessness and perfect intonation at any speed. From a just playing the trombone standpoint, the thing about J.J. is that it all sounds so deceptively easy. In a nutshell, he's had a bigger influence on the way his instrument is played than any other musician on any other instrument.

           

Urbie Green

           

 Sometime during high school I picked up a copy of 21 Trombones, 2 LP's of Urbie Green and 20 "of the world's greatest trombone players."  I played it when I needed inspiration to practice, which was almost always, and wore the grooves out of it. When cassette players came along, I got a new copy and played it once to put it on tape and then again a couple of years ago to digitize it. As far as I know, only half of this album has ever been released on CD and that's a crime. This album, more than any other, showed me what the trombone was capable of and to this day, Urbie Green's is what I think a trombone is supposed to sound like. And some lucky descendant is going to inherit 21 Trombones.

Fab

            They called Al Grey Fab because that's what he was, fabulous. One of my prize possessions is a vinyl copy of an album he recorded with J.J. Johnson, Thing Are Getting Better All The Time.  I've had it since the mid-1980's and it was my introduction to one of the all time greats.  At the time, my horn had been gathering dust since high school and my knowledge of trombonists was limited. When CD's came out, a couple of the first I got were Count Basie's with Al Grey solos. From then on, if I were granted the wish of being able to play like just one guy, it might be him.

 

            The first time I ever heard Al live was at the old One Step Down, in Washington, D.C.  Sometime in the '90's, I was visiting a friend in Alexandria and, by chance, saw an ad in the Washington Post for Al's performance that night. I told Cindy (that's our friend Cindy, not my wife Cynthia) that this was one of my musical heroes and we absolutely had to go hear him. Off we went to Foggy Bottom and when we got to the club, the only seats left were at the small bar. As we sat down and ordered drinks, I glanced at the smallish guy to my right and realized this was the man himself. All of a sudden I was like a giddy little kid and nudged Cindy, "That's him, that's Al Grey."

Buster Cooper

            There's one man who falls under a heading of famous trombone players who know me if I remind them how.  One of the first pieces I had published was an article in the April 2008 ITA Journal. Some day everyone at the home will be hearing about the day I spent talking to Buster Cooper about Duke Ellington.

 

            Buster Cooper spent ten years with Duke Ellington and for that reason alone qualifies as American musical royalty. The first time we met was during a Florida vacation. Cyn and I went to hear him at the Garden (downtown St. Pete where he still plays every Friday night) after reading an article about him in the St. Petersburg Times. I had known about Buster from reading Kurt Dietrich's Duke's Bones, about the great Ellington trombone sections, and had his only album but didn't know he lived in St. Pete. When we got the chance to say hello, it was like he'd known us all his life.

Tom Brantley

            In between ravings I've decided to do posts on my favorite trombone players, My Trombone Heroes, as it were. Like everything else, I'll probably decide who and what as I go along but I wanted to start with the theme of trombonists-I-dig-who-have-paid-my-bar-tab. 

 

            The first, actually the only one, is Tom Brantley, the trombone professor at the University of South Florida. I got to know Tom after I retired from the FBI and decided to go back to college to study music.  He was the first teacher I ever had who was born the year I left high school and probably deserves some kind of medal for sitting through my lessons for 2 1/2 years. Plus, he's just plain good people.

Trombone 102, Are You Man Enough?

Melba Liston

            My last post was about the trombone studio recital at the Conservatoire in Bordeaux and some of the difficulties these young kids were going to face in wrestling with their new horn. The group included a number of girls and this post is for them.

 

            Not surprisingly, the trombone was not the first choice for most people who end up playing it. I'm not sure I even knew what it was when one was handed to me in fourth grade. And my bet is that even in France, kids showing up for band without an instrument are steered to a trombone. But for a boy it is at least not a girly horn. How they get little girls to play it is beyond me.

So long St. Pete

     It's getting down to crunch and time and we're starting to get a little nervous. Actually a lot nervous and to say we've got mixed emotions is putting it mildly. For me, while there's no doubt we're doing the right thing, still, the United States is where we were born and raised, well, I was anyway. But beyond that, everything I have I owe to Uncle Sam. I paid my way through college as an FBI clerk and have been a public servant ever since. When I discovered police work wasn't for me, the Bureau took me back and gave me the career that is now allowing me the freedom to do whatever I like. I'm as American as you can get and I don't want to hear any of that anti-government shit.

     But we're also wondering if we're not a little spoiled. After all, we've got a pretty good life here in St. Pete and for me I've been able to pursue another dream. When I retired from the FBI in 2004, I hadn't intended to stop working but before I looked for another job I wanted to deal with a regret I'd had since leaving high school. I wanted a degree in music.

     I grew up in Springdale, Pa., a factory town about 16 miles up the Allegheny river from The Point in Pittsburgh. Playing the trombone was the only thing that got me through high school. Like most people who play it, I didn't really pick the trombone, it picked me. Somewhere around 90% of the kids who show up for elementary school band without an ax are handed a trombone and I was one of those. As it turns out, however, this instrument suits my personality probably better that any other. Trombone players as a group tend not to take themselves too seriously, possibly because nobody else does either. But when it came time to leave high school and find a career I gave the horn up, believing myself not good enough to pursue it further.

    Occasionally though, usually around Memorial Day and 4th of July, I'd get the horn out and march with the local fireman's band but that was it. After 1979, when I left the 'burgh for good, even this outlet dried so for about 25 years I hardly touched the thing. Then about midway through the '90's, it became imperative that I have something to distract me from my job so I retrieved my old 2B from my mother's house and joined a community band. After a couple of years I decided to start taking he whole thing more seriously since I was no longer satisfied with being slightly less than mediocre. I found a good teacher, Jay Shanman, and as I got better began to wonder if it was too late for me to ever be any good.

    Because law enforcement (I've never really been comfortable with that term) is perceived as a young man's job, most agencies allow for retirement after 20 years of service and the FBI added the requirement of also being 50 years old. I had 20 years at the age of 51 and did not let the door hit me on the ass on the way out.  The spring semester of 2006, I started classes at the University of South Florida.

   When I decided to do this, my relationship with most teenagers had been mutual distrust and, at best, barely tolerant. But from the first day at USF it became apparent that I was at last among my people. For over 30 years, I was forced into daily association with people who not only regarded jazz with contempt and ridicule but if they listened to music at all it almost always prominently featured pedal steel guitars and alcohol related themes. To be every day with people 1/3 my age who not only knew and dug J.J. and Urbie Green and held conversations about Miles' modal period was, well, (cue Handel).
 
     So I graduated in 2008 and for the last 4 years I've bounced around, picking up gigs where I can but, like a lot of people, but especially trombone players, not as much as I would have liked. On balance, however, I've had more ups than downs, really, although if you've been the one who's had to listen to me bitch it hasn't always seemed that way. I'm writing this after having just finished my last gig here. I've been lucky enough to get to sub regularly with the TomKats, a St. Pete big band that plays every Monday night at the Blue Parrot in St. Pete Beach and features some of the best jazz players in town. In fact. I don't really belong on the same stage with most of these folks but I've generally not embarrassed myself and held my own on the occasional solo.

       I'll probably write more about this later but I want to get something posted before I leave town.  While I've lived here, I gotten to know a lot of some of the best musicians in the Tampa Bay area and, to me, that's infinitely cooler than following guys of Mediterranean ethnicity around Brooklyn all day. And I'll just say here that I consider myself lucky to have spent time with the great Buster Cooper, who most times remembers who I am after I tell him. One of the first things I ever had published was an article about Buster that appeared in the Journal of the International Trombone Association and if I ever figure out how to do it, I'll post a link here. If you don't know Buster, check out the Duke Ellington Orchestra after around 1963 through 1972. Once I got to play hockey with Gordie Howe and this is the musical equivalent as far as I'm concerned.

    At USF I got to take lessons once a week from Tom Brantley and if I could play like anyone, it might be him. Apart from being a great human being, he's a amazing musician - one of those people that when you see and hear him play, you know you're getting all he's got. And as if that weren't  enough for me, my last semester Tom went on sabbatical so I got to study with Keith Oshiro, an alum of both the Maynard Ferguson and Woody Herman bands. Being among these three world class trombonists was the high point of my life in Florida. And thanks to Tom's wife Claire, who was the managing editor of the ITA Journal, I now have a steady writing gig, even if it doesn't pay a dime.

   The first musical experience I had after moving to Florida was to play in the summer jazz band at St. Petersburg college. This is run by Dave Pate, a saxophonist and St.Pete native and it was, without doubt, some of the most fun I've ever had and Pate was a big part of the reason for this. He's played with and for some of the world's best musicians but never, ever exhibited the ego he actually would be entitled to have. These summer bands were always a mixture of old goats like me and kids from grade school to early college. Pate treated everyone the same, made sure everyone soloed and not once did I hear anything but encouragement, even after listening to someone like me hack their way through even the simplest tunes.

   Another thing that's given me a lot of pleasure here is seeing some of my USF classmates doing well and making their way as teachers and musicians. Mark Feinman, a great drummer, and Jon O'Leary, a really sensitive piano player,  helped me get through my junior recital and now, along with Alejandro Arenas (another USF classmate) make up La Lucha, a group here in St. Pete that is really making a name for themselves. But beyond their own group, they're some of the most sought after sidemen in town and so I get to show up at their gigs and act all cool and hip 'cause I can tell people I've played with these guys.  I'm hoping to see them at Marciac some time.

   I'm going to miss all this but I'm hoping to have some of the same experiences now in a different language. If you're reading this and I've played with you somewhere along the line, thanks. Thanks more than you know. For all their foibles, I've found musicians, by and large, to be the real deal and I'd rather hang with them than anyone.

  After we find a place to live, I'm not going to have a lot to do for awhile so I'm planning on, not only total immersion language training but immersing myself in my horn again. Since this seems like a pretty good way of making the transition into a new culture, it will be a good time to work on some things I've been needing for a long time. For one thing, all the French sax players I've heard appear to prefer the same tempos as their American brethren so it might be a good time to learn to keep up.

   So long St. Pete, I'm gonna miss you. You were just starting to feel like home. Who knows, I might be back some day but if not, look me up. If you're in Bordeaux just listen for the out of tune trombone player trying to make the changes to some Django tune.