Forgettable?

Wow, one post, one comment (thanks, Chris.) It may not be a big start but at least it's something. Onward and upward…

Going back to the first, and only until now, post of this incarnation of the blog, 27 April, 2012 – military date – I find myself to have been mistaken. I found a cassette tape of that session. The memories came back FAST. Here is what I have so far:

The session, album that was never released, was called "The Best Of times."

I wrote six of the nine charts on the session.

The three best charts on the session were not written by me.

I have no idea where one of the tunes listed in the liner notes went, but it isn't on the tape.

I have a master, homemade, cassette copy of the DDA original from the studio.

I am not sure there is any other copy anywhere.

Oh, my. I was very surprised when I went to my garage the other day thinking I was about to throw away a bunch of old cassette tape filing boxes, that I thought were empty, only to find them full, mostly full. I found a few unopened, still in the shrink-wrap, copies of other AFB East sessions. I found some live recordings I had totally forgotten about, my Dad was better at keeping stuff than I and I thought I never threw away anything. Then I found "The Best Of Times!" I guess I already said that. A more detailed description:

The cassette actually had artwork. Well, it was a mock-up of something I must have just done for my Dad made in then state-of-the-art Ventura Publisher on my old 386 computer (I am guessing that only because the date of the session was 1990). On the art work, made to look like a news paper (foreshadowing my IT job at my news paper?), was a little blurb about the session in general and then short liner notes about each of the tunes, not much room on a single fold insert for a cassette tape. Of course there were player credits too. I was please to find a few things in those credits that I had forgotten. We had a full time french horn player with that band and on that session our third trombone player doubled euphonium on one cut, "I Remember Clifford", as well as our bass trombone player playing tuba on the same cut. I had to listen right away, though I should have been packing for my move. I did the listening anyway.

Having had some experience in running into twenty year-old, or older, cassette tapes I did not just slap the tape in the machine and let it roll. First I grabbed this funky stick eraser that I have kept since the 1980s just to gently roll tape in a cassette manually. I spooled forward for a while and then backward until I got to the beginning, that took about ten minutes by hand. Why do so? I didn't want to pull the emulsion right off the Mylar by slamming the tape into rewind. I have done that before. Headphones on and press play. Hum… Kind of stuffy… Hum, the tunes are not in the same order as they are on the insert… Hum… Oh, wait a minute, here comes the fidelity (if fidelity is a term that can be used to describe audio on a twenty year-old cassette tape). Oh, holy cow… This sounds like a band! WOW!!! So, pass number one, to get the wrinkles out, was complete. I hooked my cassette machine up to my computer and ran the tape again, this time dumping all of it to digital format. This time the fidelity was there on all the cuts. Sweet!

That is when the memories came racing back. As each of the tunes played I could not only remember the charts but I could remember writing those that I did write. I could even remember things like when the band leader asked me to write the title cut that he wanted it to be just ensemble, no solos. Then there was the look of frustration on the engineer's (Cris) face when we asked him to dig up two additional reverb units so we could get this odd effect in the intro of one of the vocals. Then I remembered that the piece that I had written about much earlier – the one that we pulled from the book because some of the cats in the sax section could not make the long phases – was the tune missing in action, listed on the insert but not on the tape. Then from the tape came; "Two Moods From The Duke."

That chart, medley, was actually more a collaboration between the singer and myself than a straight arrangement by me. That young lady had some very good ideas and it made it easy to put notes behind them. Two of the other vocals on the session were also done in collaboration with our singer. I wonder if we would have listed her if the session had ever been released? We should have. So that brings me back to my above comment about the three best charts on the session not being mine.

Cut Two, Side A (remember when you had to turn over recording to get the second half?) was "Nature Boy." Yes, that eerie ballad made famous by Nat King Cole. This version was anything but eerie and being set in an medium up-tempo Latin feel it was amazing. By the way, our fine jazz tenor player in that band did that chart. Damn good work sergeant!

Cut One, Side B was a thing called "La Bakina." I think the only person in the band that had ever heard of it before was the band leader who had spent some time in the AF Band they had in Panama. It was kind of a stock chart, done by one of the well know arrangers from the band in DC years before, and kind of sucked when we first started playing it. You know, hard to get behind a stock when you have stuff like "Nature Boy" being written by your own guys. I remember the rehearsal about a week before the session when that changed. Of all people, our usually quiet yet phenomenal piano player simply stated; "The reason this chart sucks is because you don't respect it." There were sixteen very embarrassed musicians sitting there in silence after his comment. We took a break and when we came back "La Bakina" cooked for the very first time. Still nothing flashy, but well worth having on the session.

Cut 3, Side B: "I Got Rhythm In My Nursery Rhyme." I had never been in a big band recording session where the band just let the trio and the singer do a cut without any horns. In fact while the trio had probably done this tune with our singer on protocol type gigs they had never done it in a true jazz setting. To top that I don't remember it even being on the list of tunes we intended to record for that session. I think the band leader just asked the singer and rhythm guys if they would like to do something like that. Bingo. One take, totally live, vocals and all. It was cool. So, I guess the arranging credits for that one would have simply read; "The Trio."

So, considering I have run down most of the cuts already, I guess I should run down the others.

Side A, Cut 1: I did mention the title cut above, but here is a bit more on it. Yes I was asked to compose and arrange a short opener, though we most often used it as an encore number later on the road, which had no improvised solos in it – just ensemble stuff. Having been a big fan of featuring soloists since getting into band that had good ones, I was a bit taken back by that request. I mean a jazz band chart without improvised solos? So, I decided to bend the request and do a bunch of Solis where the solos might naturally have gone. In case you are not familiar with the word Soli, I think it's Italian, let me explain. Soli is kind of plural for Solo, but not exactly. It actually indicates that a Section is to be featured as if on a Solo, even if the "section" is actually an odd combination of instruments; such as string bass, bass trombone and bari sax. So I crammed "The Best Of Times," the title cut, with lots of them. What I ended up with was a very short piece that contained more notes on the score than most of the long pieces I ever wrote. Well, it worked out. At least I think so considering that the engineer who recorded it, some twenty years ago, seemed to like it when I sent him a copy after unearthing the cassette.

Side A, Cut 3 was a very different treatment of the tune "Who Will Buy" from the Broadway musical "Oliver." Here is a quote from the liner notes from 1990: "In this setting of the classic Broadway tune Oliver becomes Olivia and we move her from London to Harlem. In the beauty of the urban dawn the excitement builds and the tune roars through the city before coming to rest in a retrospective recap." If that does not give you the picture, picture this: "Oliver Twist meets Porgy." Got it?

Side A, Cut 4: "The Doubtful Guest." This is the one that didn't make it to the tape. It was supposed to be a tone poem based on a story, of the same name, by Edward Gory. I am not sure I even have a live recording of that. Oh well…

Side A, Cut 5: "I Remember Clifford." I know I mentioned this one a bit above too, but here is just a little more on that one also. There was a classic chart done on …Clifford back in the 1970s, by I think Mike Barone. To me that was the only chart that should ever have been done on it. Mike got it right. You wanna do Clifford? Get Mike's chart. Oddly enough, I was asked to do three different charts on Clifford while I was in. The first one, for the AFB West was pretty much a rip-off of the Barone chart. I was not happy with it but the band liked it. Hum… My second chart on Clifford was for the AFB Overseas. I did better with that version, or so I thought. I liked it, the band didn't. Hum… My last, and I MEAN that, chart on Clifford was for the AFB East and the session I am going on forever about right now. I decided that if I had to do another Clifford chart I was going to break the mold. So, that's why the odd orchestration; solo trumpet (OK, that's moldy) french horn, two trombones, one euphonium, one tuba and rhythm section. Hum… I also totally re-harmonized the ensemble sections and went for some rather drastic dissonances and suspensions that resolved in unusual manners if at all. Everybody liked it. Wheh, no more Clifford charts.

Side B, Cut 4: Cantador. To say that is an obscure Brazilian ballade would be an understatement, though it might be more familiar to some by its English subtitle; "Like A Lover." Our singer found it, brought it to me and I fell in love. Not to let the brass section get away with the only fancy orchestration tune, I scored Cantador for; vocal, flute, alto flute, two clarinets, bass clarinet, one trombone and rhythm section. Think Sergio Mendez and Brazil 66 meets Gill Evens. I had fun with that one.

Side B, Cut 5: "St. Thomas." Yup the tune I always play on recorder. The tune that I had memorized the tenor solo from when I was just seventeen, though I could not remember any of it when I went to lift it to write this chart. Yup, just about my favorite thing in the world – right from Saxophone Colossus. There were three things about this version, the recording from the session, that really got to me when I played it.

First, the original introduction I had written for version one of the chart, back in the mid 1980s, was there. I had forgotten we did that. The prior band leader didn't like that intro so we just did a little rhythm vamp and then right into the head when he was running the band.

Second, the tempo was at the exact tempo that Sunny recorded it at, not the faster tempo St. Thomas is most often played at in jam sessions. What made that tempo important is that I pulled Sonny's solo and wrote it out for the band, not just the saxes but the brass were in on it a bit too. We had a fighting chance at the real tempo and I think we did a pretty good job.

Third, and lastly, The 3/4 section?!? What's with that? Where did the extra chorus of the fugue type thing come from? Where did the shout chorus in three come from? Where did the piano solo come from? Hum… I had forgotten about re-writing all that stuff. The best part about all that re-writing was giving the flute solo to the piano player. He nailed it!

So, that's a rap! Session's over. So much for not having any more TBOTB stories in me. Did I ever tell you the one about…