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Played swing for first time in concert

Author: Ralph G
Date: 2005-03-21 14:42

I play in a woodwind quartet, and two members of the group also run a local swing/big band combo that plays at dances, assisted-living centers, and whatnot. A few weeks ago they asked me to join them for a gig this past Saturday at a USO-style show at a barbecue joint at a nearby town. I told them I've never played a lick of jazz-swing-big band stuff in my life, and although I have a good ear and can follow along well without music, I've never done actual jazz improv. No problem, they said, we've got music, so come to rehearsal on such-and-such date and we'll get it worked out.

So I went to a couple of rehearsals, which only involved me, the two people from my quartet (to my surprise, our oboist is a pretty darn good sax player) a trumpet player, and a drummer. We ran through a few standards on which that they wanted me to take the lead -- Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, Sing Sing Sing, Chattanooga, One O'clock Jump, and a few others -- and worked out a pretty good road map of what to do.

So I get to the gig Saturday night, and the group had expanded to about nine people, including a singer, guitarist and bassist (all of whom were pretty darn good). Turns out we're filling 4 hours over 3 sets. Wow. They hand me my newly-prepared book (they kept it after rehearsal so they could string together parts where I was switching between tenor sax and trumpet), and it's chock full of lead sheets. I've never played from a lead sheet before. So I realize I'll have to rely pretty much completely on my ear the whole evening.

I'd say during the whole evening we played maybe 3 songs we'd rehearsed. Everything else was stuff I'd never played before. And it wasn't just swing and big band. Since this was a Texas barbecue joint in a small town, we played a whole bunch of country stuff too. Ever tried to follow along on clarinet to stuff like "Amarillo by Morning" and "Waltz Across Texas" and "Silver Wings" and "Pass Me By?" It's one thing to know how the songs go, but another to wedge a clarinet into it without sounding silly. I was finally grateful for a bizarre portion of my childhood where my parents had weekend jobs at a local country honky-tonk in the 70's and they used to drag me to work with them -- all those nights of seeing Ronnie Milsap and Johnny Rodriguez and Charley Pride perform paid off!

It was bizarre, but kinda fun. Since I was so new, I told them I wasn't really comfortable with taking solos on anything I hadn't prepared. But in the last set, during "Kansas City" (another I'd never rehearsed), the sax and trumpet players traded solos, then the singer announced, "Here's Ralph on clarinet!" Yikes! I missed a couple of bars because I wasn't ready, but I hung it out there for about 8 bars or so and lived to tell about it.

Anyway, I've got an open invitation to join them in any future gigs, and they're pretty much booked every weekend through April. Maybe I'll work on my pentatonics and give it another go. Hey, fifty bucks is fifty bucks.

________________

Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.

- Pope John Paul II

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