 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Djudy
Date: 2019-10-17 04:04
(and gawd ! can you imagine what his instrument must have suffered ! it's amazing to have kept reed instruments playing under those grim conditions)
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Author: oldreedguy
Date: 2019-10-21 11:27
NOW THAT'S COOL!
Thanks so much for posting...that recording of Artie with Count and the guys...oh, just a Lionel Hampton, Les Paul and some drummer named Buddy Rich, et. al, and history...wow...
So to blow my own...horn...I have some distant connections to all this...yeah, I played clarinet in 1981 Navy Recruit Band Great Lakes IL COMPANY 918...could have been an MU but turned down the gig...so I spent over two years sailing all over WestPac...just about all the places Artie was 40 years before, even homeported in Yokosuka JA...my gig was finding soviet subs and nuking them should WWIII had happened in the early-mid 1980s...shoulda stuck to music...
Well, in 1999 I started playing clarinet again, out of necessity...I needed an instrument for my Music Therapy degree program at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon...PAID BY THE US Veterans Administration voc rehab program for disabled vets...the school discontinued the curriculum, so I auditioned successfully for University of Pacific's MT program in Stockton CA...after only 4 months of private lessons...I got scholarship to the 1999 Bud Shank Jazz Clinic that summer, no jazz exp at all, but I read some chart a lady wrote for my little combo after she screamed at me for not knowing rhythm changes and theory...but she liked my sound (Peggy Stern was her name)...then I went to UOP and walked by some guy named Dave Brubeck...I was working on his archives as a work-study gig...but the school threw me out after a couple of weeks because I was a jerk...
I went back to Willamette and for the last twenty years I've been a semi-pro choirboy (high tenor starting out at age 38) and played clarinet here and there...one of my most memorable "gigs" was playing 2nd clarinet in the fall 2002 San Diego State Symphony Orchestra. The first was a real Marine clarinetist, Adrian D, Younkins. He was as obnoxious as I was and I really enjoyed playing next to him, something I rarely did in my "career." He tragically died in a car accident after the only semester we completed there (I was a grad student...I think he was undergrad just discharged from USMC). Yesterday in his memory I attended the President's Own Marine Band in Bakersfield, CA, just 200 miles from Stockton and 100 miles north of LA. I went there in memory of Marine Younkins.
Finally, 4 years ago I was playing in bands at a community college in Oregon. The director knew some guy who was the bassist for the ongoing Lionel Hampton Big Band that still carried his name. As a result I got a partial scholarship for a jazz clinic he ran in Sitka, Alaska...when I saw Artie's 1940s Basie lineup I thought of this gig...
I pawned my R13 a few months ago but just bought an S1 for $500 and brought it up near San Luis Obispo (ccflutes) to get overhauled ($400). While in SLO I also bought a Eastman student alto (251 model) and took it home for $100 rent-to-own. Are my woodwind days over? I don't know...but if it weren't for playing clarinet in boot camp...i wouldn't have lived this long...or had as much fun in music as I did, in spite of my "issues..."
Thanks again for posting...
Barney, an old reed guy
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Author: oldreedguy
Date: 2019-10-23 07:01
Hans, thank you so much for the vintage recording...FDR and Artie...Pearl Naval Base during the War...
Barney
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