 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Dan Shusta
Date: 2020-06-30 22:58
On this version of Basin Street Blues, Pete plays what I call "an accelerated skyrocket of notes" 3 times between 8:40 and 9:15 that I've never heard him or anyone else play before. Is there a proper musical term or name for what he's doing or is it just basic improve?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3UKnkPwvbM
Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy it.
Post Edited (2020-07-01 01:06)
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Author: crvsp
Date: 2020-07-01 02:36
Not exactly sure what part, but what I’m hearing is some ghost tonguing on the same note as well as some 8th note lines. Hope that helps
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2020-07-01 04:54
Hi Dan,
To me it sounds like he is running up a D Major scale beginning on B, playing the scale up to G, then smearing/gliss/bending up to an E to end it. I don't have "slow-down" software to double-check, but when I play along with it, the above comes pretty close to matching what he's doing there.
Thanks for sharing the clip! I have an autographed version of that CD, but I've never opened it, because he autographed the mylar wrapper instead of the CD. ;^)>>>
Fuzzy
[EDIT: at around the 9:30 mark, I think he telegraphs what he did in the earlier passages. I think he comes off the B to an Eb, E, G, B then jumps/slides to the E (referring to the earlier part at 8:45 or so). ]
Post Edited (2020-07-01 05:05)
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Author: Djudy
Date: 2020-07-01 13:42
I enjoyed listening to this ! Can someone tell ma about his rig ? Wikipedia talks about the crystal mp but not the clarinet. There was a Pete Foutain model around but I've never seen one. Thanks!
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-07-01 17:01
Early in his career in New Orleans, Pete Fountain played a stencil clarinet called an O'Brien. It was a large bore instrument similar to the Selmer Center Tone. When he joined the Welk Orchestra on TV, he first switched to the Leblanc LL and then to the large bore (15.0 mm) Leblanc Dynamic H clarinet that the company further customized for him. They added an articulated G# mechanism and gold plated keys, among other modifications. That clarinet eventually became the Pete Fountain model and later something much like it was called the Big Easy clarinet. From the time Fountain left Welk, I believe the only clarinets he played in public for the remainder of his long career were the big bore Fountain model (based on the earlier Dynamique and Dynamic H) and maybe occasionally the Leblanc LL. He remained loyal to the Leblanc line as far as I know. In New Orleans, Tim Laughlin still has one of Fountain's big bore clarinets.
Post Edited (2020-07-01 23:08)
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Author: Fuzzy
Date: 2020-07-01 19:19
One very small correction to, seabreeze's post...
Tim Laughlin (pronounced Lock-lin) is the owner of Pete's old horn, "Betsy" on which many of Pete's albums were recorded.
;^)>>>
Fuzzy
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-07-01 23:17
Thanks, Fuzzy, for the correction on the spelling of Tim's last name; and I didn't know the clarinet had been christened. (Did Fountain's other clarinets have first names too?)
Post Edited (2020-07-02 01:02)
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Author: AndyW
Date: 2020-07-03 18:34
a wee reminder to nobody in particular that youtube has 1/2 and 1/4 speed playback options behind the gearwheel button. I hear only 2 or 3 notes between the low B and the high E, hard to say whether Pete is thinking G major pentatonic/ hexatonic, or E major pentatonic / arpeggio. He often used a similar super-fast flurry of notes lower down the instrument, too, I could find an example, i’m sure.
as I understand it, many of Pete’s famous recordings were made before the Dynamic H was launched in around 1965. -A-
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-07-03 21:07
Pete Fountain played and promoted the Leblanc LL clarinet before he had the modified Dynamic = Pete Fountain model. Around 1959 I attended a little presentation at Werlein's Music Store at 605 Canal Street (now a hotel) in which he represented the Leblanc company and their LL. I was in high school then and recall asking him to play La Vie en Rose, which I had heard him play on the Welk show. He played that on the LL upstairs in the music room, and downstairs at the counter, they were selling LL clarinets and books of Pete Fountain transcriptions. That's when I asked my parents to help me buy a LL, my first "good" clarinet. In his early appearances with Welk, when he still wore dark frame glasses, Fountain played the old O'Brien; then Welk reworked his TV image getting him contact lenses, a toupee, and a Leblanc LL clarinet. (Buddy De Franco and Jimmy Hamilton had already been playing the LL). Fountain's early recordings with the Basin Street Six, Tony Almerico, and Al Hirt (including that great version of Tin Roof Blues) were on the O'Brien. Some of the work he did in Los Angeles for Coral Records was probably on the Leblanc LL but I think Vito got Charles Houvenaghel Dynamic models for him to try pretty early on while they were looking to tailor an instrument for him. (Houvenaghel was working on his Dynamique models back in the 1950s--there were several iterations, and the H was one of the latest). After returning home to New Orleans and ditching the toupee, Fountain pretty much played only the gold key, articulated G# Pete Fountain (modified Dynamic H) "1611" model instruments that Leblanc made for him.
Post Edited (2020-07-04 05:58)
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