Jay Sollenberger & Paul McKee Big Band Stories

Paul McKee and Jay Sollenberger are familiar faces on the Kansas City music scene, and a charter members of the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra. They are also alumnus of the Woody Herman Big Band. Charlton Price and Roger Atkinson caught up with Paul and Jay over the holidays at the Fairmont to hear the stories.

JAM: Other than Woody, was Frank Tiberi the one common band member from two different Herman bands that Paul and you were in?

Jay: Frank and Bill Byrne, the road manager. I was with Woody from November, 1977 to 1978, eight months in 1978.

Paul: I started in January, 1984, and stayed in the first stretch until May of 1987. So it was about three and a half years.

Jay: You did about five albums with him, right?

Paul: That was the period of all of the 50 th Anniversary events, in 1986. We did a couple of things for Concord , and a tour doing the Ebony Concerto with Richard Stoltzman where we played in a lot of orchestra halls around the country. There were a lot of bookings. My first three years on the band we averaged about 46 weeks of the year out on the road.

JAM: This was the period when the IRS was taking a lot of the money for back taxes from Woody Herman.

Paul: That was because of the guy who was their manager in the 1960's. Woody would trust these people if they were loyal to him, regardless if they were really competent. And this guy took all the tax money but wasn't sending it in. He gambled it away and died, so he was off the hook. It was really sad, they hounded Woody literally to death.

JAM: Where are you originally from, Jay?

Jay: I grew up in McPherson , Kansas , and graduated from high school there, and went to college at Wichita University and North Texas . Then I went on the road for about eight years. Then I moved here.

JAM: So you were in the early gang at North Texas State ?

Jay: Fall of 1970 I was there.

JAM: Was Bob Bowman there at the time?

Jay: I think he came a little bit later.

JAM: Bob mentions Marc Johnson and Pat Coil, both of whom were with Herman, as being there when he was there.

Jay: Yes, they were both in the band there when I first started. So was Jeff Hamilton, a wonderful drummer. Frank Tiberi and Gary Anderson, the marvelous writer, he did the chart for “Pavane” (on the Herman album Road Father ) and many others. I replaced Allen Vizzutti when I first came on, and it was explained that Al and I would split the lead chair in the first date. The Road Father album was done Direct to Disk. In the late 1970's that was the current state of the art technology, but what you had to do was record an entire side non-stop. There were only ten seconds between each take before you would start the next take. You had to do four songs bang bang bang bang. The first composition Vizzutti did himself called “Fire Dance”, it was amazing what he could write and play. During the fourth tune Marc Johnson had a fast switch from electric to upright bass, and he got tangled in the cords and he didn't make the switch! There was silence in the studio, because we knew we had to do the whole side over, do all four tunes again. What amazed us about Vizzutti was that each time we did it again, we did four takes, and each time he was better than the previous one. That just blew me away with his talent.

JAM: Are those your high notes on Road Father ?

Jay: Some are mine, some are Al's. Funny thing, Herb Wong did the liner notes, there is one tune where he actually credited me for playing the lead when it was actually Al. I'd say ‘I would LOVE to take those high notes.'

JAM: You were with Bill Chase?

"The guys on the stand hear you every single night. So that's who you really play for, Woody and the guys on the bandstand..." - Paul McKee

Jay: I started in 1973, Bill had just moved his band from Las Vegas to Chicago . There were some major personnel changes from the old band, Jerry Van Blair was still there, new additions included Jim Oatts from Des Moines , who Paul knows very well, he just played with him in the Des Moines Big Band last week. He's Dick Oatts' brother.

JAM: Bill Chase had been with Herman also.

Jay: He spent seven years with Woody back in the 1960's, maybe 1962 through 1967 or 1969. He was the road manager for part of that time. A funny story came from this time. He called Bill Byrne in New York and said “I need a fourth or fifth trumpet player, can you come and play”? And Bill Byrne's response over the phone was, “Well, I can't play any lead, I can't play any jazz, and the highest note I can play is a high E flat”. And Bill Chase's response is, “Hey, man, we can't all be stars!” That's a very typical Bill Chase response. And Bill Byrne came on board and stayed like 26 years and became one of the best road managers in the business.

Paul: Bill actually bailed the band out several times towards the end. Out of his own pocket, he made the payroll. Bill was the go between guy who dealt with the guys in the band and with Woody. He had a hard job. His business office was his trumpet case, he barely had room for the trumpet, there were receipts and money.

JAM: How did you get into the Kenton band, Jay?

Jay: While I was with Chase I actually met the guys who were in the Kenton band, they were doing a week at Mr. Kelly's club in Chicago , and Chase was playing Ruggles club. In addition to the club gig, they were doing a recording at Universal Studios in Chicago , so we'd go over to the studio after hours and listen to their playbacks, and they'd come to the club and see us play. So I got to meet those guys and that's where I met John Harner. Shortly after that Chase had a tragic plane crash that claimed his life and several band members, including several from the Des Moines area. Then I came home, my brother was in college at KU, I came home just to rethink everything. While I was home, Bob Foster, who was the director of bands at KU, allowed me the privilege of playing is his jazz band as a kind of a stepping stone to whatever I was going to do next. I went over to Topeka to Washburn University to see the Kenton band play, they told me they were looking for a second player. They said they'd call me, and I thought, ‘yeah, right.' And they did! So three months later I had the second trumpet player in the Kenton band. After two years Harner left and I moved up to lead and played lead for another year. Then Kenton took his fall, his tragic fall in Reading , Pennsylvania , and had to have brain surgery. The band continued for one year after that. It was a very good band. I guess Stan died in 1979, about a year after that last band.

JAM: Paul, you attended one of those Kenton clinics at Drury College , right?

Paul: I went to two of them. That was probably my biggest inspiration at that point in my life, for getting interested in the big band stuff, and realizing what I had to do and work on as a player and a writer. The first year I went I got into one of the lower bands, learning beginning theory. But I was really inspired by the guys in the band. The next year when I went back I had practiced and worked on all the stuff over the year, and I got in a much higher band. I got into Hank Levy's arranging class. I wrote a short little chart that week that the band read on Friday, which is a huge deal. I have a cassette of that somewhere. I really had the bug at that point. I remember sneaking over to the band's dorm after hours and hanging out with some of the guys in the trombone section. They said, ‘Hey Paul, you ought to check out this trombone player, his names Carl Fontana'. That was my first introduction to Carl. And that was the end of that! I had a little Scotch, the security guy came by, they hid me in the closet for a minute. I felt like I was in the inner circle! This was after my junior and senior years of high school, 1974 and 1975.

Jay: You mentioned Carl Fontana, didn't he play on your latest CD Gallery ?

Paul: Jay is my PR agent! The whole thing with Carl is that I discovered Carl through those guys and also through Supersax recording Salt Peanuts that he played on, with Conte Candoli. When I heard Carl I figured I could quit now or really get to work, because that's the way it should be done. And then through being in Woody's band, I got a chance to meet and establish a relationship with Carl. The 50 th Anniversary concert at the Hollywood Bowl, there were two bands on stage, the current band and an all-alumni band with the Candoli brothers and Jake Hanna and Nat Pierce and everyone that was still around at that point. After leaving the band I maintained a relationship with Carl and he was in the Chicago area and I got him to play on my CD on a couple of tunes.

JAM: Is there anything that has replaced those big band opportunities that you guys had?

Paul: That's one thing I was going to mention, that I think it's really sad that, I got in at the end of it, I didn't think I'd get to play in any big bands, they were starting to die out like the dinosaurs at that point. Woody's was one of the last touring concert bands. There was still a Miller band and a Dorsey band, nostalgia bands, but there weren't other bands that were touring contemporary bands. We'd play “Four Brothers” and “Woodchopper's Ball” every night, but Woody didn't want you to play the old style solo, he wanted you to play it like YOU play it. You were playing the greatest hits of the old tunes but still moving forward musically. And I think it's a shame that with all this great jazz education programs that crank out all these great players, there's no work. With a big band you had four trombone gigs, and four or five trumpet gigs, those opportunities don't exist anymore. And the other thing is just the things you learn from being on the road, which is an education that everyone needs to go through, dealing with the rigors of travel, and being on a bus, and doing a concert every night, and being consistent as a player. One night we might be playing at the Blue Note in New York City , and the next night we'd be in a VFW hall in the middle of nowhere. But the band played exactly the same. There was a standard, and it wasn't like we can phone it in because it was a lesser gig. The audience hears you once and then you're gone. The guys on the stand hear you every single night. So that's who you really play for, Woody and the guys on the bandstand, because in any band the weakest link has a lot of influence on the group and the morale of the group. And when that link is in a critical spot like the lead trumpet or the drums or a featured soloist, and that person isn't making it, then all of a sudden it becomes work, a job. So that's why it was pretty brutal if someone wasn't making it, they wouldn't be out there very long. We had a couple of drummers last like one set, and the next day they were gone. It's brutal, but if he's not making it, it brings the whole band down.

JAM: Is there any reason for the Kenton-Herman link other than that if you were playing at a certain level these were about the only options you had?

Jay: Well, it was a full-time road band, and most of the young musicians were hungry to get that experience. Any time you were lucky enough to get the call or even be considered for the call was an honor.

JAM: You had to be at a certain level…

Jay: And even if you were at a great level, Woody may not like the style that you played. There was a time when Dennis Dotson was playing the jazz trumpet chair in Woody's band, and he left, we went through five different guys. I was happy with all five of them! I was thinking, how good do you have to be to replace Dennis Dotson? It was a simple as Woody not liking their particular style. He wanted you to play more consonant notes. The same thing with writers, young writers would struggle to please Woody. Dave Lalama wrote some marvelous things, very interesting modern charts, I remember a really good calypso that we tried at a rehearsal, Woody just didn't like it. He wrote three or four things for the band that Woody didn't like. So finally Dave just gave up and figured Woody likes Duke Ellington, so I'll write a Duke Ellington song. He did an arrangement on “Things Ain't What They Used To Be”, and Woody recorded it.

"...We went through five different guys. I was happy with all five of them! I was thinking, how good you have to be to replace Dennis Dotson?" - Jay Sollenberger

Paul: I'll tell you, when I joined the band I was pretty naïve about the history of the band and a lot of the players that were associated with the band. I got a whole education from being in that band and meeting players from that era. In fact, in my first year with the band we went to Europe that winter. They frequently sent some guest soloists with the band. That year it was Zoot Sims, Bill Perkins, Billy Mitchell, and Sal Nistico. Just as extra soloists. Those guys are all gone now. Getting to hang out with Zoot Sims, he has since become one of my favorite tenor players. One of the criticism of the younger players is that they are all technically proficient, but they don't have an identifiable sound, like Zoot or Ben Webster, or Getz, or Cannonball, or Desmond, they all had an immediately identifiable sound. The personal aspect is what is lacking today. That's one thing that I learned and try to pass on to my students, that it's not just about chops, it's about creating your own identity on your instrument. Anyway, we backed up guys like Cab Calloway and Joe Williams, Nancy Wilson, Billy Eckstine, Al Cohn, Pepper Adams, Clark Terry. All these people would come in and sit in with the band, or we backed them up for a special event. It was a Who's Who situation for us. Tony Bennett is another one, we did a lot of stuff with him. I wish everyone could have that experience.

JAM: Did you have any experiences prior to Woody, Paul?

Paul: I was on the road with a blues band, Albert King, about three months, the summer before I started graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin . Which led to me getting to be in Woody's band. They say luck is when opportunity meets preparation. I was ready and waiting for a chance to go out. By being in Austin , I knew a lot of the guys from North Texas State , and there was guy who was out subbing in the second trombone spot, he gave Fedchock my name. He called me and asked me to send in a tape. I was home for Christmas break ,and didn't have anything with me, so I made a cassette of me playing with some Aebersold recordings, play along. I got the call, and dropped everything to do the gig. You talk about first night situations… I flew to Atlanta , checked into the hotel, got dressed and went to the gig! There was no rehearsal. John talked me through a couple of the things in the book, the critical little things that you needed to be aware of. That first night was directly into the frying pan, it was terrifying and exhilarating. And of course as time goes by Woody doesn't even acknowledge your presence the first couple of weeks. If you make it through the first couple of gauntlets with the other guys in the band, he'll start to warm up to you.

JAM: Jay, how about your first night?

Jay: It was scary. On Woody's band, I remember it was in Dallas . In the audience was Kim Park and Clay Jenkins. I said ‘Hi, good to see you', and had that terrified look on my face, because it was my first night. I was in a kind of daze. Evidently things went well, because I don't remember making that many mistakes and fortunately we had good acoustics that night, I always play better when the acoustics are good, you don't have to work as hard. Then, a few weeks later Bruce Johnstone, who was playing bari sax on the band mentioned to me, ‘Well, you know this is a good sign, Woody raised his eyebrows when you played that solo'. If you go out in front of the band and play a simple A flat blues solo and Woody raises his eyebrows and doesn't say anything, that's a good sign! Later on in the studio, Gary Anderson were talking about this phrasing thing, and I said ‘Let's blow through that phrase', and Gary said ‘Don't you need a breath there'? I said I'd breathe here, and the whole band followed me. If the whole band followed me, that was a good sign, too, because if they didn't like the way I played, they probably wouldn't follow it.

Paul: One really vivid memory that I have, after being pretty much ignored when I first joined the band, there was one night the band was in San Francisco. Woody called “Perdido”, and he looked up like he was seeing me for the first time. I felt like I had been hit by a cattle prod. They called that The Ray, the same thing they referred to with Benny Goodman. Every leader had that look – Buddy certainly had it. He looked at me and said, ‘You! Come on down here!' And he finished the tune, the melody, and I played like six or seven choruses, which is unheard of in a big band, stretching out that much. Iyt seemed like an eternity at the time, because the whole time I was playing Woody was right by my right ear. Anyone in the audience would think that Woody was really encouraging me. But what he was actually doing was unleashing this fusillade of obscenities: ‘F***ker, you ain't playing sh**! You want to play in my band…' It was this intimidation thing. I realized that this was my moment to survive. And afterwards, he came up to me after the gig, shook my hand and welcomed me to the band.

JAM: How long had you been with the band?

Paul: It was like six months. I had been playing every night, I didn't even know if he knew I was here! Then he started remembering my name, and everything was cool.

JAM: Did he not hang out with the band much when you traveled?

Paul: Most of the time he flew whenever it was possible. Occasionally he'd ride the bus. Pretty much in every town, at least in every major city, he'd know somebody who would come and pick him up, and he'd disappear until the gig. He'd go out to dinner with people, people his own age, people he had more in common with. Frequently you'd be on an overnight stop in the middle of nowhere, in a little roadside motel, and Woody would be staying with the band, and he'd frequently end up in the bar, drinking his vodka on the rocks. If you could get him to hang out and away from his fans and get him to start telling stories, he'd start buying you drinks, and you'd try to keep up with him. Forget about it! Several nights, various people in the band would assist him back to his room, because he would get a little toasted. But you'd get some great stories about, say, Bill Harris and other historical figures in the band.

JAM: Any other good Woody stories?

Paul: There were some great Woody lines over the nights… Sometimes we'd be playing on a stage where we were separated from the audience, but sometimes we'd do a dance where the audience had direct access to Woody. Folks would come up and request tunes by other bands, like a Glenn Miller tune or something. Of course, no bandleader wants to play other bands tunes. One of his best responses to a Glenn Miller request was, ‘When they find his plane I'll play his music.' Another time he said, ‘How much did you pay to get in here?' The guy said twenty bucks, Woody pulled a twenty from his pocket, gives it to the guy and says ‘Get the hell out of here!' One night we were doing “I've Got News For You”, we had played a chorus and he started scatting, and he scatted every guy in the band's name. It was one of those moments when he was feeling good and he was remembering everyone. Some nights he just couldn't remember names to save himself. He was like asserting himself, like the old bull roaring a little bit. He'd have some moments like that.

JAM: Paul, what do you tell your students, what do you recommend to them when they leave school? How do they get their experiences to start off their career?

Paul: I think what jazz education should be but frequently is not, is that they are preparing to go to New York or Chicago and have to be able to function in a world where there isn't a lot of work. If someone has a real narrow focus musically as a jazz musician, they're not going to be able to make a living at it. Very few people make a living playing jazz, it's like the gigs that are the most fun pay the least. The point that I try to get my students to understand is that you have to have a variety of skills. You need to be able to read music so you can function in that circumstance, and play different styles of music. Being able to write music. You almost have to be like a renaissance man, and have a lot of different skills to survive. When I first went to Chicago , I took every thing that came my way. I called other players in town, I knew some people. I was playing the circus, I was transcribing lead sheets for singers off of cassette tapes they'd give me, I was doing a lot of different things. Gradually you find your niche. I started teaching at DePaul and started playing with a couple of specific bands, and started becoming more focused on the work I was doing. A lot of guys in New York do Broadway shows. A saxophone player has to be able to play a half dozen different instruments to try to make a living. That's the majority of what pays their rent. No one makes a living playing with Maria Schneider or the Vanguard band. You need to find a balance between what satisfies your artistic self and what satisfies the reality of paying the bills. You can get pretty far away from your art to try to find things to make money. And it's harder now that it has ever been.

JAM: I assume you learned some important lessons from being in the band?

Paul: One thing I learned from Woody, it became really important at Woody's concerts, in his calling of tunes, that a big band concert has to be a combination of entertainment and education. You have to give people the tunes that they are familiar with, and slip in some new stuff. Woody would throw in some Fedchock arrangements, or some other new things, but first he'd develop a trust with the audience by playing the greatest hits. This also gets the band involved. You have to keep the audience interested, and you have to keep the musicians interested.

JAM: Can the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra ride that? How optimistic are you about the KCJO?

Paul: I think it's generating a following. That band is currently a backup band for whatever the event is, and I'd like the band to concentrate on its membership a little bit, maybe try to cultivate some original music from some of the writers in the band. We've done some nice things, that gig with Clark Terry and Harold Jones, that was great, a lot of fun.

Jay: I think that's right around the corner, the band will feature more original writing. The next concert will be the band doing blues, and I'm sure we'll do some contemporary arrangements of the blues. I think that's in Jim's plan.

JAM: Long range, could they become the repertory jazz orchestra at the new performing arts center?

Paul: My one complaint about jazz repertory bands, I experienced this playing with Bill Russo's group in Chicago, I'll be happy to sit and recreate an Ellington tune, but don't ask me to play Lawrence Brown's transcribed solo. I'll study the style and play a solo in Lawrence Brown's style, but there's no way I can sell someone else's solo. I've had students come in after they transcribed one of my solos, and I try to read it, and I can't, it's hard. When it happens spontaneously, it's much more sincere and honest, but when you read someone else's words it is hard to make it sound authentic.

JAM: Woody would never want you to play Bill Harris's solo, he wanted to hear you.

Paul: We were playing a concert in England once, and at that time I was playing the solo on “Bijou”. Of course, you have pretty historic precedent on that tune, Bill Harris' solo. We did a little clinic where people would ask us questions, and there were people that were really upset that I didn't play the famous Bill Harris solo when I played that tune. It's hard to sway someone that had that kind of bias, but you know, Bill Harris didn't even play that solo every night, he changed it up every night. And, there's no way I could play it as well as Bill Harris did. I can only play the way I play. If people want to hear the record, then they should just listen to the record. Out of respect to the musicians, you have to figure that we have to evolve. Like I said before, it's the band that has to hear the band every night. The guys you respect are the guys who really try to do something different every night on their solo, to try to keep the music fresh. There are guys who play the exact same solo every night, the audience wouldn't know, they hear it once and they're gone, and the guys who played the same solo every night weren't respected by the other musicians, because it's like you are being lazy. This is your one chance to play, it's so seldom on a big band to get solos because there are so many players, why would you want to play the same thing every night? And these are the highest level of musicians that you'd hope to play with. And Woody, his health was getting pretty bad, and he wasn't playing very well, the spark that we had when he was up there, because he was getting sick and wasn't many of the gigs, it was really a completely different feeling up on stage when he wasn't there. Even thoiugh he wasn't contributing musically as much at that point, but he still had this energy. You'd see him back stage, he'd look like a tired old man sitting in a chair. But when he came on stage he'd come alive. It was really amazing. Just after my three and a half years, when I think of the musicians who had been on the road with Basie and Ellington their whole lives, it's just amazing.

JAM: Jay, how did you wind up in Kansas City ?

Jay: In 1979, I was dating my wife for five years while I was on the road with Chase and Stan Kenton and Woody Herman, and when I left the road rather abruptly, because I was burned out with the road, I was never burned out with the music, I was just tired of the travel. It was a wonderful experience and I probably cut my career short by stopping. I came to Lawrence and my wife was finishing her Masters in choral conducting, she teaches at Shawnee Mission North High, vocal music, and she's also associated with the Kansas City Chorale. Most of the jobs that I do are not jazz. I do jazz for fun, and occasionally I'll do a festival, there are several in the area that are very good. I do a lot of Broadway theatre, I do some things at the Starlight Theatre, I do the Musical Theatre League. I've done some projects with Doug Talley, not often, we talk about doing some small and medium size projects. I'll work with the symphony once or twice a year, usually as an extra for a pops concert. I do enjoy the Broadway theatre. I'm a charter member of the Boulevard Big Band. In 1995 and 1996 we had a group called the Trilogy Big Band, we did two years at the Drum Room, Todd Wilkinson was one of the proprietors of that establishment, and did a nice job with it. Two years in a good room with good acoustics in a good band once a week, but it only lasted two years, and the Trilogy Big Band has only done an occasional concert out of town since then, it hasn't found a regular venue.

JAM: It's when the big bands play that you understand how many talented players there are in town. You see musicians that you never see, guys that don't do the club gigs.

Jay: This town is very well balanced in the arts, I think it has great opportunities for community orchestras and there's a lot of brass quintets, there's a lot of small group jazz, there's quite a few big band rehearsal bands, and the symphony. There's a lot of opportunity for music. There's not a lot of money there. The KCJO is off to a good start, the crowds have been good, and hopefully it will continue to grow. I'm excited about it, and optimistic about it. I love Kansas City .

JAM: I assume you feel the same way, Paul?

Paul: I've been here for five years, I really haven't gotten my niche yet in town, it's been pretty inconsistent for me work-wise. I really primarily depend on out of town things, like from January until Spring I do a lot of festivals, a lot of guest artist things, I try to cultivate those things. I might adjudicate or do clinics and so I'm out of town a lot. In Spring and Summer I do a lot of jazz camps in various locations. It's been a little slow. There are a lot of good musicians and there are some places to play, but you go to a new place and everyone has their spots carved out already, and you have to find a little space for yourself.

JAM: There are few opportunities for horn players, it seems.

Paul: And especially trombonists. My goal as a trombonist is to be thought of as a good musician, and not just a good trombonist. When there is a spot where people want an improvising horn, people say they want a trumpet or a saxophone most of the time. It's a little bit of a prejudice that you have to break through as a trombonist. I think that's why so many trombonists are writers, you can see it in Brookmeyer, Fedchock, Slide Hampton, Billy Byers, I think it's just another way to survive. It's hard being a trombonist, it's not the most in demand instrument.

Jay: It's hard to break into a new city , too. You wonder how many years it takes to break in. It felt like it took me two years to break into Kansas City . And even after two years I was just beginning to get work. Work will be busy for awhile, then it slows down for awhile. Sometimes the busy periods only last three weeks, sometimes it'll last for three months. The time to practice is when you're on a slow period, and time to write, the time to create new work. If you can't think of what to do, call up a church and organize a jazz event at that church and put on a concert or something. Or work on a recording project, the time to record is when work is slow. You create opportunities for other players, too.

Paul: That's what I've been doing. I didn't have a single gig in December or January, so I've spent the time learning Sibelius, which is a musical notation program, and I've got some things coming up in the Spring, I'm doing a concert in Washington, D.C. with the Army Blues band, which is a real good band right now. I decided that I'm not going to use any of my old charts, I'm going to write new charts, and in order to do that I need the help of the computer program to get all the parts copied. So I've tackled that, that's what I've done with my free time. I first came here because my wife got a job here. She got the trombone position at UMKC. I'm used to being the freelancer in the family, so I'm used to trying to put together what I can in the local scene.

Jay: Paul's wife Jody Davis is a marvelous trombone player, I played with her in the Nutcracker orchestra, and she plays in the Missouri Brass Quintet, and has played in the Santa Fe Opera. It's different when she puts on a tux and you put on a tux. When she puts on a tux it's a good job, and we heard what your tux jobs are: Tux, Bucks, and Sucks!

Paul: In the 1970's when I was in high school all the big bands came through Iowa . I saw every single big band. I saw Kenton, Woody, Maynard, Buddy Rich, Basie, Ellington, Don Ellis, I saw all of these bands. I totally got the bug. I saw Chase in Jefferson , you were there, Jay. Anyway, that's what got me going, seeing these groups live, you really couldn't get that on record, you have to hear them live. That's a problem, the kids don't get to hear that music on that level. There are a lot of good local bands, but unless you hear one of these bands, with the part-your-hair lead trumpet player… I've got permanent tinnitus from sitting all my life with the lead trumpet right here (behind him), and the drummer here (to his right).

RETURN TO FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006 MAIN INDEX


© Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors 1996-2006. All rights reserved.