On tour with Redlands High School jazz band, Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco, 1979

Onstage at Crafton Hills College, Yucaipa, CA

My two-year-old grandson, Austin. The future of jazz saxophone is assured!

Background

Shortly after moving to Redlands in 1963, I was introduced to music by my mother, an accomplished classical pianist and teacher. I don’t think I was ever much good on the piano, and, apparently even worse, was always putting the composers in the wrong Eras on tests she gave out. I do remember playing Schumann’s “The Merry Farmer” at a concert when I was very young, but, in order for it to be perfect, took it at about Quarter Note = 5. Anyway, my mother had the most amazing perfect pitch I’ve ever encountered. I used to try to play “stump the Mom” by playing random clusters of notes on the piano while she was in the next room cooking or something. She would immediately be able to name all of the notes, as well as what octaves I was playing them in--she said she didn’t have to think about it, she just “knew.” And she never missed, unless she was very tired, in which case she’d be a half-step off. Although her first love was absolutely classical music, on one occasion she decided she wanted to explore jazz piano a little bit, and went down to the local library to check out a record. So what does she come back with? Solo Monk! After listening to a side, all she said was, “Is he trying to do that?”

At any rate, I then inexplicably began to play the clarinet, somewhere around the first grade. I studied technique and classical etudes with Marty Walker, who was secretly way into Dolphy (and now has several bass clarinet CDs out), and Dr. Phil Rehfeldt, widely known for “extended clarinet techniques” (I played plenty of those, just not intentionally). Actually, I got to be pretty good, playing first chair clarinet through high school, and even continued to do this to myself for one more very long year at Cal State Long Beach, where I studied with David Atkins (he may remember me as the student he was teaching the moment he chipped the favorite mouthpiece he’d played for many years).

Anyway, when I became more aware of social dynamics, somewhere around junior high school age, I began to understand that playing clarinet wasn’t really all that hip. So, mercifully, an alto was rented, and I started in with lessons from a great guy named Walt Giblin who had me playing a solo a week out of the Charlie Parker Omnibook, and also the Niehaus etudes. Then the jazz band needed a tenor player, so my parents went out and bought me a brand new Selmer Mark VII on June 3, 1978 (I still have the receipt!), which is the only horn I’ve ever played.

As a side note, I’ve usually not, for whatever reason, listened to what most people do from very early on. In junior high, for me it was jazz from the ’20’s and ‘30’s—I had a set of records that included Miff Mole, Bix Beiderbecke, etc. That led to original big band recordings, and some small group recordings—I think one I liked a lot had “And the Angels Sing” with Lionel Hampton and Ziggy Elman. However, about this time, my older brother, a rock drummer, became very concerned and tried to expose me to more “current” music. So he got me my very first “sax album”--“Tom Cat” by Tom Scott and the L.A. Express. I wore the grooves off that record, and listened to nothing but Tom Scott until I bought a Dexter Gordon record (only because he was holding a sax on the cover). When I put it on, Dexter’s sound filled up the entire living room, and I kind of went, “Oh…….so that’s what a saxophone is supposed to sound like!”

I increasingly became more interested in jazz music, and so during high school years I studied “jazz theory” with Alan Yankee, an arranger and bari player formerly with Kenton’s band. But more importantly, I discovered that by playing the family’s reel-to-reel tape deck at half speed, I could write out just about any solo. As a result, I spent innumerable hours hunched over the music stand (being interpersonally inept at the time anyway) writing out Sonny Stitt and Coltrane solos (transcriptions). This was great for developing my ear, but unfortunately, I never could play them! About this time, I became fascinated by Coltrane’s “Impressions” solo at the 1963 Newport Jazz Festival (from the “To the Beat of a Different Drum” LP). I must have listened to it almost every night for a year. I’m very grateful to have been exposed to this level of artistry early on, as I think I’ve therefore been able to appreciate such music from a reasonably informed viewpoint for some time. Besides, it broadened my acceptance of music in general—anytime anyone put on a record and said, “Wow, isn’t that way out there?” I’d say, “Well,……..no!”

Incidentally, my best friend throughout school was trumpet player Kye Palmer, of course also from Redlands. He was instrumental in really getting me into improvised music. Kye has since gone on to play on movie soundtracks, tour the world for several years with the Grammy award-winning Brian Setzer Orchestra, and has as of this writing just joined to Tonight Show band! (I’ll bet he really regrets not sticking with the electrical engineering….) Way to go Kye! I also got my first paying gig during senior year; an older local bandleader was out a tenor player for a small group New Year’s Eve job at a mobile home park and was desperate. I could of course read, and also play clarinet, so I was in. I can only imagine what that gig actually sounded like, but the concept of being paid to play was a revelation.

Next, following one frustrating year as a music major at Cal State Long Beach (but where I heard Dave Moody, Sal Lozano, John Patitucci, Brandon Fields, Bill Liston, and many other great players), I retreated back to Redlands, and started playing in Ken Lesight’s “Happy Band” at Crafton Hills College. Lesight, a veteran musician and educator, was very encouraging as I continued to study jazz on my own, and took me to go sit in with area professionals. Lesight also arranged for me to take several lessons with the great jazz alto saxophonist Lanny Morgan, who was most inspirational and supportive. Additional help was given to me at that time by Kenny G, via mail—I sent him a few of his solos I had transcribed, and he took the time to review them, add the chord changes, and offer comments. Say what you want about the direction his playing ultimately took; his correspondence provided for me at that stage additional motivation to continue on with what I was doing. I also started playing and gaining experience in other local big bands, meeting other musicians, and began to work casuals in the Palm Springs area.

Concurrently I was asked to join the Milt Rasmussen band, which played “tunes both old and new for your listening and dancing pleasure,” primarily in mobile home park clubhouses. As someone interested in playing bebop, it’s fair for me to say that this group came up a little short on the hipness scale, but the band worked all the time, and I played many, many standards with, and for, truly nice people. I recall playing one event honoring a survivor of the Bataan Death March; I think he was very sick with cancer at the time and passed away shortly thereafter, but he really enjoyed listening to the band that night. Now that I’m older, I’m able to better appreciate the privilege and honor to have been able to provide something like that.

However, it wasn’t until the early 1990’s that I began to have opportunities to play the kind of music I really wanted to play in public. Composer/arranger Sandy Megas moved to town, started a nine-piece straightahead jazz band called“Hip Pocket”, and asked me to fill the tenor chair—and we’ve been playing ever since (see “Sounds” and “Links” pages). Similarly, I joined a very musically rewarding quartet, “Shades”, that was together for many years and developed a modest following of jazz people interested in what we were trying to do (again, please check out the “Shades” files on the “Sounds” page). I also hung out and played many times with Matt Zebley and Joe Bagg, both from the Inland Empire and great jazz musicians, then and now (please see “Links”).

Also around 1990 I went with someone to go hear the Mike Stern-Bob Berg band at a club called “At My Place” in Santa Monica. Although I had of course already been to several jazz clubs and concerts, I had never heard anything with that kind of intensity in person before, and it affected me greatly. For a long time after that, I only wanted to play like Bob Berg. Actually, this concept of playing with intensity has served me well for the two most recent groups I’ve played in, both being more in the rock/funk/blues genres. “Souled Out” provided a real challenge for me to try to singlehandedly make Steely Dan/AWB/TOP horn parts sound right, and it was a lot of fun to play these tunes with some great guys. Similarly, I’m now in the horn section of the “United Blues Band” playing “power blues” with some real blues veterans and currently gigging throughout Southern California.

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Rather than listing “influences,” here are the names of many of the people I’ve tried to steal from over the years: Bob Berg, John Coltrane, Kenny Garrett, Dexter Gordon, Steve Grossman, Ralph Moore, Woody Shaw, and Sonny Stitt. If you can tell this from listening, great! If you can’t, even better!

Equipment: Selmer Mark VII tenor with an Otto Link 10 mouthpiece and Rico Select Jazz Unfiled 3S reeds.