Brassy Saturday

Hamiet Bluiett had featured Don Pullen the other day and I spent some time with him last night.  Unlike Bluiett, I have a clear recollection of Pullen, having seen him slam the keys around 1986 or so.  Turns out he’d only be around for nine or so more years before dying young of lymphoma at the age of 53.  This song Big Alice recorded on his 1976 album simply titled “Solo Piano Album” is a simple major to minor melody that he apparently did with Mingus as well.  I’ll have to go look that other version up.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Pullen

Magically, I’ve got it on now, and it’s wonderful.  One of Mingus’ last albums from 1973.  Neither George Adams on tenor Dannie Richmond on drums, nor Ronald Hampton on trumpet are musicians I know of and will now be digging further into.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingus_Moves

And let me tell you, we are all about trumpets around this joint.  I just took my little one over to the school as this was fifth grade, try-out-an-instrument day.   My kids have had piano lessons for years but somehow they never really took off.  The younger one plays the guzheng with her mom, which is lovely, if large.  They do not however, yet play flute or violin, the otherwise obligatory young, female, Chinese/American default instruments and I was hoping she might take a shine to the trombone, which the flyer suggested they were sorely in need of players for.  I, for one, took clarinet and tenor sax through middle school band, before talking my way into guitar lessons.  But I never ever figured out how to make brass instruments sing. 

I warned her accordingly on the way over.  “You probably won’t be able to make a sound out of the brass instruments, but that’s OK.  It takes time.”  We got there and strode past the string instruments in search of fat brassy tones.  Welcomed in, a host of “big” kids were showing whoever showed up how to make sounds.  The kid off the right started playing Herbie Hancock’s “Headhunters” on trombone and I pointed out to him that this was really wonderful to hear, twice. 

She saddled up to the big baritone first and, to my complete surprise, she blew out a big, fat, steady tone.  “Excellent baby, keep going!”  I could have paid the twelve year-old student instructor cold-cash money for saying “Wow.  I don’t think I could have done that when I started.”  I don’t know who you are kid, but I love you.  Intrigued she continued a peregrination around the house of brass.  The trombone was a bit oblique without any valves to push, though they did have them in blue and red, which was rather intriguing to her.  The French Horn she was warned required a very small, tight ombiture.  She still got it humming.  (I reminded her that John Entwistle played said instrument in Tommy, though no one else assemebled was familiar with “The Who.”)  And she played the trumpet, beautifully for the first time and nodded knowingly when I pointed out that it was, of course, comparatively portable. 

A rather goth looking lass with a “Suicidal Tendencies” shirt on did not play the oboe, she played the flute.  I considered telling her I’d seen the band thirty-three years ago or so, but reasoned I should stick to priorities and we had a go at the clarinet which struck my little gal as rather complicated.  Next thing I knew she was up banging the xylophone, which, wisely, isn’t offered as a starting instrument for the fifth grade.  She migrated back to brass and settled on the trumpet, which I couldn’t have been happier about.  “You do realize you get to stick the bathroom toilet plunger in here and make a wah sound?”  “Yes, of course.  After you clean it.”  She starts Friday.

Riding home, I couldn’t wait to throw on any one of a hundred trumpet players I had on my phone.  Where to begin?  Pops?  Miles?  I thumbed quickly and noticed an album by Bill Hardman, which I’ve written about last spring.  The song Asunta has both a muted opening and an open solo and, I think for the first time really, she listened closely to a jazz recording.  I asked the teacher about securing a second hand sax somewhere and he surprised me by saying he might be able to lend me one. 

So, with any luck I’ll be Coltrane to her Miles down in the basement this year.  I know her mom’s concerned that her cheeks will start to look like Dizzy Gillespie’s, but I for one am elated.  Excited enough to 自吹自擂[1] with abandon. 

---

[1] zìchuīzìléi： to blow one's own trumpet (idiom)