I am about to add my 200th chart to the library. When I get to #201 I think I’ll back down and concentrate on getting gigs and making a system of order within the folders. When I started hewing this out of the existing NFSO books, I put everything in a database on my Mac called Bento, so that I can make sorts, pull up all the waltzes (I could use another--my guess is the Ray Charles chart of Oh What a Beautiful Morning), so that I don’t have two charts with the same number, or two version of the same chart because I thought I didn’t have one and wrote it twice. Don’t laugh. It’s happened.
The latest additions to the library are some special ones:
Disney Ballad Medley is what I choose to call a chart I got from Jaxon Stock, one of the best trombone players/arrangers alive. He wrote it for a band I played with in California led by an orthodontist who played trumpet. Two tunes, featuring the flugelhorn: When You Wish Upon a Star, Some Day My Prince Will Come. I did a reverse reduction of Jack’s score, adding the “extra” tenor saxophone that we have.
Young and Foolish, a piano feature arranged by Frank Mantooth. I bought a Xerox copy of this chart from Frank in 2001, because Hal Leonard had pulled it from their catalogue. Frank’s no longer with us, sadly, but music like this guarantee he’ll be around for generations to come. John Groves, who plays piano with us usually, has worked up this chart for another band, and he studied with Frank in college. Can’t wait to play it. I’ve never thought of this as a profound piece of music, except for the versions Bill Evans recorded. He seemed to coax a lot out of relatively simple material, especially the version with Tony Bennett. Frank recorded this arrangement with Ashley Alexander’s big band in Los Angeles, with Frank playing the piano solo and several of my old associates in the band. It’s haunted me for years, and now I have a reduction that I am hoping will work for our instrumentation. Kevin Flatt is also doing the lead trumpet part with another big band, so when the scream comes it’ll be a good one.
Into the Mystic and Domino, from the ORB book, very close to Van Morrison’s recordings.
Lowdown, also from ORB, although we never seem to play it.
Peanut Vendor, or El Manisero, and I have a long history. Stan Kenton was the longest-running mambo band ever. He was also my first solid employment after college. But you can’t adapt 5 trumpets, 5 bones, 5 saxes, 5 rhythm into our more modest resources, so I tried to pull it together as best as I could with what we’ve got.
Sister Sadie is a Horace Silver tune, up tempo, and “funky” in the original sense of the word.
Feeling Good . . . well, every boy singer on Princess Cruises wants to be Michael Bublé now, don’t they? Written for an ORB wedding, played once, deserves more.
What Now My Love? Moves up in whole steps, boy singer.
Beyond the Sea & The Summer Wind, boy singer, wrote it for Michel Chartier on QE2.
Good Morning Heartache, speaking of singers on ships, I wrote this for Casey Daniel when we were both on Grand Princess out of Galveston. It’s not the kind of material that goes over on a cruise ship, though.
The Godfather Theme adapted from a chart written by an older tenor player with Roy LaVance’s band, which I played in (when I was a YOUNG tenor player) at the revolving restaurant at the Ventura Holiday Inn in the early eighties. The chart starts with a jolly tarantella and ends with the theme from Dragnet. In the middle it’s a 2-beat that we used to call “Businessman’s Bounce,” a tempo and feel combination that is easy on the feet when dancing.
I’ve been setting up a fan page in Facebook. I thought it was pretty cool when we had as many fans as the band--11. But now we’ve got over eighty. Thanks everybody. If you’re wondering how to look at our fan page, enter Original Recipe Big Band in the search box at the top of any other Facebook page.
Oh, and I’ve decided that we are a Hybrid Big Band, because of our genre-hopping. Hmmm.
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