Just about forty years ago, in the hot southern California summer of 1970, I had my one and only experience with summer camp. I was nineteen and the world was seemingly falling apart. Personally, I had spent a year at UC Santa Cruz, wondering if I really had what it takes to major in music. My family was adrift somewhere in Ohio, having left me high and dry when I was a senior in high school. My beautiful college campus had turned upside down after May 4, 1970. Classes were mostly suspended. Some were just cancelled. I had been doing my best as an emancipated minor to keep my life on the other side of the line with respect to the draft, and so, seeing so many of my high school buddies sucked into the jungles of Vietnam, I went into the summer wondering what was next for me.
One thing was certain, though. I had to work. And work meant getting out of Santa Cruz and heading south for Santa Ana. But on my way out of Santa Cruz I pulled a brochure off the bulletin board at the Music Board of Studies for the Stan Kenton Camp at the University of Redlands.
I worked for six weeks leading trucks all night at the remains of the Santa Ana Army Air Corps base in Costa Mesa. That was enough to sustain me through the summer and pay for camp, which I’d registered for at the beginning of my short career loading trucks.
When the camp was about to start, I loaded everything into my 1964 Plymouth Valiant and headed into the smog belt for Redlands. I remember auditioning for Mike Vacarro, who placed me in Mike Vax’s band, which had the advantage of a real live arranger (whose name I cannot remember, but who rehearsed the band). My roommate was a genial baritone player who became a band director in Fresno. Improv class was taught by Dan Haerle, who was at Monterey Peninsula College at the time and soon moved to North Texas. One of the funnier highlights for me was being singled out (with the Porcaro brothers and a couple others) as a second generation jazz musician at the camp. We were interviewed and photographed and at some point an article appeared in some publication or other.
The camp revolved around Stan and the band, of course. We all wanted to get on that bus and to work for him, doing one-nighters without complaint. (If we only knew how hard you had to work for the pittance that it paid!) It was a pretty good version of the band, and students of the genre will note that the Live at Redlands album was recorded there, Wally Heider officiating. (I lent some labor to Wally, dragging cables.) The album was taped on an 8-track Ampex, the glory of the age. Nobody mixed a live big band like Wally, and that album was one of the longest-standing inclusions in my iTunes collection.
I’m sure they don’t remember it, but a couple of the musicians and teachers I dealt with at the camp were pretty encouraging to me about my chances of pursuing a career as a musician, so I was pretty excited when camp broke and I pointed the Valiant toward Santa Cruz.
In the meantime, Cabrillo College, the local junior college in Santa Cruz, was in the process of setting up a Jazz Ensemble. Third year at UCSC I’d start playing second alto at Cabrillo, in the best big band I’ve played in. My senior year I switched over to baritone saxophone in the band. At the end of that year, we opened a show for Stan Kenton’s band at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. Six months later, I was on the Kenton band, playing baritone.
I’m getting ready to go to another camp, 40 years almost to the day after the Redlands Kenton Camp.
The California Brazil Camp was co-founded more than 10 years ago by Dennis Broughton, who was the conga drummer/percussionist in the Cabrillo Jazz Ensemble, and one of the founding members of Sofrito, the legends of salsa music in Santa Cruz. I played in the first and third iterations of Sofrito, and wrote most of the horn charts.
Dennis’s idea was to set up a Brazilian immersion camp in the coastal foothills of northern California for dancers and musicians. And the idea seems to be working. The camp has spread to Brazil itself, in February, 2010, where one of the teachers was no less than Hermeto Pascoal.
The California Camp is no slouch either. Teaching staff includes Guinga, the Carioca dentist-composer, Marcos Silva, Cliff Korman, Michael Spiro (another founding member of Sofrito), Chico Pinheiro, and lots more.
Learning Brazilian music is a humbling thing for me. And so far, every person who has crossed my path has been generous and encouraging, in fact a lot like the the big band guys from 40+ years ago. But the essential element is to mantain beginner’s mind going into the Brazil Camp experience. These guys are the real deal, and to come on like I actually know something would somehow be inappropriate. I can read whatever is thrown at me, and that’s an advantage. I plan on bringing a assortment of horns to make myself useful.
I’ve got a sleeping bag and a tent and I’m borrowing Adam Ray’s “extra” SUV to get from Oakland to Cazadero. Oh, that’s another thing: Unlike Redlands 40 years ago, where we occupied concrete-block low-slung dorm rooms, California Brazil Camp is held in a towering redwood forest, much like UCSC. While campers can sleep 4 to a tent, my sleep habits may lead me to use my own compact tent. I’ll be the one in the tent playing Scrabble on his iPhone, something I never imagined when I went to Redlands to absorb Kenton’s music.
So come on, fill me up, Brazilian music! I’ll be all ears.
