Well, here we go again . . . Only it's my hope that I'm stitching some of the scattered threads of this 30+ year old project into something that actually represents a business now.

We've had a couple very successful gigs at Bocci's Cellar since I last posted. Stella has proven to be an tremendous asset, unlike a lot of singers I choose not to name. I've been writing like a fiend. The band never seems to need rehearsing, and we've been so well received at Bocci's that we have steady second Fridays of each month until the place closes for party season come December, 2013. Nancy Carr, the ball of fire who took over running the Friday Swing Dance Happy Hours, suggested we might make it a goal to resurrect the spirit of the old Catalyst Happy Hours with Jake Stock and Wally. Thinking this was a pretty good idea, I put together this press release, which I am mailing out to press outlets today:

. . . and here we are, almost three weeks out, with plenty of time to get this ball rolling. The big news, as may be inferred from the poster, is that Art Baron is going to play trombone with us on the 8th of March. While we didn't go to the same school, I was in 8th grade across town from Art in Fairfield, Connecticut when we played together in the first big band either of us was in, the Fairfield Police Athletic League Dance Band. (Shout out to my Irish twin sister Noreen, who also played in it!) My family returned to California when the next year, but Arthur and I stayed in touch, and when my dad got another job in Connecticut and we returned to Fairfield, we were both seasoned pros of many dances and jam sessions, me a sophomore in high school, Art a junior. We got to fill in whenever my dad's various bands needed personnel (and when do big bands not need personnel?) and remember well the great times with my dad and his friends that Art and I had.

When my dad suddenly died, the family packed up and headed back to California. Art and I never lost touch, though. I was a high school senior when he entered Berklee (my dad's alma mater) in 1968. He studied with Phil Wilson, who took a shine to him, and befriended a trombonist-arranger from Monterey called Jackson Stock, who would later be the guy sitting next to me at the Catalyst that taught me the forms of Dixieland tunes. Art hung up his spurs at Berklee for a road gig with Buddy Rich, followed by and extended association with Stevie Wonder.

I remember there were only two soloists listed on Stevie's album Music of my Mind, which I bought when I was a freshman at UCSC. One was guitarist Buzz Feiten, whose brother, photographer-trombonist John Feiten, shared a mailbox with me at College Five, UCSC because of the alphabetical proximity of our surnames. The other soloist was Art Baron on trombone. Coincidence?

During his Stevie tenure, Art came out to Santa Cruz a couple times for a hang with me, Jack Stock, Jim Baum, and may others. Here's a shot of us playing music Jack and I put together behind the pre-earthquake Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Then, as I was graduating from UCSC, word came that Art, aged 23, had been hired by Duke Ellington. THAT Duke Ellington. He'd been hired to play the Tricky Sam plunger parts. I mean, come on, really? I knew Art was great, but there usually was an old guy standing in the way from any of these fantastic road gigs! How was this possible?

I remember walking on the beach one night at 26th Avenue after I heard the good news with Dian Smith, my girlfriend and fellow saxophonist. I was comfortable living on the cheap in Santa Cruz, playing in the Cabrillo band, occasionally doing gigs, but this was seriously challenging my world. I decided that night that I too would get a glamorous road gig (Ah! If I'd known then what I know now!). The Cabrillo band was soon to open for Stan Kenton's band at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, and I decided that this was a big chance for me. I was playing baritone (a niche market instrument, much like Art's plunger trombone), and I knew Lile would feature me on a number or two. So when the band arrived in town on their glamorous bus (except for Glen Stewart, whose son drove him in his Porsche) with their leather jackets and their hangers-on, staying at an otherwise drab motel on Ocean Street, there I was, waiting in the weeds.

Tony Campise, a hero of this blog from my days in Austin, had just been married, so rather than schlocking onto him, I fused with baritone saxophonist Roy Reynolds. When Roy grew weary and switched to a vacant tenor chair in the band, about six months later, I got the call for the freed-up baritone slot. Off I went, January 5, 1975, 23 years old for another 24 days until my 24th birthday, which we spent crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a PanAm 747.

What happened next doesn't bear repeating, but suffice to say that I did my term with Stan, and I trace all of it back to the feelings I had when I was walking the beach with Dian that night, trying to make sense out of Art getting a gig with Duke Ellington. That feeling still spurs me on from time to time when I waver in my resolve.

In other news, I put together a new band website, http://newflamintoswing.com. I joined Gigmasters for a trial six months, and you can find us by searching for Swing Bands in Santa Cruz. I'm toying with the idea of an organ trio, because how much better is it to call two guys instead of 11?

I got a replacement road bike, but I still miss my Bruce Gordon BLT, which was stolen in September. I'm trying to get serious about biking, although serious at 62 and serious at 22 are two way different things. Still, I am putting in the miles.

Oh, and I am, I guess, somehow retired, as my main income stream comes from my Social Security benefits. I opened my account at my 62nd birthday. All those years of working for The Man finally pay off!

Listen! Another Giant Has Fallen.

(I wrote this in September, 2007, right before I joined the QE2 in Southampton. My other blog is closing down, but I decided to save a few posts that are important to me.)


I met him once, when my friend Ginger (who now teaches flute in Houston) took me to one of his Duke classes, in 1975. Ginger was a composition major at Berklee, a school which then doted on its guitar players but had enough respect for Herb that it practically enshrined two of his classes, Line Writing and Duke Ellington, after Herb returned to the school in the mid-seventies. Even though he had never met me, he made me feel right at home auditing his class, during which he played 78 rpm records and explained, as best as anyone could, what was going on. It was an impressive performance.

Afterward we talked, and to my astonishment, Herb told me about my dad's writing when they were both at Berklee--then called Shillinger House. He told me about a big band book my dad had written for a 13-piece band and how he was so proud of it that he had tried to get Herb out to Fitchburg to hear it. (Forty miles was a lot longer back then.) Herb continued until I had to leave, filling me in on a few details I didn't know about the band, and about my dad's education. (My dad was the first drummer to be admitted to what became Berklee. Back then drummers hardly ever read music.) The funny thing was, my dad's 13-piece big band was started right after I was born. At the time I met Herb I was 24, just off the Stan Kenton band.

There's nobody I know that Herb didn't touch this way. He made you feel special for just being there. He ran rehearsals the same way. Believe me, it's a struggle to get to a band rehearsal when you're playing 2nd Tenor Saxophone. You need to know that you're making a difference to make the rehearsal. Herb knew that, and knew how to bring out the best in your playing, because he knew what was going on musically all around him, and how important the internal parts are. This he learned himself from a lifetime of study of Duke.

It's easy to grow cynical in the world of music. While music becomes not so much an artistic pursuit as a study in survival, there are plenty of posers who get paid more than Crosus and Duke put together ever imagined. And yet, these are the people the mainstream press talks about as "musicians," people who mastered the are to lip-synching and who perform not music, but spectacle, and derivative spectacle at that.

That's what made Herb's life all the more remarkable. When he was 22, he was playing with Charlie Parker. Yet he never wavered in his resolve as a bandleader, as a teacher, as a player. He didn't have any bad habits. He never went to rehab or drove a Jaguar into a tree.

The night Duke died, I had tickets to see the Basie band play a gig in an old movie palace in Oakland, California. Needless to say, there was a bit of a wet blanket on the festivities. Basie himself pulled the plug a little early. I remember thinking that, if Basie was upset, there was something to be upset about. There was something, I reasoned, that would not and could not be replaced by Duke's passing. And so it was. No new Duke rose.

And so it is with Herb Pomeroy, son and grandson of Gloucester dentists. You made a difference.

See Herb's Wikipedia listing here.