As promised: Frank Foster's Shiny Stockings, first tune we did at Bocci's Cellar, March 8, 2013.

First Set instrumental highlights:

Second Set instrumental highlights from Bocci’s, March 8, 2013:

March 8, 2013: The Day the Roof Was Blown Off Bocci's Cellar.

While not even close to perfect, the band rose to the occasion and projected an authentic, swinging feel in every note. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have Art Baron sitting in on trombone. Stella was terrific, despite what she might say about the evening.

We had 110 paid admissions, the best in the history of the Swing Happy Hours. Nancy Carr, who runs the program, was ecstatic.

More later, when I'll have some video clips and deeper thinking on this and many other matters.

Meanwhile, here's the poster for the remainder of March, and a first proof of a poster for our gig on April 12.

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!

We're At It Again . . .

Well, here we go again, only this time, it really is about the band. I have untangled all my personal problems from my musical career. It all started when Nancy Carr took over the booking at Bocci's for the Friday afternoon Happy Hours. She approached me with a great plan. Her idea was my band would play at least once a month starting in January, 2013.

Not only did I agree without hesitation, I suggested to her that we'd be really charged to do Black Friday, November 23, 2012. That's usually a hard one to book, and the consensus was that they'd probably blow off that Friday. I thought it was a great opportunity, so I let Nancy know that we'd do all we could to make this otherwise unlikely afternoon a success.

So far, I've secured the services of sax players Kurt Stockdale and me (waiting on Paul Contos and a special guest on baritone), the brass is Stan Sorokin, John Hemsley and Dave Gregoric, Jon Dryden on piano, guitarist and former Santa Cruz resident Steve Hayes, Chris Charmin on bass, and Olaf on drums. This will be a very hot band, at least the equal of the bad that played back in August in Bocci's.

And then I thought about Stella.I have a couple female vocal charts I did with Marilyn Rucker back in Austin, and several more we didn't get to back there. So I sounded her and she responded with no small enthusiasm. We'll be harnessing her energies. I've been talking to her, and I need to talk to her some more, about the classy girl singers I've worked with in the past (and in their twilights), notably Helen Forrest. Stella is a student of her craft, a hard-working singer who has disciplined practicing techniques. I look forward to working with her.

So far, I designed the flyer, put an event up on Facebook, and we've got more than a month to go before the Happy Hour. I designed the flyer around the concept of Black Friday, as in, "What are you going to do? Shop at the mall?" Adding one of Stella's flirty head shots was a natural.

So, come on down to Bocci's on November 23 for the New Flamingo Swing Orchestra, with Stella D'Oro on vocals. Your $5 cover goes 100% to the musicians.

The more things change . . .

And so, things have changed. But I decided that we would go back to our original identity for the next gig. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, we are the New Flamingo Swing Orchestra—only now, we are Richard Fenno's New Flamingo Swing Orchestra.

Why? I'm still shaking off my time in Texas, where we were the Original Recipe Big Band. The New Flamingo Swing Orchestra was what we were when at our founding, back when I was scribbling charts in our spare bedroom on Westwood Blvd. in Los Angeles, soon to be occupied by our about-to-be-born son, Brendan, who is now 28 years old and himself living in Fort Worth with his lovely wife, two huge dogs, and a gig most weekends playing drums with a young people's jump jive band.

I guess I just like this incarnation better. Texas was a lot of frustration for me, despite the good and enduring friendships there. Something about being at war with the climate on a fundamental level, either too cold or blisteringly hot. Ah, the heat, and the fire ants. Don't get me started on fire ants.

So here I am living alone in paradise, and the band's a reflection of that. For better or worse, this is my identity and the band's.

I continue to write charts like there was a demand outside the band for them. (Perhaps someday . . . ) Recent additions are Blues in Hoss' Flat by Frank Foster for Count Basie, Greasy Sack Blues by Don Rader for Woody's band, and, now that I'm all wrapped up in Benny Carter's compositions, I Was Wrong, a lovely little ballad we'll be playing at Bocci's.

The band at Bocci's will be me on alto, Paul Contos and Brad Hecht on tenors, Paul Tarantino on baritone, Stan Soroken and John Hemsley on trumpets, Dave Gregoric on trombone, Mark Howell on guitar, Jon Dryden on piano, Chris Charman on bass, Olaf Schiappacasse on drums, and young Nick Roberto doing a couple vocals.

I'm going to get a few club/restaurant owners in to Bocci's to hear us. I want them to see how we pack the place whenever we play, how we take care of the customers and use our fan lists to bring them out. Ultimately the business is all about butts in the seats, couples on the dance floor, and how many drinks are consumed per person. I've always counted beers at tables from the bandstand. Try it. It works.

Ever onward.

A year has passed.

A year has passed since I moved to Santa Cruz, with my eyes wide open. I knew then that it'd be a hard slog, and I haven't seen anything yet that contradicts that assumption. I've had comical musical experiences (see this post) and meaningful ones too, like the Cabrillo Reunion back in October, where most of the 1975 jazz ensemble's members got together with Lile Crews at the helm once again.

Making a living hasn't been easy. I took a part-time job at a struggling music store. I've never been this close to the ground in retail. Always I had the advantage of being detached from the customer by a distributor, importer or wholesaler when I ventured into the music trades.

Sue's been marvelously supportive. In the last year, I landed a couple gigs–one for my big band even–through her kind offices. But it's time to get serious on a number of levels, including hastening the divorce and getting rent checks in on time, as she's struggling too.

So I've decided that I'm going to redouble my efforts to get my various bands hired. I already built a website called fennomusic.com that's still got a few glaring deficiencies, although the structure and look are just about right.

It's been a long haul from the time I decided to set up my big band once again, through my ship contracts, to the heart attack in 2008, through my marriage ending, leaving Austin, and here in Santa Cruz, where I had to step on the first rung of a ladder that I'd pretty much climbed 35+ years ago, where people play for free nowadays and restaurants expect not to pay musicians for making music.

I'm also going to try a little writing again. I wrote this book for Peachpit Press in 1998. Unfortunately the product was pulled off the market the very week the book was released, the reason being that Steve Jobs had returned to Apple and decided to reallocate the software development, canceling titles that were under the Claris banner. (Not that I'm pissed at his memory, because at the time I was mopping up Apple shares with my 401(K) rollover account. If he hadn't closed that unprofitable appendage of Filemaker along with about a million other details, I'd have a lot less in that account than I do now.)

What has me intrigued is Apple's new textbook initiative and the tool they released for authoring textbooks. For free. Unlike when I wrote and produced my last book, which I did the prepress production on as well, there will be no copy editing through MS Word (ugh!) files passed back and forth among several editors, page proofs generated in Quark ExPress, and then off to some RR Donelley plant in northwest Ohio. Just my iMac and maybe an iPad to test pages.

There are several things I feel I know enough about to be able to produce a text aimed at a very tight market segment. More on this later.

Then there's the issue of the royalties. If I remember correctly I made less than 2 bucks on each book sold. Cover price was $16.95 if I remember right. They sold a lot of them eventually, but the take per book was less than stellar. I was green behind the ears, though, it being my first book.

That's what I don't understand about pundits bloviating about Apple's cut of a finished textbook in the iTunes store. Seventy percent of a book going to the author sounds pretty good to me!

Whether that's good enough to get me going and sustain me through the process, well, that's another matter.

I'm also thinking Sue, who just earned a French Wine Expert shingle from the French Wine Institute, and who just returned from an almost mythical tour of Burgundy with a group of admitted partisans, has a book in her waiting to gently be extracted. The Women Vintners of Burgundy, perhaps? Or something a bit more general?

Again, more as it develops.

Meanwhile, I'm playing almost every night of the week somewhere in Santa Cruz, usually for free or a cut of the tip jar. I'm writing some charts for Dan Young's Pleasure Point Horns which we're about to unleash on an indifferent universe. I'm doing my best to get a saxophone quartet off the ground. And I'm thinking about hiring an organizer. I'm wondering when we can do a reunion of Sofrito.

Growing Up on LA Radio

I grew up on southern California with the radio on. My family moved to Laguna Beach in 1960 from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, for crying out loud. I was nine, and the Pirates were beating the Yankees in the World Series the night we flew, far from non-stop, across the country on TWA. My young ears were open as we left Boston’s Logan Airport, over the considerable hum of the engines from our Lockheed Super Constellation, the most beautiful transport plane ever made. By the time we had reached LaGuardia, Mazeroski had faced Ralph Terry and it was all over for the Yankees.

Once we’d settled in Laguna Beach and adjusted to the idea that a Catholic like us could be President of the United States and that the November did not necessarily mean adjusting to snowfall. One of the first adjustments I made to the rarified atmosphere of early sixties southern California was the voice of Chuck Niles, delivered through the radio, through KNOB (“The Jazz Knob”) in Long Beach.

From that day forward, I’d be follow Chuck to various stations around the dial. Radio changed formats, but not Chuck. His bass/baritone, impeccable timing, and unquestionable musical taste dragged me into some swinging places, with some very swinging and ultra-hip musical forces. Chuck never let me down, even he ended up at KLON, a public station in Long Beach that had inherited the library of KBCA and a low-watt transmitter. Chuck’s greatest moments were when he was drolly commenting on the traffic reports at KLON. (I remember a truckload of sheep loose on the Pomona Freeway . . . )

Then, there was KMPC.

As soon as I heard Gary Owens, my goose was cooked. He was the zany afternoon guy at the station that was owned by Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, who also owned the Anaheim Angels or whatever they’re now called. Before the gig with Laugh-In, he was there every afternoon being silly and playing some stuff a little to the right and a little more corporate than Chuck was playing.

Then there were Roger Carroll and Johnny Magnus.

They jointly set up the Teenage Underground just in time for me to join as a teenager.

In an amazing stroke of luck I won tickets to see, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a TAU concert with Miss Ella Fitzgerald backed by Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, and Ed Thigpen. That afternoon was a real ear-opener for me. In fact, I thought I’d be hearing things like Ella and Oscar for the rest of my life. As if!

Later high-flyers on the singing cowboy’s station included Bob Arbogast and Jack Margolis, who admitted over the air that they smoked pot and were against the war. It WAS a great time to be young, after all.

The thing that all these gentlemen had going for him is the dark and deep resonance of their voices, which added to the appeal of the music they were playing. Their voices were instruments which managed to grab me through the static of AM and the relative dearth of FM, sit my ass down, and play some music for me, along with associated hi-jinks.

By the time I’d become a disaffected teenager with a learner’s permit, I’d run into KPFK, the permanently-embattled Pacifica station in Cahuenga Pass. Blessed with a massive signal, the station was at the time home to Lowell Ponte, who led The Party of the Right and went on to obscurity as a minor talk show host. Then there was Elliot Mintz, who at the time was using the Youth Culture (whatever the hell THAT was) to break into the business of being a press agent to the impossibly glamorous.

Then there was Radio Free Oz, where the Firesign Theatre was born. If you’re asking who the FST was, you’re too young to understand who they were, but you could look it up in Wikipedia. Basically a freeform show hosted by Peter Bergman (another great LA radio voice) RF Oz hit me right between the eyes when I was most vulnerable, and I even started credible variations on the FST voices so I could memorize their records, which soon followed.

About this time, KRLA was playing during the news an incredible skit team called the Credibility Gap, and that’s where my radio dial was every day at least once. I had next to no interest in the music that was playing, but oh the satire of it all!

The best known of the Gap, and one of the great voices of our age, was Harry Shearer, who’s been doing voices on the Simpsons, as well as the bass player in the various incarnations of Spinal Tap, for a very, very long time.

The Gap was edgy in a way that satire could only be that was written the day it was performed, and these guys knocked me out. (Harry’s still doing great things, including a documentary about the levees breaking in his adopted home, New Orleans.)

Then I moved to Santa Cruz, where there were a lot fewer radio stations.