Joseph Duemer wrote:
> Ken, I'd like to hear you play Dolphy's clarinet for 10 minutes.
So would I. "Back in the day," bass clarinets came from either Buffet
or (more likely) Selmer. I started playing the "regular" Bb clarinet in
elementary school, quit for years after high school, then went back in
the late '90s. I discovered the sound of the bass not through the usual
suspects--Tchaikovsky and Wagner--but through Eric Dolphy doing an
extended improvisation around "God Bless the Child." It took getting
used to: a man playing an instrument with that size and power with the
agility a flutist brings to a flute. In my mind it was rather like some
dude playing the Satie Gymnopedies on a euphonium. But it worked. I
bought myself a used Selmer school marching band bass from a repairman
and my first experience of it was almost to explode my eardrums: the
vibrations rattle your head. Then I got into it. Then I got it
overhauled and repadded. Then I went positively(:-) nuts.
I've thought more than once of learning 10 ballad standards and, when
I'm out of a job (an increasingly common state of life), going up to New
York and playing in the subways. NY is not Paris were you have to
audition to become a "sturdy beggar" or wandering minstrel, I. I've
heard people play who didn't know which end of the instrument went in
their mouths. I got to talking with a young man who could play to die
for the Meditation from "Thais" on the violin. And my favorite--a man
who got on the local one night carrying a tenor sax with all the lacquer
worn off, scratches and dents...and then he began playing and I'd swear
Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster was on the train that night. I had no
money but I gave the guy five dollars. He'd earned a lot more.
I have seen violinists, Bb clarinetists (an old guy with a yarmulke
playing klezmer), flutists, Latin and African drummers, saxes of various
sizes. Never have I seen a bass clarinet. I wonder if subway begging
comes with benefits....
Ken
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Ken Wolman andreachenier.net rainermaria.typepad.com
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND: IT IS REALITY THAT IS MALFUNCTIONING
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