Archives for March 30, 2012

Following the recent post about plunger mutes, Rifftides reader Deborah Hendrick sent a reqest:

Would you give us a history lesson sometime, on the origin of mutes. “Jazz” seems to be played with muted brass more often than not. I’ve always wondered why, and how the practice began.

Aside from the plunger, mutes for brass instruments are not primarily specific to jazz, and they go back much further. I can give you no better history of mutes than this brief one on a website devoted to them.

As an appendix to that document, here is the brilliant cornetist Warren Vaché demonstrating a raft of mutes to his student Laura Telman.

For more of Vaché on the cornet and trumpet, go to his ArtistHouse page.

Sonny Igoe, who played drums with a succession of prominent leaders, died this week at the age of 88. In 1939 when Igoe was 16, he won the first Gene Krupa drum competition. After four years in the United States Marine Corps in World War Two, he worked briefly in a band of former Marines, then began a career that included work with Les Elgart, Ina Ray Hutton, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Chuck Wayne and Charlie Ventura. Herman’s featuring Igoe on “New Golden Wedding” in 1951 brought the drummer considerable attention. Two years earlier, his drive energized Benny Goodman’s big band and sextet. You can feel the swing intensify when Igoe switches from brushes to sticks on cymbals behind Wardell Gray’s tenor saxophone solo on “Blue Lou.” The other players are trumpeter Doug Mettome, pianist Buddy Greco, bassist Clyde Lombardi, rhythm guitarist Francis Beecher and Goodman on clarinet.

In recent years, Igoe co-led a big band with saxophonist Dick Meldonian, another musician respected among his peers but not widely known to the public. In this concert performance of “Just in Time,” Meldonian gives his partner the tempo assignment.

Sonny Igoe, RIP