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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

A Slider

August 10, 2006 by Doug Ramsey

Steven Bernstein writes from New York regarding my piece in the July 27 Wall Street Journal about trumpeter Randy Sandke (You can read it here if you’re an online WSJ subscriber). He is concerned about my speculative aside that in Sandke’s Subway Ballet, Bernstein plays…”what may be this century’s first recorded solo on slide trumpet.”
“Thanks for a great article on Randy Sandke,” he says. “I wish more journalists would support this incredible musician.” Then he takes me to task.

Since you are a journalist/historian, I’d like to clarify a statement you made about the slide trumpet in the 21st century. I am a professional trumpeter /bandleader in NY for the last 25 years–started a band called Sex Mob 11 years ago in which I ONLY play the slide trumpet…..have played it on numerous cds, tv shows, movie soundtracks, dance pieces etc. There are two slide trumpet players in Europe (that I know of), Luca Bonvini and Axel Dorner….and a bunch of young kids out there inspired by me who are starting to play it. You might be interested in hearing Sex Mob. We play compositions ranging from “Blue and Sentimental” to “Nirvana” and lots in between. My 9-piece band the Millennial Territory Orchestra started off playing pieces by Tiny Parham and Cecil Scott and expanded out. Our debut CD was just released on Sunnyside.
So anyway, about 100 slide trumpet solos recorded this century, and it’s just starting…
Keep yer ears oiled
Sb

I just ordered a new bottle of oil.
This famous photograph of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in 1923 shows Louis Armstrong playing a slide trumpet. His cornet, the instrument he most often used with the band, is in front of him. Armstrong Slide.jpg
The photographer arranged the group with wonderful symmetry, but it is unlikely that Johnny Dodds often performed seated on the piano in that excruciating posture. From left to right, Honoré Dutrey, Baby Dodds, King Oliver, Armstrong, Lil Hardin, Bill Johnson, Johnny Dodds. To hear Armstrong and Oliver in a complete performance of “Chimes Blues”, click here. The cornet solo is Armstrong’s, his first on record. The date was April 6, 1923.

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Comments

  1. Luca Bonvini says

    April 8, 2008 at 6:04 am

    Great article and that rare photo of Louis is one of my favourite, of course.
    As my good friend Steven (in a concert in Padua (IT) he invited me on stage to play the encore with his quartet… ever seen two slide trumpets on stage?….. a dream 😉 ) mention my work in progress work on the slide trumpet, I’d like to add a link just to let you know what he is talking about.



    Anyway thank you for interest in one of the rarest instruments in history!
    Greetings from Paris and good luck to all!

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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