George Ryan, red-hot cornet-playin' world-renowned gynecologist wild man

[bloke]

Damn he could play !!!

He just passed away, only a week or so after his wife passed away. He was well into his 90s.
He lived a helluva life!

this: from 43 years ago...
This leaves four of us still above the ground.

[tubatodd]

I didn't have this thread title on my 2025 bingo card.

[Three Valves]

I’ll listen to that album again real soon.

[Schlitzz]

Yeah, he outlived Richard Simmons.

[tubatodd]

@bloke what make, model and key of tuba did you use for the recording? I can't really tell what you are holding in the promo shot. You were just a singer or 2 away from being Squirrel Nut Zippers.

[bloke]

@bloke what make, model and key of tuba did you use for the recording? I can't really tell what you are holding in the promo shot. You were just a singer or 2 away from being Squirrel Nut Zippers.

What what make, model, and key do you think it is, and what are squirrel nut zippers; is that the name of a band?

[tubatodd]

@bloke what make, model and key of tuba did you use for the recording? I can't really tell what you are holding in the promo shot. You were just a singer or 2 away from being Squirrel Nut Zippers.

What what make, model, and key do you think it is, and what are squirrel nut zippers; is that the name of a band?

I can’t tell what tuba it is. Squirrel Nut Zippers were a band popular in the 1990s.

[bloke]

It's this tuba (see link) that I bought new 43 years ago.
At the time I was playing with this band, it was only tuba owned, though I owned two different sousaphones, as - two years prior to this band recruiting me - I was playing at two venues back to back five nights a week and six nights a week. One sousaphone was in E-flat and it stayed on the bandstand at the happy hour 6:00 - 9:00 venue, and one was a B-flat sousaphone that was stored in a mechanical room at the 9:00 to 12:00 venue.
The E flat cost $25 and the B-flat cost three times as much.

https://www.tubaforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=9713

[tubatodd]

It's this tuba (see link) that I bought new 43 years ago.
At the time I was playing with this band, it was only tuba owned, though I owned two different sousaphones, as - two years prior to this band recruiting me - I was playing at two venues back to back five nights a week and six nights a week. One sousaphone was in E-flat and it stayed on the bandstand at the happy hour 6:00 - 9:00 venue, and one was a B-flat sousaphone that was stored in a mechanical room at the 9:00 to 12:00 venue.
The E flat cost $25 and the B-flat cost three times as much.

https://www.tubaforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=9713

Ahhh...the F tuba with the Dubro linkage I've heard about. Nice horn! Sounds great and fits right in on the recording.

So let me get this straight. You played the recording on an F and would gig on Bb or Eb, depending on the location? That's pretty awesome.

[bloke]

It's this tuba (see link) that I bought new 43 years ago.
At the time I was playing with this band, it was only tuba owned, though I owned two different sousaphones, as - two years prior to this band recruiting me - I was playing at two venues back to back five nights a week and six nights a week. One sousaphone was in E-flat and it stayed on the bandstand at the happy hour 6:00 - 9:00 venue, and one was a B-flat sousaphone that was stored in a mechanical room at the 9:00 to 12:00 venue.
The E flat cost $25 and the B-flat cost three times as much.

https://www.tubaforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=9713

Ahhh...the F tuba with the Dubro linkage I've heard about. Nice horn! Sounds great and fits right in on the recording.

So let me get this straight. You played the recording on an F and would gig on Bb or Eb, depending on the location? That's pretty awesome.

I have multiple tubas these days. Back then I didn't.
Prior to being in that band, I had owned a Alex C and a Miraphone 184-C, but had sold both. Right after, I believe was when I bought a 188 with gold brass and all that stuff. It was about the worst 188 I've ever played, LOL, but I kept it for a few years, sold it, and ended up with a Rudy 4/4 C... (with apologies to those who love them) another bad choice.
I owned a go-to really nice playing C instrument until two or three years ago, but I decided to sell it (even though considered my primary instrument). I had this "B-flat epiphany" about which I've posted way too much.

...but YES, since you've made me think about it and jarred my memory, I still had the fiberglass Conn 36 B-flat sousaphone and the possibly-York stencil "Pioneer" E-flat sousaphone. If you're just playing songs and not reading music, what does it matter how long or short a tuba is, yes? At that point, it just becomes a capo.

[arpthark]

I guess you made sure all the charts were in sharp keys to avoid the "dreaded low C" on that instrument?

[bloke]

I guess you made sure all the charts were in sharp keys to avoid the "dreaded low C" on that instrument?

This was a dance number we played - which featured a lot of key changes to extend it, but check out the key we started in, @arpthark :

Then figure out the other keys...

(Again, never any sheet music...not to start with, not when learning the tunes, never... Listening to the Tuba Skinny band, I strongly suspect that they learn all their tunes the same way we did.)

[bloke]

Decades later, the banjo player decided to round up some of the people from the band (who were becoming frail, yet could still play - and along with some other friends of his who had never been in this band) to make a recording.

I just thought it was going to be something amateurishly recorded, as the address he gave to record was one that I did not associate as being a recording studio...YET IT WAS...

I hadn't bothered to load my E-flat tuba, but had the C helicon (if anyone remembers that instrument) in the back of my car...from a gig with the (basically black funk and NOLA brass) band - with which I'd played the previous night.

...so here are two oddball tracks of me playing "dixieland" (and a ballad - whereby I SHOULD have been playing BASS) with a C instrument.

Notice the solo (not being accustomed to C and - well - also never-ever having solo-ed on the particular changes before) might not quite be as fluid as one might otherwise wish. (Also - truth be told - though I had HEARD this song, I had never played a gig where this tune was called...so this was also my first time - and there were no "run-throughs"...LOL - to have ever actually played this one.)

The singer of "Everybody Loves My Baby" (as well as one of the two cornet players) is someone who I never had met...and wasn't even introduced to them at the recording session.

There WAS a music stand in front of me...but all that was on it was a set of headphones.




Here's the ballad, whereby I SHOULD have brought my bass - had I known.
The singer is the DRUMMER from Hot Cotton.
A lifelong smoker, he had undergone a throat cancer operation...thus (though well into his 70's) the strained higher pitches.
Someone actually fetched him from a NURSING HOME to record this song.

Gardner Hitchcock.png (50.95 KiB) Viewed 128 times

(...but over two decades after this picture was taken)


Here's a pic. of "Hitch" from his lady-killer/boy-crooner days...gleaned from his obit (1940's pic - after serving during WWII)

Hitch2.jpg (42.64 KiB) Viewed 123 times

[arpthark]

I guess you made sure all the charts were in sharp keys to avoid the "dreaded low C" on that instrument?

This was a dance number we played - which featured a lot of key changes to extend it, but check out the key we started in:

Then figure out the other keys...

(Again, never any sheet music...not to start with, not when learning the tunes, never... Listening to the Tuba Skinny band, I strongly suspect that they learn all their tunes the same way we did.)

I caught D to E and a lot of passing harmonies in the first half or so. Pretty cool!

[tubatodd]

@bloke excellent solo! I'm impressed. So no sheet music for the tunes. How did you memorize them? Was it remembering the changes? Did you memorize the parts? Were the bass/tuba parts played the same (more or less) each time or was each performance unique, because you were playing the changes?

[bloke]

@bloke excellent solo! I'm impressed. So no sheet music for the tunes. How did you memorize them? Was it remembering the changes? Did you memorize the parts? Were the bass/tuba parts played the same (more or less) each time or was each performance unique, because you were playing the changes?

I was surprised that those (basically) head charts at that recording session (where I just put a blue background with them on YouTube) ended up sounding as good as they did. Every tune was mix and match personnel and I think we probably spent about thirty seconds talking about what we were going to do before the guy started rolling tape for each song. Also, we didn't all play in the same room, we were stuck in four different places (which isn't very good for a band that's recording all at once). I was in a room with the drummer. The horns were all stuck in another room, the piano and banjo/tenor guitar were in another room. When Hitch sang his ballad, he was in yet another room.

As far as memorizing notes or memorizing songs is concerned,
you yourself don't have all the songs that you have been able to sing (ever since you were a boy) memorized; you KNOW those songs. I know songs... Maybe (??) I know a few more. I don't memorize them. None of the old jazz tunes recordings I've been involved with had anything to do with sheet music - not with learning them in the first place or performing them or recording them. When I put down bass lines, I try to anticipate what the soloist, the lead, whoever's doing the most prominent thing, and the tenor voice instrument (so they and I don't play the same thing) is going to do. That's what bass players learn to do over time, and some get better at guessing and playing the percentages of likelihood of where a soloist is going than others, it seems. Also, it's kind of important to avoid playing the same bass line chorus after chorus, yet stay within comfortable parameters for the sake of everyone's else comfort zone(s). If everyone else is amenable, it's sort of good (particularly with head charts, where there aren't any cute things stuck in that the band has rehearsed and planned out ahead of time) to change the feel somewhat, as long as it doesn't distract and as long as the pulse doesn't get affected. It's another way to supply variety. With the Hot Cotton band, we used to play the song Panama (Rag) perhaps once every few times we had a gig somewhere.(Our repertoire was fairly vast.) It's a tune like High Society or South Rampart Street Parade in that it is sort of like a typical march, as it has several strains. I had this idea (sort of due to boredom) of playing the last time through the last strain of Panama with a Latin beat. The band caught on immediately and that particular crowd really loved it, so we incorporated that into the way we played Panama from then on... Other than the last eight bars of that last strain, whereby we sort of morphed back into 4/4 and drove to the end (repeating the two bars prior to the final two bars two extra times) with what we called an "eight bar ending".

[1 Ton Tommy]

@bloke et al, when I play bass behind a local rock band , I listen to the vocalist and the lead guitar but it helps greatly if I have a chord chart for the changes. Sometimes I do and sometimes not. If not, I'm much more dependent on the vocalist.

This brings up an argument that came up in a Jazz jam a couple of years ago between the visiting house band and one of our local reed players, several years my senior. He had been the high school music teacher and played in many jazz combos. The visitors were youngsters recently out of NYC's Juliard. The argument went like this: The changes come from the melody (NYC); no, the melody comes from the changes! (local). I'd played trumpet with both and would much rather play with the NYC group, cause I'm not so tightly bound to the changes and can allude to the melody and wander off into different keys or modes and they get it without getting all huffy because I didn't play some chord notes they expected.

I never really thought about it before then but it seems like a chicken and egg argument. As a lead player (trumpet) I need to know those changes for improvisation and as a bass player I need to hear the lead, whomever that is.

Trad jazz is freeing to my soul and I don't even know who's the chicken and who's the egg, nor care. But listening to Tuba Skinny, whom I consider the best in the business, I realize their collective improv is not just organized chaos. I hear the roots and I hear the passing tones that the rock band never bothers with.

[bloke]

I don't embrace the term "traditional jazz", because jazz music was never meant to be traditional... Particularly not the original "jizz" music played by people such as Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton and others who played in bordello parlors... Jazz music has always been pretty radical.

There's no chicken and/or egg in regards to melody and chord changes.
They both come from a song's composer.
Bass lines? Again, those are derived from the melody and chord changes and are (nearly) mechanically/theoretically dictated, unless a composer makes unusual choices for certain types of musical effects.
When it comes to playing bass lines underneath solo choruses, again it becomes a percentages guessing game in regards to where a soloist seems to be going and how to choose inversions or series of chord tones that are going to compliment a particular soloist's particular chorus...
.but (again) the songs themselves - played by jazz musicians - were all composed by someone.
That person wrote the melody, the chord changes, and the bass lines, and they had best be respected/strongly referred to, unless part of the arrangement of the song is to hyper-arrange the song, which - sure - is something that is done.

In the very early 1980s - shortly before he died of a heart attack, I played a lot of jobs with a very fine jazz and standards pianist named Sidney Chilton in Memphis. (He was the father of Alex Chilton, the leader of a rock band called the Box Tops that came out with the hit song, "The Letter" (... Some people are old enough to remember that song being played on top 40 format radio stations.)

At that time, I thought I was big stuff, because I was playing a whole bunch of jobs (from polka band jobs to symphony orchestra jobs, and everything in between) with people who were in their 50s and 60's... as well as Mr Chilton, who was in his late 70s and a few others that were nearly as old as he was.
VERY fortunately for me, Mr. Chilton let me know that I was NOT so great, and that I was stepping all over songs that people had carefully composed with specific passing chords and bass lines, which - for the most part - follow the rules that Bach followed in his own chorale writing.

At that moment, I begin listening more intently to what he played as well as to what other great pianists (who I worked with) played. Typically, the pianists were the singular members of jazz bands who actually knew the songs properly, as they played solo jobs and actually had - at one time - used the original lead sheets for all those songs until they knew them and didn't need them anymore. Wind players - who also really knew the songs inside and out - were those who (dating back to the 1940s and 50s) had played in hotel bands or big bands and played all of the "standard" songs in written arrangements over and over to the point that they absolutely knew the songs as well.

Having been a reasonably good student and having analyzed Bach chorales - as well as having been required to harmonize melodies and all that stuff that college-aged music students are expected to learn how to do, the correct inversions of chords of songs started falling into my hands more and more often. Of course, there are a whole bunch of exceptions, particularly when playing in 4/4 time or playing a song in a certain style that it wasn't originally composed in or that sort of thing, but the reference is always to the composer, the composer's harmonies, and the composer's bass lines... and sure, there have been quite a few good melodies over the years that were composed with somewhat vanilla chord changes and bass lines which have been improved upon over the years, and those harmonic enhancements - many of which have become standard - are noted and respected.

I used to play some rock and top-40 cover band gigs, and those differ greatly from any style of jazz band gig in that - pretty much - a cover band is expected to play a tune just like the original recording. If they try to do something original with a well-known tock/top-40 tune, the crowd is going to look at them funny and wonder what's going on. Most of the time, this includes all of the inflections in the vocals and all the notes and the keyboard, guitar, and bass playing. In this way, rock bands are much more like symphony orchestras than they are like jazz bands..
=============
Just in case I peak anyone's curiosity, I often include parenthetical information about things to which I refer. "The Letter" was recorded in Memphis, Tennessee at American Sound Studios owned by Chips Moman (I'm thinking: in 1967).

[1 Ton Tommy]

Yes, jazz by its nature is not traditional. It evolves but people playing at less than an avant garde level are playing what came before. A famous example of that is Preservation Hall. They are stuck in a time and place. In contrast, Tuba Skinny has evolved and the idiom has evolved with them. So, what does one call their idiom?

I play a lot of stuff I'm not intimately familiar with and without charts. I'm dependent on my knowledge of chord progressions and basic theory and listening to what's going on around me. Sometimes I play jazz trumpet in a group with a very good piano player who can change the inner voiceings of chords in a way that leads me in the right direction. When I don't know the tune and the changes come thick and fast, it's really a Godsend.

Where it gets difficult is when I'm playing with others who don't have even basic music theory. And some may say I shouldn't be playing with them at all but that's not consistent with small-town politics, and paying-it-forward. I have long heard it said, "play with the best musicians you can get to play with you." Now I find myself one of the better musicians and I see why it's a chore to play with newbies. But I'm willing to do it.

That requires that I strike a balance between what I know how to do and how to convey that to others diplomatically; for example, getting the piano player, who learned by playing chords while he sang melody, to get off the bottom of the keyboard so I can develop the bass line was a head scratcher. Problem was he didn't know anything else and I couldn't insult him by making that plain. So, I passed along a FB post by Ron Carter with a photo of the left end of a keyboard with masking tape over the keys and the words "keep off! We have a bass player." That did the trick. He now is exploring what his right hand can do and I can play bass.

[bloke]

I get along just fine with two-handed pianists...

I suspect the retreat from "dixieland" to "traditional jazz" is due to "dixie appearing in the word ie. the banned symbol/thoughts of

and not that any jazz music (again: regardless of the harmonic palate) was or has become traditional.

Bebop is dated to a past era, as is "swing", so - if "traditional" - those styles should be labeled as "traditional II" and "traditional III" (or some such), yes?

A clue to the motivation being the avoidance of saying "dixie" is the typical nomenclature elongation (ie. five syllables vs. three), in additional to the fact that far more people/laymen know what "dixieland jazz" is - as contrasted with "traditional jazz". ...hmm...much as with "T.U.B.A." vs. "I.T.E.A." (the International Test and Evaluation Association).

When I'm playing dixieland jazz music, (and luck into being able to work with a "stride" pianist, or - perhaps - I'm playing a gig where there are more songs played which were popular in the late 1940's - 1960's whereby the pianist is more knowledgeable, and is actually playing the composed bass lines), simply - I "enjoy the ride", follow more strict harmonic structure/rules, and I'm nearly always playing right with them. Note: I'm referring to playing the "heads" and not referring to playing under solo choruses.

Speaking specifically of "stride" pianists (besides having completely mastered - note-for-note - many songs in that style, most all off them can go back-and-forth between typical jazz band playing (left-hand-chord/right-hand-melody) and "stride" (left-hand-BASS/chord-and right hand melody-harmony). Most of them only "turn on" the stride piano technique when it's their turn to solo, at which point I'll probably drop out (as often also will the drummer and fretted instrument player).

Here's a textbook example of playing along with a stride pianist in a jazz band (as the stride style originated with expanding rags from piano-only to multi-musician bands...Just as the (well...) correct bass notes which the composer wrote (being played by the other instrumentalists - along with the pianist).





In regards to ALL of this: MOOT
This music is currently rarely played (and even less often, played well).
There were two major "dixieland revival eras" - one in the early1950's - mid 1960's (of which the band - linked above - was a headlining contributor), and the other in the mid-1970's through the 1980's.
The current era is a dead-zone for this music (other than as window-dressing - ie. as a party's theme or club's monthly theme).
Mostly, all styles of jazz music (other than in schools of music, etc.) are in a dead zone, and most all currently-listened-to music features from one to (if particularly sophisticated) four chords.


Here's the "king of stride", Mr. Thomas W. Waller.
Notice how he backs off the left hand (to the extreme) on the soft chorus (when the band is playing with him), but - on the loud chorus (when the horns and drums are going to drown out both his left hand and the bass player anyway) he cuts loose.