purple sticker: We were hired to play at a huge party in D.C. (as well as an appearance at the jazz club there) and - as part of the deal, a sponsoring corporation agreed to purchase those L.P.'s to give away as "party favors"...which helped finance the production and pressing of those lp's. (From the same recording session at Ardent, we sold another set of cuts/sides to Jazzology records (of NOLA). These strategies defined that we paid $0.00 for that recording session, as well as having plenty of boxes of records to take to Europe (1984 tour). so yep: a birth control pill company financed about half of that recording session and pressings.
I was in my mid-20's, the trombonist was in his late 30's (40?), and the rest were in their early-to-late 50's.
Three of the people in the band could have easily individually written personal checks to pay for the Ardent Studios session time, John Hampton's (grammy-winning recording engineer) time, and all of the pressing (actually of BOTH lp's), but the idea was to run the band as a business, and not as some rich-guys'-subsidized hobby.
The banjo player in the front and cornet player/band leader (far right) are pictured below (picture taken yesterday).
Today, the banjo player is in his 80's, the cornet player is into his 90's - as is the pianist (far left).
The 2nd and 3rd from the right (drummer/clarinet) are deceased.
I'm pretty sure all the rest of us are still playing music.
I continue to occasionally work with the banjo player (front, and above left) and the pianist (far left in the top pic, and below.)
This was actually taken of him while playing at the keyboard recently, accompanying a singer sitting next to him on the piano bench.
(It's actually a screen shot of a facebook-hosted video. I cropped her out of the pic.) We actually almost lost him three months ago, but he was soon back playing again...
the point of this post:
I consider these people - along with others in their age range who are still playing, and with whom I still occasionally work - to be precious and fragile porcelain, as far as the collected relationships and experiences in my life.
I don't know how many of you follow country music enough to recognize people on the B-list, but Dan (banjo player) does some touring/performing with this guy:
https://www.billydean.com/
