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When a couple of your dear old music friends are now 85 and 89 years old, maybe it's a good idea to take a picture at every job.



...We speak of so many of our wonderful friends in the past tense: "If so-so were here/were playing this/etc., they would..."

Same here. I have been sureptiously "documenting" one of my brass quintets for the last two years fur the same reason: we will likely suffer the loss of one of our friends in the next year or two.

This tune - Mandy, Make Up Your Mind - was called up, today.
I don't believe I've played it in nearly forty years.
It's a tune from a 1920's musical, "From Dixie To Broadway".

(Do any of you regularly play this tune...?? I had to think REALLY quick - to remember on which chord the "turn-around" begins, at the end of the chorus. LOL...I started to reach for the "bass book", but it was on the floor - zipped up neatly in a cordura cover, and I didn't bring music stand, anyway. My brain remembered the first four - of the last eight measures - in the nick of time. )

Although some passing chords are ignored (by these monumental players), this is the best version I could find on YouTube that actually includes the verse - at the beginning...and - well... - that bass sax...

These two seem to be like the Eveready energizer bunny - one of them is bent way over (yet, he tours regularly all over the country with a second tier country music star), and the other - an amazing pianist - and formally very heavily in-demand cinematographer) can barely hear (and the gig would’ve been a little bit easier today had he brought his friggin hearing aids ).

The “younger guy“ with the clarinet (and the sax, and the trumpet, and the trombone, and the flute, etc., etc.) survived throat cancer, as well as - later - a benign tumor, which required having about eight of his lower teeth pulled, and replaced with implants. i’m doing an Oktoberfest with him next weekend… Of course he’ll be playing all of those horns (as well as some related horns), the drummer will be singing, and I’ll be moving around between tuba and a few various 9 and 4-1/2 feet long brass. (We try to make it sound like a bigger band… LOL)
…We Lost our (referring to the polka band) accordion player a couple of years ago. He was a guy with a terrible singing voice who – ironically – was the most in-demand vocal teacher in the area. He was both Britney Spears’ and Justin Timberlake’s vocal teacher and coach before they both broke through and after as well:
https://archive.commercialappeal.com/en ... 4631.html/
(etc.)

Not a "job", but a for fun event. My friend Dean, who will be 91 next month, and I at this weekend's Oktubafest to kick off Oktoberfest in Fredericksburg, Texas. I'm hiding behind the guy with the beard, hat, and euphonium. I figure if I live to be 91 and can still say "tuba", I'll be doing well.

I'm hoping we can see someone well-known cross from their 90s to 100+ sometime soon. We've had some near misses in the past few years:

Queen Elizabeth
Prince Philip
Betty White
Carl Reiner
...

I hope one of these 90+ people has got to make it last 100:
Mel Brooks
Dick Van Dyke
Barbara Walters
James Earl Jones
Tony Bennett
William Shatner
Buzz Aldrin

My wife's grandmother passed in 2020 at age 94 (or 95?). That's my closest contact with someone in advanced aging. I probably knew her for close to 15 years, and she was an incredible woman... Lived alone (widowed) and drove until right near the end. Sharp, witty, talked a lot, and had such an incredible memory for any and everything. My wife and her aunt remind me a LOT of her. And my younger son, too.

Some people, sadly, exit this world far too early. Some people, somehow, have a much longer turn than others. And if we are lucky enough to know those folks, we need to remember that we are lucky enough to know those folks.

I have so many friends now in the 80 and above area, and they are starting to drop like flies, it seems. For my extremely accomplished and well-known-in-his-field friend who may make it to 86 in November, it is nip and tuck -- having trouble navigating his house and with serious heart problems. He never knows if an angina attack is going to be his last. Another friend just passed at 83, tuba friend is somewhere in his 80s but seems to be honking along pretty well. I think back to the Friday night after-brass-band-rehearsal restaurant gatherings we did years ago, and of the table of ten, three of us are left.
I just hope I don't have one of those incredibly long slides down, would rather, really truly, just be hit by lightning and go out with a bang at some point.

“bloke” wrote:Although some passing chords are ignored (by these monumental players), this is the best version I could find on YouTube that actually includes the verse - at the beginning...and - well... - that bass sax...

Many times, with many different bands.

The last 8 bars of the chorus (with a progression that isn’t “Sears Roebuck, and therefore don’t lend themselves to typical improvisation) are routinely “stepped on” by “pick-up” bands, and “Dixieland dilettantes”.

I’ve always felt the shifting chords are supposed to be characteristic of a person who “can’t make up one’s mind”.

FWIW, I’ve always thought the best part of that tune is the verse.