When you are on the bandstand, how do you go about creating a favorable impression with the audience?
Well, first of all, I think the bandstand should be treated with the same sanctity you'd treat an altar. You don't deface it. You don't get on the bandstand with a cigarette and a glass of whisky in your hands. While you're there, you only concentrate on the music or music-related things. You don't talk to anybody off the bandstand. You have very little time to be up there, so devote all your time to the task at hand. People have paid good money to come and see you. They didn't pay money to see you talk to your friends or crack jokes and all of that. I'm not saying be stiff, but by all means focus on the reason you're up there and know that people are looking at you. You are on stage, so your demeanor is supposed to reflect this.
And by all means, focus on the music and focus on being creative with it. If you're with a group that really doesn't have written music-or even has written music-try and make each tune creative. I mean, even if you're doing standards, if you're doing "All the Things You Are" or "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise," try and do something different with it. Don't just do the intro, the head, blowing, and out. That's predictable. If the audience hears you do that, maybe, two or three times, pretty soon they can just about predict what you're going to play.
So the thing is to create at the moment. That's why you have to listen to what everybody else is playing, because something you hear coming from the piano or the drums might spark an idea in you and you go off that. That's why your concentration has to be on the bandstand.
And plan what you're going to do before you get on the bandstand. You can always change it. Even when you go to jam sessions, have a couple of tunes when somebody says, "What are we gonna play?" Have two or three tunes that you think everybody knows. So this avoids all of that stuff. "What are we gonna play?" "Oh, I don't know, man. What you wanna to play?" I think that hurts a lot of musicians more so than they realize.
I'm glad you brought that up, since you've been hosting a weekly jam session at the musicians' union in New York. I'd like to hear your feelings about jam sessions.
Well, older musicians taught me that when you join anything or when you go anywhere, keep your mouth shut and find out what you're joining first. See, being a musician is such a thing of talent and ego, you have to keep both in balance, ego especially, because when people are telling you that you sound good and all that, you start to believe that you're the latest hot thing. And once you start believing that, then you stop growing.
Well, for jam sessions, the same thing applies. When you go to a jam session, have a tune, have two or three tunes, and when anybody asks you what you want to play, name those two or three tunes. But you'd more or less be on the money if you go to that jam session before and listen to what the other guys are playing. The first time you go to the session you can take your horn, but don't sit in. Listen to see what you're joining first and then have those tunes that you call.
And by all means, jam sessions are not places to practice. In our jam sessions we normally have very good rhythm sections, real experienced guys who have spent many years playing. Now I tell everybody, "When you come up, don't use these guys to get your stuff together. Since you've got fine musicians, this is the time to shoot your best shot and have them make you sound very good." So I look at it as more of a showcase. And that's because most people who are going to jam sessions now haven't the vaguest idea of how jam session were created or what they were created for. They think "jam session" now means that you go and show everybody what you know.
So they play 24 choruses on "Star Eyes."
Yeah. And hopefully somebody's going to say, "You sure sound good," and give you a gig. But if you do that, if you play 24 choruses of anything, chances are you're not going to get a gig, because somebody's going to say, "Well, I don't need that in my band." (next column...)
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Sure, what leader needs a guy who's going to play 24 choruses on his gig?
What leader needs a guy who's going to be dumb enough to play 24 choruses? A leader's looking for somebody who's smart. And brevity is it. You know, say what you got to say in two or three choruses, maybe four. I mean, if you're really hot, stretch out in five. But you don't need more than five choruses to show people what you know.
A lot of times, the older you get in music, the more you'll find out that less is more. Leave spaces and don't play everything you know. As a matter of fact, when I worked with "Sweets," Harry Edison, a couple weeks ago, he was a lesson in that. He knows very well how to use a rhythm section. If he's going to play seven choruses, the first two are kind of sparse. He makes a statement, then gets out of the way and the rhythm section kind of covers. He gradually builds it up. I learned that this was a technique he uses and it's one that we could all benefit from learning, because it gives your solo somewhere to go. I mean, you don't play everything you know in the first two or three bars.
So after more than 50 years as a professional musician, you're still learning on the bandstand?
Oh, yeah. When I worked with Joe Williams recently I thought it was very ironic, because there's a relationship between Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra. I think Sinatra said it was through his relationship with Tommy Dorsey that he began to learn phrasing.
And breath control.
Well, I thought about this, working with Joe Williams. I said, here it is, a singer learning from a trombone player, so why can't a trombone player learn from a singer? Anyway, the main thing that I was trying to learn from Joe is breath control. He'll hold a note or do a phrase for a phenomenally long time and not take a breath. You never see him breathe. So that's why I was looking at him, because if I can find out how to do that, that's useful to me, too.
And I'll tell you, I worked with him a whole week and I sat, oh, maybe no more than two feet from him, because we both had stools on the stand, and I had a chance to watch him up close and I never did find out how he breathed. In fact, I asked him when we went up to the dressing room, I said, "Joe, do you breathe under your armpits or something, 'cause I never saw you take a breath of air? How do you do that?" He said, "I don't know how I do that. I've been doing it so long, I guess I figured it out a long time ago. But if you ask me to analyze it, I can't do that."
Looking back on your 50 years in music, it's been a good life, hasn't it?
Oh, yeah. Still is. For me, I am doubly blessed to be able to make my livelihood for 50 years playing trombone only. I never had any jobs as a waiter, taxi driver, any of that stuff. And this has been one of my most productive years. It's fantastic. I can't believe it myself, because I've had a pretty good run and I keep expecting it to peak and then be on the downhill, but it keeps going up. And I'm more amazed than anybody.
© Bob Bernotas, 1997; revised 1998. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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