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Day One
Well, I guess a little later. I still wear this outfit from time to time......
A. Middle "C" signals need for diaper change.
B. C Triad signals need for diaper change.
C. C Major 7 signals need for diaper change.
D. C Major 7 +9+5 / B Flat 7 -5 signals need for diaper change.
Everyone, at some point (like with sushi, skydiving, and Bacardi 151) has to at least TRY the trombone. That's my brother Bill on trumpet.
Graduation from junior high school. Me on left, with clarinet case in hand. My younger brother, Bill, is next to me. I don't know what's up with that combination of pants and jacket. I guess it matches the clarinet case.....
Pete Christlieb was my idol. I used to hear him at Donte's, in North Hollywood, in a quintet he had with my teacher, vibraphonist Charlie Shoemake. I was sixteen here, sitting in at a club for the first time. We are playing "Joy Spring" (well, I guess that's obvious). Harvey Newmark on bass.
The next time I sat in with Pete was about 25 years later. I think we are playing a blues in D flat. This is the 93rd birthday party of Saxophone mouthpiece maker, Arnold Brillhart. Ricky Woodard is also playing.
None of us is playing a Brillhart mouthpiece.
That's me with Linda Blair, in The Exorcist II. The worst movie ever made, and I was proud to be part of it. With absolutely no luck, I tried to date Ms. Blair. She explained that she was, unfortunately, from Connecticut. (Same old line.)
My first professional gig, at age 16. A week in Hawaii with Lionel Hampton. Hanging on the beach all day, playing bebop all night. I don't think my life has gotten any better. Except that now I have a hip espresso machine.
Also during that sublime week in Hawaii. This is years before Steve Turre figured out this shit......
For three years I played in the Monterey All State High School Band. That's Eric Marianthal to my left. We performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival with guest artists Clark Terry, Benny Golson, George Duke, Chuck Mangione, and others. Benny Golson had a production company at A & M, and in a meeting that was set up later in L.A. offered me a contract for a five record deal. When they asked me if I would consider singing, I kind of spaced on the whole thing.
A few months after sitting in with Charlie and Pete at Donte's, Pete and Charlie split, and I replaced Pete. I was sixteen, and would have to get up with little sleep and go to school the next day. My parents were so supportive, always there, my father taping with his cassette recorder. I still have all the tapes. And fortunately don't still have that sweater.
Randy Kerber on piano.
Trumpeter and composer Don Ellis took a few trombone lessons from my father (Don had had a heart attack some years before and was told by doctors to never play the trumpet again) and came down to Donte's to check me out. When Art Pepper (who played alto in Don's band) got too sick to make a European tour, Don asked me to join the band. Don started playing the trumpet again, and died a few months later of a heart attack. This picture was taken at Blues Alley in Washington, DC. I am seventeen here.
Festival at Juan-les-Pins. One of my favorite records at the time was Miles Davis' "Live in Europe," which was recorded on this same stage. In fact, the man who introduced Don's band was the same guy on the Miles record, fourteen years later.
The night we performed in Antibes, I met Stan Getz. He was so incredibly nice and supportive. The next day I ran into Stan and his wife, Monica, on the beach. We hung out all day. Stan was in such great physical shape. I said to him "all this stuff they say about you, about using heroin, and all that, isn't true, is it?" He just laughed, like I was the greenest thing. Then he showed me the (old) scars on his arms, and said he was from good Russian stock. His wife told me she became an American citizen just so she could vote against Nixon. Very cool.
Louie Bellson was one of the sweetest, most supportive musicians I have ever met. He had me join his big band when I was seventeen, and it was in this environment that I really started to learn about playing in a big band, and how to blend in a section.
Pictured:
Blue Mitchell, Snookey Young, Bobby Shew, Walt Johnson -- trumpets.
Nick DiMaio, Alan Kaplan -- trombones.
Ray Reed, Dick Spencer, me -- saxophones.
This was the only gig I ever played with my Uncle (and namesake) Ted Nash. I wish there had been more. I was still in high school, and used to a rather dubious sense of intonation and phrasing, and couldn't believe how easy it was to play with him. I actually didn't appreciate the full depth of my uncle's playing until I was well into my twenties, and heard him on Mancini's Dreamsville. Hearing the expression with which he played left tears in my eyes.
My first record date. Don Ellis' "Star Wars and Other Galaxies." My dad, naturally, was there with the camera. I was a pretty good clarinet player. I could have been a contender. But then I discovered Bird, and never recovered.
I got to play my first big concert as a leader when I was seventeen. The audience was about five thousand, and I felt like a star. (I am announcing, not singing....)
This is where we stayed in New York when Don Ellis played the Kool Jazz Festival in 1977. It was during this trip that my decision to move to New York was made. I hooked up with Paul Moen, the tenor player I had met with Lionel Hampton's band, and he took me to the Village and we walked from club to club. I remember hearing George Coleman, Bob Berg, Kenny Baron. The energy in New York was incredible and I knew this was where I had to be. I moved there the next year.
This was taken during a photo shoot for my first record as a leader, "Conception," on the Concord Jazz Label. I was nineteen. This record is now a collector's item (i.e., not available).
After moving to New York, I would return home to Donte's to play for several years. Donte's closed a long time ago and has been replaced by a car dealership.
Upper left: Dick Berk, drums; Charlie Shoemake, vibes; Harvey Newmark, bass.
Upper right: Dick Nash.
Lower left: Roy McCurdy, drums; John Williams, bass; Dick Nash, trombone.
Lower right: my name in lights (Dig that polyester shirt!)
Probably the most important association up to this point in my life was with the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. I learned more about music playing in this band then anywhere else. This was also my favorite saxophone section.
Pictured, left to right: Joe Lovano, me, Dick Oatts, Doug Purviance, Ralph Lalama.
I was in this ad for Wild Irish Rose Wine. The other saxophonist was Eddie Barefield. I was walking down the street with my father who was visiting New York, and we saw this billboard. Photo Op........
At the end of the first rehearsal with Benny Goodman's band, he fired me and told me my sound "...just wasn't, well, fashionable." He called the next day and rehired me, and I remained in his band until his death the following year. This was my first gig with him at Yale University in 1985. My sound is much more fashionable now.
Visones was the first club in New York where my band played regularly. It was a great club that gave a lot of opportunities to musicians that couldn't get into places like Village Vanguard or Blue Note. It's closing was quite a loss, to musicians and audiences. That's Ben Allison on bass. It was around this time that we formed the Jazz Composers Collective.
I had so much fun with the Carnegie Hall Big band. I did several tours subbing for Frank Wess, who wasn't doing much traveling at the time. Also, this is one of the few big bands where I played tenor, which I prefer (over the alto). This band brought me to South America for the first time.
Pictured: Steve Turre (partial), Dennis Wilson, Slide Hampton, and Doug Purviance, trombones; me, Jerry Dodgion, Dick Oatts, saxophones.
Marcus Roberts band. I played mostly clarinet, and it was a challenge for me to improvise on some of the forms he wrote. But the experience got me more intimate with this instrument, which probably helped me form the decision to start my band Odeon, in which I play a lot of clarinet.
Pictured: Ron Westray, Vincent Gardner, Randal Hayward, Marcus Printup (back row); Steve Riley, Wes Anderson, Richard Brown, me (front row).
My first gig with Wynton Marsalis, in Atlanta at the summer Olympics. Years earlier it was my dream to play with him, a dream I never expected to come true. He heard me with Marcus Roberts, and asked me to do a couple tours, and a CD. This was couple years before I joined the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
At first Wynton knew me as a clarinetist and saxophonist, but later learned I played flute and piccolo, instruments he wasn't used to hearing in a jazz context. He began writing for both in his music. Here we are messing around backstage before a concert in Sao Paulo.
I played a concert at the White House with the LCJO. This was a couple months after the whole Monica Lewinsky thing happened, and Clinton was a bit preoccupied. He did, however, ask me what kind of mouthpiece I was using. Hillary was incredible -- gave three minutes of attention to each person in the room. Was not particularly mouthpiece savvy, though.
Like playing the trombone, at some point everyone wants to try a beard. For the first couple weeks you feel like a movie star. Then you just feel kind of dirty.
Joe Lovano recorded a record for Blue Note called "Celebrating Sinatra" which used a woodwind quintet, string quartet, and voice (his wife, Judy Silvano). Manny Album did the arrangements, which were beautiful.
(See what I mean about the beard?)
I ran into Samuel L Jackson at a museum on 42nd street.
This was taken during the sessions for Anthony Wilson's CD "Goat Hill Junket." Anthony is very cool. So is his father, Gerald Wilson.
Guys in the LCJO really like to jam. Any excuse to pull the horns out....Here we're at a party in Santa Barbara. The main culprits are Wes Anderson (always), Andre Hayward (often), Wynton (without exception), and me (sometimes).
The latest tour with my band Still Evolved took us to Italy, Portugal, and Austria. This picture was taken at a concert in Vienna.
Pictured: Marcus Printup, trumpet; Matt Wilson, drums; Paul Bunyan, hand.
Signaling the beginning of an incredible modeling career, I appeared in this Grand Marnier ad (with Wynton and Marcus).
Signaling the end of a great modeling career, I appeared in this Brooks Brothers ad. Actually, the photographer, Diego Uchitel, said we could use out takes from this session for whatever purpose we want. (Check out the cover of my CD, La Espada de la Noche.)
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