When Tony Bennett and I (John Bunch) heard you warming up, we thought we had made the biggest mistake of our lives!
That was the night Woody started calling me Too Tall John. Someone said if he makes up a nickname for you . . . it means you’re on the band!
Someone asked David Baker in an improv class if he thought any of us would make it in New York. David answered . . . make it in New York? Just find a way to stay in New York.
Having real musicians and real orchestras is part of bringing the human experience to the theater. You want to go to a baseball game and see a pitching machine that can be turned up fast enough to strike everybody out? What kind of human experience is that?? It’s NOTHING!
We started playing brass instruments very young. I think it was mostly from our curiosity of the shiny metal objects in the forbidden room.
Musically, playing with Frank Sinatra might still be the highlight of my life.
It would not surprise me if in the next hundred years a future John Coltrane is a trombone player.
I’ve played my 46th score for John Williams as first trumpet. Most recent was the last Indiana Jones movie. The first was The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing in 1973 with Burt Reynolds.
The line of horn players waiting to sit in with Elvin Jones looked like the line of people waiting to buy fish at Zabar’s.
Woody Shaw was an intense person and that’s why his music had that intensity. He believed in what he believed in and wasn’t scared to say it. He was 100% focused!
