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!
The personnel manager turned his computer screen around and it said Riccardo Muti is named new music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I sat down and cried like a baby.
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.
It would not surprise me if in the next hundred years a future John Coltrane is a trombone player.
John Belushi told me he was going to make me the most famous trombone player since Jimmy Dorsey. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Jimmy was the saxophone player.
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!
Whenever you have a choice between the facts and the legend, always go with the legend. Whatever you’ve heard is true.
I saw the Tijuana Brass TV specials and thought the trombone player was really cool. He was in the background and then he would jump out and play a solo. I thought that would fit my personality.
We have that saying that studio/orchestra work is 95 percent boredom and 5 percent sheer terror for brass players.
