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.
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.
We’re always going to be on the brink of disaster, that’s just the way the music business is. I believe it will always find a way, because music is part of being human.
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.
After Woody’s band, I moved to Hawaii and that’s when I first met Jerry Hey. That’s when Jerry used to work for me . . . for a lot less money, I might add.
