Wycliff Gordon

[hairy james]

I just finished playing a gig with the great trombonist Wycliff Gordon.

It was Wycliff, tenor sax, piano, bass, drums, and myself.

The reason I bring this up is because I watched Wycliff's chop's all night. He looks like a IIIB and you can see that he really uses buzzing in his playing.

Some of the special effects he uses on his solo's are just like Doc's buzzing and walking in drills.

And talk about control ! this guy never overblows and is always in perfect control of his aperture. A truly magnificent brass player and musician.

I used every trick I knew just to try and keep up with him and maybe got into a little overblowing in the low and middle registers myself ( he called some blazing tempos on Cottontail and Caravan !)

What I learned from playing with him is that you don't have to play real loud to play with fire. I'm sure Doc would totally agree.

Chris



[ This Message was edited by: hairy james on 2002-12-04 11:45 ]

[CRJAZZMAN]

I saw Wycliff play with Wynton and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra a couple of years ago. All I can say is WOW! That guy can do it all! Must have been a blast! I am sort of semi pro and can not even imagine "keeping up".
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[Mr.Hollywood]

This might not be the musically correct thing to say, but when you play with a guy like that in a jam session type setting you must have some tricks that you can use or you'll get destroyed.

All the great jazz players have a few tricks in their bag that they can call on "just in case".

Some of the players that come to mind are; Roy Eldridge, Charlie Shavers ( who probably had more than anybody) and Rex Stewart is another one who used more than his share of 'Tricks"

What do I mean by tricks? anything that you can do to steal the attention away from the other players. As much as we would all like to think we are gentlemen, nobody wants to sit there and get pulverized by another player. Say whatever you want to about Arturo's jazz playing and musical taste, but I would never want to play next to him when he was 'on" and trying to "cut" me !

What does all this have to do with Reinhardt? Well if you've got music in your soul, but you have faulty mechanics what good does it do you. How important is it if you have it in your heart but can't get it out on the horn ?

I believe that I was born with a certain degree of musical talent as many people are, the difference between myself and a lot of other players is that I studied with the greatest brass teacher that ever lived. This alone gives me and other Reinhardt students an "edge" brass playing wise. And believe me, after the first 30 seconds that I heard Wyclif I knew I would need all the "edge" I could get and then some !!

Chris





[ This Message was edited by: Mr.Hollywood on 2003-01-12 11:13 ]