OLD TIME MEDLEYS
I was a better leader than a musician. Mostly, I was busy doing my own thing. In those years there were lots of bands, but no one selling them. I liked selling, and I was more into being a bandleader than a jazz cat. “My strategy was, one lick at a time. I’d ask myself, ‘What do I need to do to get to where Wyatt Howard and Jackie Souders are? How can I cover the waterfront on every job?’ I was young; I hadn’t been in the business for twenty or more years like the older guys, so everything was scripted. At first I wrote out all my announcements. How else do you learn?
Guys like Norm Hoagy teased the heck out of me! The old pros said, ‘He’s just a flash in the pan, he’ll never make it.’ But after a while, I was hiring those guys. And no band in the sixties was busier than the Burke Garrett Orchestra—nobody. We played the Governor’s Ball, Boeing parties, auto shows, military bases, the Tennis and Yacht Clubs, conventions and most of the high school and college proms in the state of Washington. Twelve to fifteen casual gigs a month was typical for us in the mid-sixties.
“With my final seven piece instrumentation (four horns and rhythm), our music was unlike anybody else’s. The versatility of our guys resulted in a lot of interesting instrumental combinations. I played alto and soprano sax, clarinet, valve trombone, and sang a little (I didn’t need to sing much with Keith Mirick in the band. Cecil Heick, and Ed Culver for a few years, played tenor sax, clarinet, flute and valve trombone. Don Glenn was lead trombone, a fine soloist always playing warm bluesy laid back licks. Keith Mirick played trumpet, valve trombone, helped front the band, and was our featured vocalist. Keith wasn’t well-known locally because he only worked in my band, but he had an MBA in music and was an excellent musician and vocalist. So we could do the tenor band thing, or the big fat trombone ensemble sound, which people dug. We also played Dixieland and commercial ‘Mickey Mouse’ renditions of songs with flute, clarinets and muted brass.
Playing the ‘two beat’ arrangements was a lot of fun for us. Bernie Press wrote many of our commercial charts. He was Jackie Souders’ arranger and Jackie, in the Fifties and early Sixties, had the most successful commercial dance band in Seattle. So I hired Bernie to write similar arrangements for us. The hipsters would consider that sound corny, but dancers loved it. I’d go through the fake books, sit at the piano and try to figure out which tunes would best fit together, then Bernie would write charts that moved through all our different instrumental combinations: trumpet, trombone, sax, a group vocal, then a vamp into another tune with clarinets and muted brass. Some of those charts were ten pages long. Bernie and I also collaborated on a custom book of fanfares, including musical vignettes, play-ons and chasers for every situation.
Bernie was a good arranger but the band would sometimes camp the heck out of his charts. I mean, we were young guys (22 – 32), and so occasionally we’d exaggerate the Guy Lombardo vibratos and “two beat” licks. Most of the time we were playing for audiences twenty years older than we were, and they loved it. I was a stickler for playing what the people wanted but, still, sometimes we’d push the envelope a bit. We also had a number of fine charts by Milt Kleeb, Butch Nordahl, Overton Berry, Cecil Heick and Norm Hoagy. In addition we did head arrangements of stuff like ‘Night Train,’ ‘Jose Outside,’ and ‘Day Tripper’ that got us into an R&B groove. We were able to cover all the bases and satisfy the partying public of that time.
We all had day jobs and very little time to rehearse, so for the big band gigs I pre-programmed most of the music into sets with six to ten songs per folder. I might call up set eight, for example and the guys could get the music up in just a few seconds and we’d be good-to-go for thirty or forty minutes of continuous music, which dancers appreciated.
Playing the “two beat” commercial charts was a lot of fun for us. Bernie Press wrote most of these arrangements. He was Jackie Souders’ arranger and Jackie, in the 50’s and early 60’s, had the most successful commercial dance band in Seattle. So, I hired Bernie to write similar arrangements for us. Hipsters would have considered these charts to be un-cool, but dancers loved the swing music medleys. I’d sit at the piano and go through the old fake books; trying to figure out which tunes would best fit together and then Bernie would design charts that showcased our different instrumental combinations featuring trumpet, trombones, saxes, clarinets, flutes and group vocals. We would vamp along from one song to another, moving from clarinets with muted brass to flute and muted trumpet to four trombones or a Dixieland combination. Some of our arrangements were ten songs long and took fifteen minutes to play. To get an idea of what I am talking about here select one of the medleys on this page.
“The members of my band in the Sixties were young. In fact, the year we had the greatest number of engagements was 1965. I was 26 years old at that time. Although we were young and preferred to play our hip jazz-flavored arrangements, rhythm and blues and Dixieland, we were often playing for conventions, Elk’s clubs and company parties where the people in attendance were twice our age, or older.”