Claude Gordon Brass Camp 1991 - Claude Gordon on Virtuosos and Their Cornets

I get calls all year long about where can I study this way of practicing and
learn and they'll be from back east or Midwest and so I've made a list of
teachers that you can get in touch with.
In Las Vegas, there's Carl Leach. His phone number is 702-733-9559.
In Torrance, Los Angeles. Well basically in the Torrance area though, right?
No, actually it's out towards Pasadena and Orange County.
Okay, David Evans, 818-335-1407.
In the North Hollywood area, Rich Hoffman, 818-767-4244.
Up in the Bay Area, San Jose, actually Gilroy, Tom Brazine, 408-842-0386.
San Francisco area, Chet Macasa, 415-795-9160.
San Togo, that's San Jose area. Bruce Hague, 408-370-0669.
In the same area, Mike McPheeters, 408-462-0489.
Up in the Denver area, I don't have his phone number, you'd have to get it from information.
Jim Grafmeyer, Canada, up near Toronto, Dave Schneider, 519-578-4601.
Also in the Canada area, up in that same area, Vince Gassi, 416-493-1453.
Also, from here in the Inland Empire, Rich Hoffman is going to be teaching here at
La Sierra next year, and so that number would be 785-2036, that's the music department.
Also in the Bay Area, San Francisco, Dave Bendekite.
And if you want to learn jazz, he specializes in that, but he teaches also in the other.
In the Recita area, Casey Kinscher, 818-866-9015.
Run that through again.
Claude?
Yes?
Claude, it's...
886.
886?
Yeah.
Didn't I say that?
That's Casey, that's Casey, that's Dave Bendekite.
He doesn't have Dave Bendekite's number.
No, you'd have to get that from him.
I got it at home, give me a call, then I'll give it to him.
886-9015.
Right.
That's Casey.
That's Casey.
Yeah.
All right, also up in, Casey will take beginning trumpet too, even though she,
French horn, trumpet, and so forth.
Up in the San Jose area again, Mary Catherine Lee, 408-379-3812.
And up in Paradise, that's California, that was originally Pear Old Dice.
You may change it to Paradise.
Larry Miller, 916-872-4460.
And the same area code, 877-4465.
You'll change it.
Did I get everybody?
And I think I got everybody that's teaching, that wants to be teaching,
in those different areas.
Those are the areas we've covered at this point.
Hopefully, as time goes on, we'll have teachers in different areas around the country.
Are you still teaching?
Yeah.
That's my number is on the camp.
It's 714-866-2107.
Thanks, Bruce.
I always forget that one.
Let me put a plug in too for four-year colleges.
I'm at Cal State Fullerton, and I'm also at Azusa Pacific University.
Yeah, that's right.
I'm sorry.
A lot of times, yeah, we're talking about, if you want to go to college,
a lot of times, you go to different colleges and get all kinds of interesting data.
And one of the hard things, I'll be very honest with you,
one of the harder things to do, being in the four-year college system,
is you've got the juries and final exams and recitals to contend with.
And what happens to a lot of teachers at the four-year college,
they get roped into that too much, and they get tied up with just teaching the tunes.
All right.
But if you're interested in going to, you know, obviously here with Rich,
and myself, I'm at, like I said, at Cal State Fullerton,
and Azusa Pacific University.
So if you're interested in doing that, we'll be glad to have you there also.
I have many students call and say, well, I want to go to a school now.
Shall I come down to Northridge?
No.
Watch, there's a tape on.
Absolutely not, it'd be better.
Much better to go see, what did I say, Dave?
Oh, don't worry, it's okay.
I'll try to get out of that one.
Did I say something wrong?
No, it's fine.
That was great.
It's kind of getting like Manny once in a while, right?
Yeah.
You know, you've got to be so carefully when you're talking or giving a lecture
of what you said.
That's why I never mention a name.
I made a bad mistake one time at a camp up north.
And I was just talking along.
And I didn't think of actually what I was saying.
And I said, I have never known anyone with a degree to make it.
And I heard Dave in the back, ooh.
Oh, well, in the real estate.
And what it was, I had turned around what I meant to say.
What I meant to say was, I've never known anyone with a degree.
Or I've never known anyone to make it because of a degree.
That's right.
In other words, it's still you that asked him anything.
Exactly.
If you've got 10 degrees.
And boy, I don't know whether I ever straighten that out.
I think you did it just now, Paul.
You got it.
Talked all day on that.
Only 10 years.
I didn't understand what I meant.
OK, so one thing before we go too much farther here.
Pro-oil was nice enough to give everybody some oil.
So we'll be passing that out in some slide grease.
So just let us know which one you use and stuff like that, OK?
And it was like, you know, it's their promotional thing for this camp.
So everybody gets a free.
Every year, everybody gets a bottle of oil.
Now, what is it now?
A dollar and a half, two dollars, a bottle.
And the blue is for like, it's supposed to be real thin.
Horns, real tight tolerances.
And the reds for normal horns.
The white is rotor oil.
So you have three flavors.
Paul?
Now, I'd like to mention another thing.
We're going to talk about trumpets today.
We're going to talk about trumpets today.
And all their history that we can.
And play a lot of great records.
But I want to mention one thing about trumpets.
Everybody says, oh, this horn plays in tune.
No, it doesn't.
It is impossible to make a trumpet in tune.
Absolutely impossible.
Except on the CG Selmer, it is so designed so that you can play it in tune.
It's not the trumpet that does it.
It's you.
But the whole design.
And I'm going to show you one little secret quickly.
Here's the lead pipe.
You understand?
Here's the mouthpiece receiver.
The mouthpiece goes in here.
The closer the mouthpiece is up to the lead pipe,
the more you're going to be able to play in tune.
But the taper of that lead pipe and these measurements are the critical angle.
Here is where your intonation comes from.
I've had players tear that whole horn apart completely.
And I said, what in the world are you doing?
You've torn up a brand new beautiful instrument.
Well, I put it back together.
I said, okay.
He says, I'm just trying to find out why this horn plays in tune.
I think it's in the valve section.
No, it doesn't.
It's right there.
It isn't the horn.
It's that the taper allows you to play it in tune easily.
So you've got one of the points there that's quite a secret, really.
And I'm not going to tell you the measurements of points,
but that's why you can play it in tune.
If you'll notice on that horn, you've got no triggers.
You don't need them.
You've got the third valve.
That's all you need.
We've had students up in Canada, we demonstrated, come on.
I said, play me an octave C sharp.
Now, that's pretty badly out of tune, gentlemen.
A low C sharp is so high.
And this young player come up and he played it right in tune.
No triggers, no nothing.
He heard it and he played it.
Now, you want the third slide sometime to help you once in a while,
but you can play that horn almost impeccably in tune.
In fact, yesterday, I think it was, is Bruce here?
So Bruce is here in case anyone comes up to the last minute.
Do you still have some of those instruments or is there none?
I've got one new one and one slightly used.
Got what?
I've got one brand new and one slightly used.
Okay.
All right.
Some are very fortunate today, boy.
I checked out every instrument that they sold and boy, it's right perfect on the money.
Perfect measurements.
Sometimes the factory will goof a little in the manufacturer
and they allow a tolerance of five thousandths of an inch.
That's not much.
I thought it was the thickness of a sheet of paper.
But on that horn, it's critical.
And I've had some pretty loud conversations back with the factory.
There is no tolerances allowable on that horn.
That's why I like to check them out when someone buys one.
So if anyone wants one, if there's one left, why, that's, they're good.
Now, was there anything, Patty, that I asked you to remind me of?
Oh, thank you.
It's my right arm, my ears, my eyes, and my memory.
You notice how they record today.
I hate to even think about it.
Someone goes in and he plays the first trumpet part.
The next day, someone goes in and plays the second trumpet part.
And then someone will dub in the third trumpet part.
Then someone goes in, dubs in the guitar.
It takes them about a year, and they finally get an album out.
It's not an album.
It's a manufactured product.
That's not music.
And you're always at the mercy of some guy in there with the dials adjusting everything
as to what's going to balance and sound.
Terrible way.
It's no fun to record that way.
Your enjoyment is when you sit with the orchestra and everybody plays, and then you get a record.
We used to do recordings, I don't know whether you've heard any of my recordings or not,
but some of them we used to go in.
The arranger would still be arranging some of the arrangements when the orchestra came
in the room, and so they'd pass them out.
We'd play it down, like Rosson's Holiday.
That's on one of my recordings.
And then we came in, played it down, and started recording it.
And we would do as many as four of those heavy solos in one session.
Now that was the fun way to do it.
Sometimes it was a little hard on the nerves, but you did it.
It's like when we did one of the recordings called On the Mall.
We came in, we ran it down once, took a take.
I wasn't happy with the take, so we took another one, and we took a third one.
And I told them, that's it.
We're not going to do any more.
We took the second take.
That was it.
And then you couldn't, if a note was wrong, you couldn't clip it out.
Like now they've got a tape about that wide.
Well, we'll make another, and they'd clip the note out, and they'd put it in.
It's like some of the guys that did, recorded
Boto Perpetual.
Frank was telling me yesterday that he had a long visit with Mendez on that.
And Mendez said he did five splices in that.
And Brad yesterday did it live with no splices.
So you see, the way they do now, you get a manufactured product.
You should try to insist on, well, you can't.
They're going to tell you what they want.
So it's all right.
Still do a good job.
Years ago, the way they recorded.
Now, this is when they made records on a cylinder, about that big around.
And the needle was on top of it, and the cylinder turned, and it cut the grooves.
Now, that was actually in wax.
They had a big horn.
Like, have you ever seen the old Victor ad, Victor Victola ad?
And they had the big horn, the little dog listening, said his master's voice.
All right.
They had a machine like that.
And this was set up, and they would put the instruments at the best place they'd find
to record it.
And when they had the band, no matter where they put it, the baritone boys
socked through over everything, all the time.
Baritone was hard to balance in an orchestra.
The soloist would stand facing this horn.
Oh, they'd have, I'm sorry, they'd have about six of those machines.
And the soloist would stand where he would kind of get a perspective on all of the machines.
Now, it was wax records.
And when they started making the flat one, they were about that thick.
Now, there's no way you could ever copy those.
At that time, they would stand at the best place they'd find, and they'd play the solo.
And no such thing as correcting a note, or doing half of it again, or anything.
They would have to do the whole solo.
They would take those off, stack them up, put new ones on, wax discs.
Now the soloist would do it again.
They would start early in the morning, late at night, they're still doing it.
Because they can't copy it.
Now, if they sold 50,000 records, figure out how many times that soloist did that solo.
And yet, you very seldom, if ever, hear a mistake.
Glad they'd play solo all day long.
And that's the way it was done.
So we're going to have some of those records today, so that you can see them.
Do we have my list?
I know what it is.
Hey, you got that?
Yeah.
All right, now here we have a collection of fine old instruments.
I really enjoy this session, because it's the one time of the year
I get to take all these cornets out and look at them.
I just love to look at them.
Probably the first cornet made was made by a French company.
Okay, we've got it here.
The first cornet was made in France by a fellow named Couture,
Anthony Couture.
Now, it was a cornet that everyone wanted.
That was, I think, one of Herbert Clark's first cornets.
And very interesting, the lead pipe came out.
The reason for that was you could change lead pipes for a pitch of the horn.
You want a C, you put a different lead pipe in.
You wanted an E flat, you put a different lead pipe.
An A, you put a different lead pipe.
And so that made them play pretty hard, because it was always different.
There happens to be a finger hook on this.
Most of them there weren't.
But very cleverly, they put a water key so that you push one key and it opens two points.
And that was very clever.
Can't do that on the trumpet, but on this they did.
And the tuning slide was here.
Now, I'm going to let Dave play these as we go and you can hear.
Now, this is the kind of things those guys that played so great played on at that time.
Well, the thing about it is you always hear guys go,
just imagine how great they would play if they had modern good horns.
These little cornets from what's 1870, 1867 is when this was made.
These play easier than 90% of the trumpets you can buy in music stores today.
The upper range is easier.
They just get all down the instrument.
So that's an instrument that's 123 years old and it just effortless to play on.
So when you hear somebody say, think how they would play today.
Now, they play just fine on these.
Now, they really had intonation problems because they hadn't
worked the horn up yet where the intonation was taken care of.
But you know why they played easily?
They were open.
They were not small.
We'll get into that as we go.
Now then, after that, the first great American
cornet started with the Kahn Company.
Kahn was the first American manufacturer and it came to be a massive company.
I'm telling you, they sold so many horns.
I've got lists up there, 220,000, 320,000.
It's just amazing how many horns they put out.
Now, the first great American cornet was the Kahn Wonder.
Now, this was in 1885.
And this is the very cornet that's in the back picture in the Arbor book.
Now, beautiful little cornet.
And notice it had the same water key.
I always used to kid them.
I said, they played so fast they didn't have time to let the water out.
So they just would flip that and the water.
Now, everybody calls that a spit valve.
That's not true.
You don't have that much saliva in your mouth.
What it is, is when you play, your horn will get very warm through here.
And water condenses and forms so that it creates water in the instrument.
Like you'll notice some days, there'll be more water in your horn than on other days.
That's because of the weather.
Now, here was a very clever thing.
For intonation, notice this little set screw here and here.
Now, while they're playing, they could adjust with that finger.
So they had some clever ideas back then.
And again, the lead pipe came out.
You buy a horn at this time, you get a beautiful little case with it.
And it had all kinds of slides and little lead pipes and things in the case.
Because in those days, the players, it might be a guy out in North Dakota that
rode a cowboy on a herd of cattle.
And they weren't that educated as to music.
So they had to have all these different pitches and things.
So if it said cornet in A, they'd just put in the different slides.
Nowadays, we don't have that because most of them are educated into music.
No finger hook.
No finger hook.
In fact, on my horns, I always took the finger hook off.
Okay?
This is the old Con Wonder.
I looked for years to find one and it was very unsuccessful.
Then a guy in Florida called me and says,
I understand you're looking for a Con Wonder.
I says, yes.
They made the mistake of telling him who wanted it.
And I said, how much are you asking for?
He says, $2,000.
I said, well, I'll think about it.
And that was it.
Now, let that go.
So then I met Dave Evans and Dave never forgets.
I've had guys that I said I want a certain horn I'm looking for.
And they found one and they kept it themselves.
And that happened a lot.
I don't know why they kept it.
They weren't making a collection.
But that happened.
So I told Dave I wanted one.
And so I said, keep looking.
If you run across a Con Wonder, I want it.
And he can tell you the subsequent story.
So the lesson is just kind of like you just mentioned.
He says, I got a picture out of one of the old Con magazines.
He says, I've been looking for one of these for years.
This was like on a Wednesday.
So like that Friday, I'm at a music store in beautiful downtown Azusa.
And all of a sudden, I'm in this place getting these horns picked up for the school.
And up on the top of the shelf, there's this little kind of black bell
hanging out over the edge of the shelf.
And I asked for repairman to go, what's that?
And he goes, I don't know.
Some old coronet's been around here for eons.
And I went, well, can I climb up there and take a look?
So I literally got up on the shelf and climbed up there.
And I pulled this thing off.
And it was just black and tarnished.
And no valves, no slides, no leader pipes, no nothing.
So I kind of went like this.
And I rubbed really hard.
And as I'm rubbing, it starts to come out Con Wonder Coronet.
And I went, oh, my god.
That's exactly what the guy was talking about two days ago, right?
So I go to a guy who says, well, this is kind of interesting.
And he says, but there's no slides or valves or anything.
And he goes, oh, there's some case around here somewhere.
So I just go going through these cases.
And the back underneath the shelf was this little black case.
And I opened it up.
And it was like you'd reached through 100 years.
The purple ribbon was still in the case that said Con Wonder Coronet.
There was all the slides, including the changes to A.
The valves were laying in there nice and neat.
You open it up.
And on the bottom was an autographed Jules Levy mouthpiece
and an autographed Walter Rogers mouthpiece
without a dent or a scratch in it, right?
So I kind of put it all together, right?
And I just, I'm going, and it just went down.
And I go to the guy, I says, well, what are you going to do with this thing?
He says, oh, and I says, well, you know, I'm a trumpet player.
It'd be kind of cute to have this little lamp shade on it, you know?
Maybe drill a hole, right?
I said, what would you like for it?
He says, oh, I don't know.
50 bucks.
I gave him 50 bucks.
I didn't even negotiate, right?
So I go home.
Is that what you bought that for?
Hey!
Give me a hard time.
So anyway, so I go home, clean it all up, right?
Just threw some, I put a little bit of Pond's cold cream of water in the valves.
And he's just like.
It works.
So Claude had just got a brand new desk.
And you could, you know, you had to go and very gently put your books on it, right?
You couldn't even touch this desk.
So I go to my, I didn't call him up or anything.
Go to my lesson on Wednesday.
I take this big old clunky quad case.
And I go, right on his desk.
And he goes like, right?
And this is when he had the studio in Woodland Hills.
And it had a glass all the way around it.
Because you see out in the parking lot, right?
And I said, oh, hey, Claude.
I forgot my books.
I'll be right back.
So I open up the case.
So he's looking straight into the case.
And he's just steaming.
I'll kill him.
I'll kill him, right?
So this, I polished it all up.
I had it sitting right in the middle of my quad case.
And he's just like this.
And I'm out, open up the trunk of my car.
And I'm kind of looking in the window.
He's just kind of, you can see him storming.
All of a sudden, boom, he spots this bell.
Now, you've got to imagine this man in a quad case,
feet first, right?
Feet like this, right?
And he comes back.
I come back in.
He says, oh, I see you found it.
And I had the little case with me, the whole thing.
And he goes, where'd you get it?
I said, don't worry.
I said, it's yours.
You've been looking for it.
Don't worry about it.
So I just kind of gave it to him.
And this was the condition it was in.
This was exactly the way it looked.
And the case, the whole thing, was just kind of really neat.
So and this thing plays really, really free.
Just big and open and effortless.
So that's how we found this little beastie.
OK?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Little colleague, yeah.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
Ah.
Ah.
It'll polish up.
Oh, it's beautiful.
Yeah.
I haven't had time to polish them.
Can I borrow it for a while?
Yeah.
Nor the energy, either.
OK.
Now then, I always have to think a minute to see which order.
That was the car.
Now then, there was a repairman in Cleveland.
His name was H.N. White.
And he repaired instruments.
And everybody would come to him.
In those days, there was no such thing as a repairman.
You go to the factory, or you didn't get anything.
But there were some good repairmen around.
And H.N. White was one of them.
And he made a trombone for a young man named King.
And this guy named King was a very popular player.
And he made this trombone for him.
And all the other trombone players would play it.
And they liked it so well.
First thing you know, guys are coming in to White and saying,
make me that King trombone.
And it became so popular.
And it became the King Musical Instrument Company.
And that's where that came from.
That was in Cleveland.
And if you notice on the instruments,
it would say King H.N. White, Cleveland.
So that's how that company got started.
Now, he had a very good cornet out at that time.
And it took me a long time to find this.
And I'm not going into the whole story.
I found it.
But all these have interesting stories with them.
This one I found up in Oregon.
To make a long story short, I traded a trombone I had for this.
It was the Colicchio trombone that I got six years later
after I left it with him.
Remember I told you about that the other day?
And it wasn't the same horn I left with Colicchio.
Fortunately, it wasn't because it turned out
to be a classic, what was the name of that company, Martin.
It was an original Martin trombone,
which got very popular.
So I was glad when Colicchio finally brought that back.
And I had this.
And the guy traded it direct for me.
This was the pre-master model.
Now the master model became the very popular cornet.
That was the King master model.
Very long gone now.
But this was the pre-master model in 1893.
Now notice it had the same characteristic.
Triangle water key.
The lead pipe came out.
The valves were good.
Now these valves is the spring in the top or the bottom?
These had the spring in the top.
They had a three prong diamond in these.
That's the pre-master model, 1893.
It's a good old cornet.
Now these are gems.
I wouldn't take anything for these right now.
I've had several of my older students
try to get me to promise I'd will it to them.
I don't blame.
I do the same thing.
All right.
Now then, let's see.
We have the what?
Which one is that?
Oh, where's the master model?
Now that horn emerged into the King master model,
which came out in 1915.
Notice it was very wide this way.
But a very pretty horn.
The tuning slide was here.
Very pretty horn.
It holds comfortable in your hand.
But one of the characters had a rather small bell.
And it was a little tight.
It blew a little tight.
But this was the favorite instrument of Del Statoos.
He played that for a long time.
And it even sounds a little tight.
But that's a gem to have.
I think Bruce has one.
Don't you, Bruce?
Big sounds.
Very centered, though.
Yeah.
OK.
Now, as we take these, kind of put them together
so I know which one they are.
Everybody was trying things in those days.
Now, here it came in 1893.
I didn't realize that white was going that far back.
They were trying.
Notice all the different curves and the way
they curved the slides.
They were experimenting with things,
trying to make them play better.
And this was called the King Improv Perfecto.
And I don't remember how this was played.
Notice they had the heavy valve caps on them then.
But the valve caps were always pearl.
And that was the thing.
Pearl valve caps.
A little different tone, isn't it?
A real cornet sound.
OK.
All right, let's just take a minute.
We got the recording set up?
Yeah, we're set.
Can't come out of that shirt.
We can't go back and back with these.
So we'll have to take them in this order.
The first one was, what, on the mall?
I think this is one of my recordings, an old march
that we did, Billy Bay Arranged, as it's called on the mall.
An old Texas march.
Old march.
Can you all hear it?
Now, this is four trumpets.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
Now, this is four trumpets.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
I had a three trumpet section, but when I played,
it was four.
ok
Now England, over in England, they were really coming up
on some great solos.
Now England, over in England, they were really coming up
on some great solos.
We had great solos out of England, out of Spain,
We had great solos out of England, out of Spain,
France,
France,
and some were coming up in the United States,
Some were coming up in the United States at that time.
Incidentally, at the turn of the century,
there were 10,000 bands in the United States.
Just think of that, 10,000 bands.
Every town, hamlet, and community in this country
had bands.
And they really enjoyed it.
I started out playing in bands.
And we'd play in the park on Sunday.
They had the little band shell.
Everybody in town would be sitting around the park
with their lunches, enjoying a band.
And it was wonderful.
They would have band festivals, where
you'd have a band on every corner of the main section
downtown.
Very exciting days.
All right, now in England, there was a marvelous trumpet
player named Winford Pimp.
He just, now, we talk about high notes.
I'll listen near the end carefully,
because the recordings were not good.
But listen near the end at his tremendous range with ease,
and also his technique, and what tone
we can get on these records.
Now, all these recordings, you must remember,
they couldn't convey a good sound,
because they were just done by a needle vibrating on a disk.
It wasn't like the marvelous techniques of recording now.
So the tone, it never comes out like it would like it.
OK?
Thank you.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
High notes are not new to our era at all, and you notice these fellows just played them
right in the solo as though it's written right on the staff.
Okay, that was Winford Kemp.
Now, about this time, or before the turn of the century, there was a guy that became
one of the biggest names, and his name still lives forever.
That's an Italian name, Liberati.
Liberati was phenomenal, and there was nothing timid about his playing.
As you will notice.
Now, on this particular record, I think this is the one.
I call it the longest cadenza ever recorded.
The whole solo is a cadenza.
I think this is the one.
Okay, this is a Liberati, around, sometime around the turn of the century, made on the
old cylinder disc.
And is this the one where Edison announces it?
I think so.
Now, the voice at the start is Edison himself, of the Edison photograph, the one that invented
it.
And it was on a cylinder disc, which I'm so sorry.
Patty and I were cleaning out a lot of old books and things off of our bookshelf, and
I knocked it down.
And of course, as old as it was, it broke into a million pieces.
And I was going to bring it so that you could see what those cylinder records looked like.
But I don't have, yes.
So anyway, I don't have that.
But this was recorded on a cylinder record.
Now it was dubbed onto something else, dubbed onto something else, dubbed onto something
else, until finally I got a hold of it on a flat record.
I think I got it from Clark, as I remember.
This is a low-preliminary sound clip of it.
Played by T. Donna Liberati in a song record.
Played by T. Donna Liberati.
Played by T. Donna Liberati.
Played by T. Donna Liberati.
Played by T. Donna Liberati.
If you listen, I don't know whether you noticed or not, but you could hear him striking his
valves.
You could hear the valve.
Boy, he was just pounding them.
So that's not new either.
All the greats did that.
Okay.
Now then, as time went on, the instruments, tremendous sales in musical instruments at
that time, and the Kahn Company kept growing and growing.
By far, even today, it's no more.
It's gone.
They had a lot of young people come in that didn't know anything about the business or
anything, and they actually ruined the company.
So the Kahn Company is zilch anymore.
But it was, at that time, old CG Kahn.
I especially liked him.
He had good initials.
Anyway, he built a tremendous factory, and at that factory in Elkhart, Indiana, was the
greatest collection of musical instruments, antique instruments.
He had everything in there from the beginning up to the time.
This was in the 1960s.
For example, he had a tuba that was so big.
I think that one of those is in the Carl Fischer window upstairs in New York still.
This thing was so big, you'd stand by it, and it was way above you.
There's no way.
And that bell must have been like this.
But it played.
And there's no way you could lift it or carry it.
You'd have to have it in a wagon and pull it as the band was marching, and the mouthpiece
was like this.
But it played very well.
Kahn was very innovative.
He tried more experiments than any manufacturer, but he made good experiments.
He didn't just change the looks of the horn and then say, now I'll try a new model.
He really experimented and came up with some absolute gems.
Now, everyone that became a manufacturer of notes worked for the Kahn factory at that time.
Frank Houghton, who was a very good friend of Clark's, he was a trombone player, and
they worked together.
Houghton later came out with what he called the new proportion.
And this was a very nice looking cornet.
But by this time, notice the cornet's getting a little longer.
So there was a little transition.
But it's still a cornet.
It's still the same thing.
This new proportion, what's the date on that?
1911.
1911.
We got a Clark here?
Yeah.
Yeah.
This new proportion later grew into the Houghton-Clark model.
Okay.
Right sound.
Yeah.
I'll take it.
All right.
That was the Houghton.
Frank Houghton.
And he established his own factory.
And that company's still going today.
But it doesn't have the instruments not near what these were.
And then later, Houghton and Clark were very good friends.
They played together on the Sousa band.
Incidentally, my dad was clarinet soloist on the Sousa band way back then.
Now then, here's the Houghton-Clark model, which came a little later.
That's a very much sought after horn still.
In fact, a couple of the guys here just found...
You got one there?
Get that out.
I'd like to play that too, see how it is.
Go ahead.
This is 1921.
Okay.
Clark Houghton?
Yeah.
Right there.
Yeah.
You know?
That was an excellent horn.
Everybody played...
Krill played that.
Bahamard Krill, listed in the grass playing book.
That was his horn.
I have a picture of him at home with it.
You never know what condition these are in.
Which one is that?
This is another one, Houghton.
Just above it, it says made for Houghton.
Am I Houghton-Clark?
Yeah, it is a Houghton-Clark.
listed in the grass plant book that that was his horn I have a picture of him
at home with it you never know what condition these are in but yeah it is a
whole part I just found it two weeks ago at a swap meet in San Bernardino and I
did the same thing you did I started rubbing it all of a sudden Clark started to appear and you sold it for $70.
$70. Does it work? And that valve, that metal valve is gonna pull it up. Well that's probably where it goes up right now.
Probably not gonna hold it up with your fingers. That's the way it is right now, it's probably the stems. It is? Yeah it's gotta be fixed.
Oh that'll have to be yeah that'll have to go worked over. But you can still
find them. All right now Clark of course was coming up right after Liberati. He
spent most of his time on the East Coast at that time and in Toronto Canada and
that's why I feel that a lot of very fine trumpet players came out of Toronto
because Clark was up there teaching a lot and as he said he talked to keep the
wolf away from the door. At that time they all worked in a factory and had to
do their playing on the side. All right now Clark first recordings were made on
those in those playing in those big horns. So the band, it says the Sousa Band,
it was not the Sousa Band. Sousa would not record, never. He refused. He said that
recordings were going to ruin the music business. Well he wasn't far from wrong
because we still have the effects of recording on musicians. So he refused. But
they would record and they would use some of the guys out of the Sousa Band,
maybe 10, 15 guys. And the thing was they were still using the arrangements for a
hundred and twenty piece band. So and you'll notice you hear the bare tone
hawking through. I believe this is the one. This is Clark, it's called Caprice
Brillanti. What was the other name on that?
Showers of Gold was it? Yeah okay anyway the basic name was Caprice Brillanti.
He was a wonderful player. He was such a nice man and I looked at him like a
another fighter. He was just a beautiful person.
If you want to listen to some more of Clark's recordings, Crystal Records has
put out an historical album of Clark's recordings. Yeah okay Crystal Records
is just Herbert L Clark's recordings. Okay Trombone players, they also have an album
of Parker Pryor. Of course you've got to remember they've been over it up, over it up,
over that. Like I had a, oh I got mad one day, a student said well my professor
told me that Clark really didn't have a good sound. He was just an old cornet
player and I said really how old is your professor? He said 32. I said yes. I said
Clark's been dead for 45 years. How would he know? And you know that on the record
you don't hear this. Clark had the most gorgeous, it's just like velvet
dripped out of his horn. Just marvelous sound. Okay now about the same time there
were other engineers in the Kahn plant that branched out on their own. One of
them was called Bisher. We used to pronounce it Bisher but it's not, it's
Bisher. And he was experimenting and notice all the things they they were
doing in the horn, always trying to make them play a little easier. That was the,
that's the mark of an instrument. You make the sound, you're the one that plays
pretty or whatever you want. Does it play easy? That's all I cared about. I want a
horn that played. If it played easy that's the one I was interested in. I
didn't like that torture of playing a backed up instrument.
Oh very similar aren't they? A little small. They were tight. Some of the players like, like a
lot of the symphony players like small horns and I never have been able to
figure that. By small I'm talking about 460 bore. That's, that's not that small
but that was considered small especially when some were making 438 bore. Well that
is small. And the original Bach 459. So they were relatively small
instrument. Except, now when Kahn came along into the picture again, let's see,
well let's, let's mention the French first. Besson in Paris started manufacturing
trumpets and cornets. I tried to get Clarks. I had a beautiful Besson French
Besson cornet. Beautiful French Besson trumpet. I wasn't either that did, I
wasn't able to get either one when I tried. But in London there was one of the
brothers and he built a Besson cornet. That was not too great a cornet but this
is what it looked like. Notice all the vows in that era were rounded brass caps.
This blew rather tight as I recall.
Okay so then now Kahn was still coming up and you noticed with the whole what
that it was getting longer. Now Kahn put on, and this is a marvelous find, this is
all gold. Although it needs to be polished but it's all gold. And this was
called the Kahn New Wonder. So he was improving them all the time. Now this had
some great revelations on it. This was not used to tune it. That was
generally as you know as the tuning slide right? But this is not what it was
used for. The tuning slide was here and you could tune it to a Nat's heel. So you
didn't even bother with this. You tuned it here. Now that was the original tuning
bell as this is a dummy here. It comes around like this. Now what a much more
intelligent idea than that bell one company put out in the last year called
the tuning bell with set screws all over it and the bell had come off. And
can you imagine Tchaikovsky conducting and he says trumpet I want and the trumpet
wait a minute wait a minute I gotta fix this tuning bell. That was a silly
concept. Never worked and the bell slid on and off which meant that you've lost
vibrations where the bell picks up. This was an excellent idea. Now what did you
use this for? That was a quick change to A. Now you'll be playing along you get a
measure out and it says A and now you got a change to A. But every time you
pull this slide to put it in A by the time you got that slide out far enough
the horn was terribly out of tune. So he devised a very unique method. He got a
little trigger mechanism here and see it coming through the slides. All right now
watch him. Then you can see you pull that slide out quick all the slides pull.
Did you see that over there? Okay now I'll push it in. Slides all go back in. An
ingenious idea. Click there they are and the horn plays in tune. Play it in B-flat
L-A. This was about this was 1917 by the way.
All right now that later emerged as the convictor. Same thing see the tuning slide
out here and the same mechanism in here. Now this is what my first nine years of
playing was on a convictor and that was a good horn. Now this was terribly small.
The bore on this is 487. Now that's almost like a small trombone. And Larry Sousa fixed
this mechanism up for me when I got this one it was in bad shape. And we laid it in his
shop and every fine player in San Francisco would come in and they would say play this
horn. And everyone is wow that plays great. Everyone. What bore is it? We wouldn't tell
them. If you told them the bore size before they played it they said oh I can't play this.
It's all up here. This plays much freer and easier than those small horns.
This was 1925.
Everybody says well I can't fill it. What do you mean you can't fill it? It's open on
both ends. How are you going to fill it anyway? You get a vibration going through there. Okay
now then. Paris was getting in the act too and there was Paris Selmer. Now one thing about their
they made them very tight. They were small. But actually they're beautiful. I just love to look
at this horn. Look at all the ornate work on it all over the engraving, the valves, and I use this
on the CG Selmer. They screw inside the valve the caps do instead of on the outside. That keeps
these guys from falling into that idiotic loose of the valve cap to play into. Ridiculous.
This is a beautiful little horn. Now this was way back number 733. But look at the
it was a work of art. No way could you build a horn with that much artwork on it anymore.
It would go so far out of price you couldn't buy it. You also always hear about the French
sound and all that kind of thing. You hear these and you can kind of realize that nice light French
sound they had.
The French school was always that. You notice that in all the soloists when Dave played,
when Frank played, all the soloists and Piccolo. That was the French. All of their music was very
frilly. Okay, now then that's all the cornets, right?
There was one instrument company in Boston that made a very fine cornet. There weren't very many
of them made. If you find one you probably want to get it. I've had guys find them in swap shops for
$10. That's what swap means. They're a very good instrument. Clark played this for a long time.
He's the one that first told me about it and it was the old Boston three-star. Now I don't know
how this one plays yet. It belongs to Tom. This is yours. This is mine. Okay, play that.
The way this one came about by the way was we in Los Angeles threw Mr. Gordon a little surprise
birthday party. I think it was what? Your 33rd, right? 33rd party? Yeah, right. What we did was we
just rented this big hall in Studio City and everybody was in it but Claude. It was on an
early Sunday morning. Oh, gosh yes. Yeah, real early. The Gordon family was going to breakfast,
tee hee. They pull in. We've got like Charlie Collins out from New York. We got Manny Klein
up at that hour of the morning. Yuan, Racy, everybody. All the LA guys were there. It was
huh? Billy May came over. Yeah, it was just a great morning and so Claude and the family were coming
down to this hallway and I'm standing there. I go, good morning Claude. Dave, what are you doing here?
I go into this hall and we knew he'd been looking for one of these forever. Kind of like we got in
the con wonders like I need a Boston threestore. I need a Boston. So Bill Bing and myself and a few
other guys in LA found this back on the East Coast. Had it completely overhauled like this
and as a birthday and anniversary present we gave it to him at this party. So it was pretty neat.
That's how we came across this one but it was almost impossible to find this one. It was really
hard but yeah.
I notice it's a pretty horn. Well it's small. It feels so good in your hand and it's like
you're thumbing your nose at somebody. But it's just beautiful. It's like look at the beautiful
engraving. Now I had a great surprise for today but Zig called me yesterday and they're having
some problems lining the valves which have to be perfect and he says I can't get it up to you.
It's my own model cornet which I've been working on for years and it was going to be a big surprise.
Dave didn't even know about it. I was just going to say here Dave play this one.
I'm not going to tell you the bore size because you won't believe it
but it's beautiful. There's more than one size intermingled through the horn. We're going to
put out a special edition with that gold bell and silver with some engraving. That'll just be a limited
few and then they'll be available in brass or silver. At first they have to come from us
because Zig is making the prototype. I told him the other day I said Zig I've got 13 students that
want that horn bonafide order. It was dead silence and he says don't do me any favors.
So but that's what it's going to look like. Isn't that nice?
Beautiful. Let's see Tom's. I'm not really sure.
Yes another boss, a three star. I just had Larry do the work on it.
Yeah. What do you have any idea what year these are? Not yet. Not yet. Okay.
I'm actually see how this will look.
All I got was Dave looked at me on the corner of his eye.
I'll take it Tom. Look at this guy. Now if mine doesn't blow like I expected it won't come out.
In other words I designed this cornet and decided it's going to be the best cornet ever made
or it's not going to come out. It's not to make money. I never never make anything on these horns
but it's going to be a great instrument. So now then let's go on. There was in the brass playing
book you'll see some reviews on a Bahama krill. Now this is the guy that was studying with a player
in Chicago and the teacher told him he says on your way home you go by the lake
and as you go by the lake get out of your car and take that horn and throw it as far as you can
into the lake. You will never be a cornetist. He turned out to be one of the world's
greats. So that's why I don't like aptitude tests. You go to the school they give you all kinds of
aptitudes. Well you're good for this you're good for that. All right maybe they do have an aptitude
but that doesn't measure their desire to play. Now krill had the desire and he became one of the
world's greatest. You've read that review on him. Okay now this record, okay this is the arbon
carnal of Venice. That was the classic. So any of you that have your arbon book open it up in the
300s. It's the 11th solo and follow it along and try and remember what he did. This was the classic
of all time. I got this record from Clark and it was about that big around. It was the old big 12
inch record. Okay.
That's the classic.
All of my students are going to have to play that. Some of them are working on it now
and hopefully some will perform it at camp.
One of the guys especially that did you do that one last year? Yeah.
Okay now krill became known for his pen and register because no one knew anything about it
and it was a big mystery and even when they asked him he said he didn't know how he did it. That's
not true. He knew exactly how he did it. So give an example. He recorded some.
That goes on and on and he plays way down the whole thing and so forth. But I wanted to hear
how well they played them. It sounds like another instrument you know it's in tune
but he plays them remember what we talked correct. You don't play it with the lip. It's ah right.
International come later. I don't want to be very low. Okay.
Now in the long one of the guys that came along as a great soloist and could have had the crown
as the world's greatest but the poor guy drank too much
and he killed his career and finally it killed him. It was Bell Stakers. Now he recorded all
those solos recorded Carvalho Venice at one time or another. So this is Bell Stakers and Carvalho
Venice and he's playing that master model. We're going to find it.
State
is
I
["Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major, No. 2 in D minor, No. 3 in D major, No. 4 in D major, No. 5 in D major, No. 6 in D major, No. 7 in D major, No. 8 in D major, No. 9 in D major, No. 10 in D major, No. 11 in D major, No. 12 in D major, No. 13 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in
D major, No. 13 in D major, No. 13 in D major, No. 13 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major, No. 14 in D major.
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry,
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry,
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry,
I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, OK.
We recorded another one on the other side called Napoli.
Play a little bit of it.
We won't go through that whole one.
He is fast. He is real fast.
He is real fast.
He is real fast.
He is real fast.
He is real fast.
I liked it so well we went all the way.
That's good.
And all of you can do it if you want to work as hard as he did.
Are stager recordings available today?
Is it what?
Stager recordings.
Are there any stager recordings?
Oh, I doubt it. You might find some.
If you look around there's some rare shops and collectors, you know.
But I haven't seen one for years.
But that man could have had the crown.
But they need to take a break.
We've got a lot of good, great things coming up yet.
So let's stand up and take a few breaths.
Get out of the chair.
Just stay around but take a break for about five minutes.
Don't come up here.
That's why I don't like to take a break.
Okay.
Everybody here?
Well, close enough for jazz.
Let's go.
I see a lot of advertisements nowadays.
Somebody will advertise the only conical cornet.
The conical is where it's like a cone.
It graduates all the way.
And the trumpets are cylindrical.
They taper in the lead pipe.
Then they're absolutely cylindrical to the bell and they're tapered.
Now, I see a lot of ads lately that says the only conical cornet made.
Don't believe the advertisements.
It's impossible to make a trumpet or a cornet conical.
You can't do it.
Because you've got to cross the valves and they match up together.
And it's impossible to do that.
Where are those guys that were in the back row?
I don't know.
No, they'll be back in a minute.
So, but there was one.
I still don't know how he did it.
I've seen the specs.
But I don't know how it's done.
And that was a courtier.
Strange looking, isn't it?
But it's absolutely conical all the way through.
I don't know how you would ever clean these slides.
Because they won't pull out.
You have to clean it through the horn.
And the amazing thing is it blows very well.
It never became a popular instrument that it was sold on.
I think maybe because it didn't look that good.
And he made it in cornet and trumpet both.
What's the name?
The name, courtier.
C-O-U-T.
C-O-U-T.
I-E-R.
I-E-R.
H-I-E is what it looks like.
Where's my glasses?
The other thing about this one was they also came with this mouthpiece.
After Larry's speech of the day, I'm not going to play.
But it's like the mouthpiece is not round.
It's one of those convex, concave, whatever you want to call it, mouthpieces.
It actually fits on your lips.
Fit the tooth.
But after Larry's speech, I will not play that mouthpiece.
But an interesting part about blowing on this thing is there's no resistance.
It just goes right out because it's all that, you know, the cone.
It's just you blow on it and there's nothing up in front of you at all.
Now then, Selmer in Paris was not to be outdone.
And they came out with a trumpet probably early 1930s.
And this became known as the Louis Armstrong model.
Notice the valves how far from the front of the horn.
And when you first picked up that horn, you had to be awful careful.
You'd knock a tooth out because it's there before you think because your hand is there.
But again, it was that beautiful, ornate thing.
Now in the early Betty Goodman Orchestra, the trumpet section all had these.
And that's what they played and advertised, of course.
This is 1930.
Yeah, no kidding.
That had a very edgy sound.
And that was called the Louis Armstrong model.
All right, now then, as time goes on, Kahn, of course, kept building and building.
And they came out with a Besson copy, 464, and they called it their symphony model.
This was 1926.
This was a pretty darn good horn.
I finally got this, the third trumpet player in my section at Columbia,
he played this all the time, and I finally, after he quit playing, I was able to get it from him.
Now that was called the 2B.
And a great little trumpet, very popular.
This is my favorite one. I look forward to this one each year.
Yeah, I gotta watch Dave. He'd like to have that one.
Yeah, this one I want.
Good. Thank you, Kahn.
Now then, of course, the rage at that time was for high notes,
so they thought smaller would be able to play higher.
It wasn't, and it never will be.
But they did it, and they put the same horn and scaled it down to a 438, and that's small.
And they called that the 22B, and they put that out.
That became probably the most sold instrument in history.
At that time, I was a young player.
Every player in this country had this horn.
You can find these everywhere.
It's like I found mine in a pawn shop, and these things are, and they're interesting.
Yeah, they're heavy.
Yeah, but...
Now, the Martin Company...
22B.
Yeah, 22B. You notice it's edgy.
Now, the Martin Company started to build trumpets,
and they weren't too successful for a long time,
and then they came out with what they called the committee model, Martin trumpet.
I want to go into why that all happened.
I want to go into why that all happened.
Now, this one, I had two that were just marvelous.
And as I do, I let students buy them,
and I let a trumpet player in Columbia talk me out of one,
and practically gave it to them.
I was sorry later, because they were pre-World War II.
After World War II, the company was drafted into tooling for airplanes and stuff,
so the horn became non-existent.
After the war, they came out with another model of it.
It's not quite as good, but I got one, and it was one of the better ones I had seen,
and that was the Martin Committee model.
And I played that, in fact, it became a rage.
Back about 1940, everybody was playing it,
and they were light, lightest that had been brought out,
not as light as the some are now.
But it was a light horn, and it played very well.
I played it for several years.
I have to watch Dave, too, because he likes that.
Okay, now, about the turn of the century,
there was an Englishman named George Swift.
Where's Carl?
Where's Carl?
He doesn't want to listen.
Now, George Swift was a phenomenal player.
His only problem, as one Englishman told me, he said,
well, George was inclined to imbibe a little.
You know what that means?
He used to drink a bit.
So that was the English version of that.
He used to imbibe a little.
Now then, I happen to procure two of his records.
Is Carl there?
I can't find him.
He'll hear it.
Too bad.
All right, this is George Swift.
Thank you, George.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Always got to be a show-off, doesn't it?
When did he leave?
What's the dates under here, remember?
Fortunately, a long time ago.
I'm proud of you.
I'm proud of you.
Yeah, to begin the century, I'd say.
Yeah?
Made or didn't, then.
Next one?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, George Swift.
Now a one-armed trumpet player,
and you hear somebody like this playing,
what's the matter with me? His right arm is off. No, I think he was born that way. His right arm,
he can't, he's immobile. So he has his horn made on the left side, the bell is on the other side of
the mouth. He holds the horn and plays it. And Rich Hoffman did his solo the other day. It's
called Pianza Allegra. Rich did this on his concerts the other day.
I
knew
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Okay, now someone says, see, how does he do that?
He's holding, he's not using this arm, he's just holding the horn here, his fingering
is excellent.
Someone says, how does he do that?
He can't have any grip on the horn or anything, but if you see a picture of him, I've got
a picture of him, again, like all those guys, chest was like this.
Bruce, you have that picture, just like that.
In power and control, you let the air do the work.
I saw him perform in New York, and it was just marvelous.
Now Kahn keeps going, not to be undaunted, they came out in the 30s with what they called
their Conqueror, isn't that beautiful?
Now you'll notice that the tuning slide and lead pipe switch over and come in on this
side of the valve.
The valves all look like a Roman pillar, they're all concave.
There's no rim on the bell, it just comes up to a flare and stop.
Very delicate.
I've seen a lot of players play these, and boy that bell looks like it's all crinkled
up there.
Another fallacy, somebody comes in and they say, I want to get a dead bell, one that doesn't
ring.
Now the idea of this was, so it would ring.
So there's two theories, but the guy, all of a sudden it became a fad.
I want to get a dead bell, let me a dead bell besing.
You know what caused a dead bell?
Because you'll hear this theory, it was a bad solder job.
In the ring, when they curl it around and they put that ring in there, if the solder
wasn't a good job, the bell would be dead.
And if it was a good solder job, it would ring.
Another fallacy that you're told, oh find one with a dead bell, doesn't mean a thing.
The lead pipe here is encased, the lead pipe is actually inside this pipe.
George Wendt at Vegas had this, and I got it from him, and he was a very powerful player.
I played that for a while, I liked it, but it's awfully heavy.
If you look at it this way, it's interesting, because you're used to looking down and seeing
that ring the whole time, it's sort of art deco.
It's supposed to be very modern, and they had it in the cornet, and Kit just told me,
he has a cornet, I'll break his neck if I don't get it.
My younger brother has a Conqueror combo, the same thing.
That's almost extinct, but that's a treasure.
You see how the water keys are actually kind of buried inside of this little thing here?
It's really neat.
That's a beautiful horn.
That's still in mint condition.
Now, I happened to come on the scene, I was so worried about not having a good horn,
and I was afraid my old besan was going to wear out.
So I went over and started working with, I won't go into the story, it's too long,
but started working with some Bench trumpets.
And after much developing and working, I came up with what they called the CG Bench,
which happened to turn out to be the most popular trumpet they had.
It wiped out all their other trumpets.
They didn't even make, what was that other one called?
6X, they stopped making those.
Well, they had one that was a king, actually.
It was like a medium, large plus.
Anyway, they just quit selling them.
This one, I bet they made several million dollars on this horn.
I didn't get one penny, not one penny.
But that was the forerunner of the CG Selmer.
Fortunately, I didn't have all the things in this one.
This was just a developing thing.
But it turned out to be a very good horn.
Notably, it had very long valve stroke.
And the reason for that was that when these ports line up,
they have to, when they curve in the valve, the tubing,
when they curve it, they bump against one another.
And if you'll notice that some of the valves on your horns,
your plant have bumps in them,
if you look through the holes in the valve, they'll have bumps in it.
That's because they bump up against one another,
and there's nothing they can do about it.
That causes resistance in the horn.
We tried to take that resistance away by making the valves longer
so they wouldn't bump up against each other.
. . .
Oh yeah, it just sizzles.
It was a good one.
It got very popular, especially in Europe.
Now, the gem of all horns,
the best trumpet made up until the Selmer today,
was the French Besson Miha.
Now, Miha, M-E-H-A, was the trade name when it was sent to the United States.
There was another one that was sent to the United States, a Besson,
it was called Rapuaena.
So those were all Bessons.
Now, this one was the one I played on all my recordings,
all through the studio years.
This was a marvelous trumpet.
And some of the secrets out of here that I found and worked out,
which most of the manufacturers thought were just mistakes in a handmade horn,
and they weren't mistakes.
They were very hidden secrets.
And those are all incorporated in the new Selmer, plus some more.
This was very thin, and we made it thinner yet.
We took it out to old Earl Strickler and had him put it on a buffer
and thin it down even more,
because most of the manufacturer horns were very heavy.
And we wanted a light horn.
So we would do that, and this is very light.
One of the best ones I ever played was so thin
that if you did that with your fingernail, you'd go through it.
You couldn't use it, but it was just that old and thin.
This is a marvelous trumpet, and it just sizzled
and sang at tremendous power and control.
And that's all of my records that you hear.
This is the horn that was on it.
And this was what I played in the contest.
Okay?
Right now.
Yeah, that is a marvelous, it still is a marvelous horn.
I just don't like it to be used anymore.
I sold it twice and went through, oh my gosh,
like an act of congress, I finally got it back.
I was sorry I ever let it go.
And fortunately, it was still in good condition.
Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the horn.
It's a marvelous horn.
I sold it twice and went through, oh my gosh,
like an act of congress, I finally got it back.
I was sorry I ever let it go.
And fortunately, it was still in good condition.
Now, I talked about the contest.
We thought you might, well, you don't get a chance to...
Patty, would you make sure of the tape there?
I thought you might like to see.
After this contest, we did a show out of New York with the band.
Videos or anything going, turn them off.
You too, Shirley.
We cannot take this on video.
When I got it from ABC, the Dick Clark production tied me up
in a contract so tight that I don't dare let it be copied or used anywhere.
I'd be in court the next week.
So we need to make sure that that's off.
All the boys and everything thought you might enjoy seeing this tape.
Get that one over there too.
All recordings too, Todd?
Thank you.
This is kind of neat.
You have to just, I mean, ABC, Dick Clark, you've got to turn the stuff off.
Sorry on this one.
With the one time this week, you've got to turn the stuff off, please.
That's exactly the right place.
Oh, here I thought.
I've got to get audio going.
Here we go again.
Oh, no.
Where's Paul, maybe?
Coming back from New York, we had a string of 61-nighters in a row.
I got into LA to find out that I was scheduled to do a broadcast on the Lawrence Welk show the next day.
So I wasn't going to play this because I was tired, very tired after 61-nighters,
and I drove every inch of the way.
We had to rehearse in the morning over at the ABC studios,
and that wasn't my band, which is not really comfortable, but we had to do that.
Then we did the show, and Welk says, don't you get nervous?
I said, not anymore, Lawrence.
I said, there's too many performances, that doesn't bother me.
He says, well, do you want to pre-record it?
And if I'd have been smart, I would have said yes.
But I said, no, it's no bother.
He said, well, how about you want to put your music over by the piano?
So I said, no, that's okay.
Don't worry about it.
So we went ahead, and then we did the show, and some notes I'm not happy with,
but Patricia talked me in.
She got the tapes.
She's finding all these tapes for me.
It's just wonderful.
So we thought you might enjoy seeing that too, so we're going to run it.
Is it queued up?
Because it's in the middle of the tape.
We had to do that show, and that night we had to play the Palladium.
So it was an all-day playing session.
You did 61 nights, right?
What was it?
61 nights before you did this.
Thank you, and I'm...
Oh, yeah, you can use the tapes as you want on this.
This is all right.
Yeah, you can take these.
Go ahead.
Pat.
Pat.
What I just said, it's okay.
Enjoy the Dodge station wagon just as much as the Lemons family.
At this time, we have another outstanding guest.
A brother who won the title of the best new band of 1959
in a contest sponsored by the American Federation of Musicians
and the National Ballroom Operators of America.
He's a very, very wonderful musician,
and we thought you would enjoy hearing him.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
He's a very, very wonderful musician.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
Claude Gordon and his trumpet with Bavarian sounds.
believe a pleasure half of you hear with us on
believe a pleasure half of you hear with us on
believe a pleasure half of you hear with us on
the show
We're all proud of you, and congratulations on winning number one on the best new band
of 1959.
Thank you, Lawrence.
Thank you.
It's indeed a pleasure having you here with us on the show.
And how did it feel to you when you came in number one?
Well, actually, it was the biggest thrill of my life, Lawrence.
I was very thrilled.
It's hard to say.
I was on cloud nine, I guess, for a long time.
Still am.
We're all very happy, and we would like to play for the folks' arrangement that you
brought down for us today, so the folks can see why you won number one.
It's a very nice arrangement, and I might tell you, for your overflow this evening down
at the Palladium, you might ask them to come out and dance with us at Aragon Ball.
Well, I'll tell you what I'll do, then, Lawrence.
If you promise to do the same thing, send your overflow to mine.
Would you be good enough to announce your next number now?
I certainly will.
How about one of my new Warner Brothers albums, Lawrence?
It's called Mama's Gone, Goodbye.
The first second missed, the last note clear.
Now, how do you like this?
I give Claude Gordon the band full couple minutes to play one of his numbers, and he
makes a swing band out of my shit.
Well, it sure didn't take him very long.
Good luck to you on your tour this summer.
Last week we had a number sketch for you.
One of the things happened in that Bavarian balance, I've got to mention it, and to show
you that everything isn't always like a scene.
Did any of you notice where I had the memory lapse?
Yeah.
Quite a few.
All of a sudden, and the thought that went through my mind, why didn't I put that music
by the piano, like you suggested?
But all of a sudden, my mind went completely blank.
I think it was fatigue, really.
Sixty-one nighters, and rehearsal all morning, and still had to play all night.
Let's see, where can I latch on?
It only went two bars, and then all of a sudden I found I was right back on track.
Fortunately I listened, it stayed in chord, and it was no disaster.
No one else would ever notice it.
So that's why I wasn't going to show it, but then it's good to show you that we can
have these things, and they always happen when you least expect it.
Now let's not leave the trombone players out of this.
Skip from Blue Bells and Stinting, run through that, and Arthur Pryor was the trombone soloist
that was equal in those days to the Herbert Clarke on the cornet.
And there are still people today that claim that it's impossible to do what he did on his slide,
that he had valves, but he didn't.
And he learned how to play behind the barn on his father's farm.
And if his father caught him practicing, he'd have probably given him a good beating.
There was no way he was going to let him be a player.
Is that ready?
Not so fast, you don't even notice it when you listen.
Now let's listen to Arthur Pryor.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
He was a phenomenal trombonist.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
This next one is called Polka Fantasy.
Never had a teacher that just learned how to play behind the barn,
so he didn't have a teacher to mess him up.
He was one of the greatest trombonists that ever lived.
He started the whole trend for the future of trombone.
Now, we're going to play one more for you that I thought you might like to hear.
I told you we came in off the road,
went into the recording studio, made three takes of this record.
It's on my albums. It's called Brassman's Holiday.
We made this, and sometime later,
they were pushing Al Hurt to be a big name,
and Al called Billy May and wanted to know if he'd make the arrangement of Brassman's Holiday.
Billy says, no, I can't.
He says, there's nothing else I can do with it.
He says, it's Claude's arrangement, and you'll have to ask him.
So Billy asked me how I felt about it.
I said, give him my blessing. Go ahead.
Didn't become a hit anyway.
It was used in some motion pictures, but it never became a smash hit.
So I said, go ahead. He's got my blessing.
The strange part about it, I never heard another word.
He used it and made it.
I'm never going to thank you or anything else, which amazed me.
So anyway, we got it?
I don't know. We'll find out.
This is, as I said, it's on the album.
Brassman's Holiday.
Brassman's Holiday
Brassman's Holiday
Brassman's Holiday
Brassman's Holiday
I was in it during the recession.
Billy May was in the booth, and we did three takes and took the second one.
And that was it.
You didn't have time to learn anything.
We were actually reading most of it as we played it.
But I didn't feel too bad about Al Hurt doing the record, because his didn't become a hit either.
So it was all right.
I've had a lot of players call me, and you can try it if you want.
They took and slowed it down on the record to see if they could find misses in it.
And if you want to try it, it's interesting.
Okay, now we're just about running out of time.
But the gentleman from, what was that?
Clauses wanted to know, you said they slowed down Al Hurt, and it came up with a lot of misses.
You all heard that, I didn't.
Good thing you didn't.
Don't worry about it Claude.
How many misses did Al Hurt make?
I'm not going to say.
I'm not going to say.
Okay, now there's a gentleman from Anaheim Band instrument company down in Anaheim.
And he's got about three or four minutes to say a few words, and then we'll sum everything up.
Chris, is he here?
This is Chris.
Now, Anaheim Band is behind our Brass Festival 100%.
And sometimes you go into stores, it's difficult to find what you want.
You can't find the books, you can't find the instruments, you can't find the knot pieces.
But Chris was telling me that they have a complete supply of all the summer trumpets,
all the personal knot pieces, and all the books, right?
So he wants to talk to you for just a few minutes.
I wish we had more time Chris, but we're just about running out.
I wasn't expecting to speak at all.
How are you doing?
Glad to see you.
Good to see you too.
Well, just real quick, I don't know how many of you are local, I don't know where you guys are from.
But if you're not familiar with Anaheim Band, we're located in Anaheim,
real close to the corner of Lincoln Estate College.
We're a Bach Selmer Pro Shop, so we do carry the full line of Bach trumpets, Bach trombones.
In fact, we are the gods of Bach trombones right now.
Anybody needs a Bach trombone, please come down, we'll make a great deal.
We carry the full line of Claude Gordon Selmer trumpets.
In fact, I brought some down with me.
I've got the trumpets in silver and in brass, and I have a couple of sea trumpets with me.
I also have some of the CG mouthpieces with me.
I didn't know what you guys were going to have down here.
But we do carry the mouthpieces.
We're one of the largest brass woodwind shops in Southern California.
We carry a wide variety of stock.
I have lots of stock on hand at all times.
I've got lots of cards on me.
We do give student and pro discounts.
Other than that, we do carry also the full line of Claude's books and everything.
I do have cards on me if you ever need to.
We have a shipping department also.
We also have an on-the-premises, about a 1,500 square feet pro repair shop that's part of the Bach Pro Shop.
We have two full-time brass repairmen on staff at all times,
woodwind repairmen on staff at all times.
If it's an emergency, usually you can walk in and we can take care of things for you there.
Bam, you're on your way.
I'll be hanging out if anybody has any questions, or I'd be glad to give you a card with a number on it.
If any of you would like to try out the trumpets, I didn't know what the situation was today.
For the mouthpieces, let me know. I'll be around.
Thanks, Chris. Thank you.
It is a good shop. For all of you in that area, you can get it.
And they do give you good discounts on the horn.
Fortunately, here's a shop that carries the trumpets in stock.
There's not many stores around here.
Stores don't make it nowadays.
And you order something, you might get it in six months, maybe not.
Okay. All right, Dave?
Tom has a few announcements, I think, for cleaning up stuff.
No, I already announced that.
And he's all taken care of.
Now, you have some announcements or something?
I want to say that it's been a marvelous week for me.
Boy, I've enjoyed all of you. It's been a wonderful group of players.
I hope that we've inspired and instilled something into you that wants you to be one of the greats.
Because I can't over-emphasize. You can, if you wish.
It depends on where your values are.
And I'm going to be around for a long time.
Because I've got Patricia now, and boy, she has kept me going.
And she's just a gem.
So you can bet I'll be here.
And now then, some of the boys...
Are you in trouble?
The boys at the band?
You know what, Claude?
Before you sign off, I think that these kids and everybody else that's here
really needs to know what a tremendous privilege it is to have this man here with us.
And to have the staff that we have between Carl and Dave.
We've got some tremendous players that you would never have a chance to rub shoulders with anywhere else in the world.
And to have had them around to give you personal advice
and to be your friend all week is an unbelievable privilege.
This guy here has inspired more people inside and outside of the music world
because of his loving personality.
And to have it now quantitized and all put into a week of tremendous trumpet and brass teaching
is not duplicated anywhere else in this world.
And it's really Carl and Dave that came up with this concept.
And they helped Claude get things together.
And I think that we really owe these people a tremendous hand.
And we also are really privileged to be here at La Sierra University.
Dr. Favarito has made this week a tremendously enjoyable week for all of us.
She's solved innumerable problems as they've come up.
And working with Tom and Kent particularly, they've made this whole thing go very smoothly.
And it's not always that way.
I've worked in medical seminars and other places where I see the interpersonal stuff
get in the way of what the whole subject is.
So I think I would like to give these guys a real big hand.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
This is the proper...
Three lessons for six months.
When we started this, it actually gets...
When a group gets this large, you can't meet everybody and get that close to them.
But we tried to.
We tried to treat everybody like Claude treated us.
It was always very, very friendly and a total help flow.
And always being constructive.
And if you notice, every one of the staff that was teaching has the same type of viewpoint.
And we just want you guys to do really well because we've had a lot of fun with it.
And we hope you do too.
So that's why we're here.
A couple of things I want you to just be aware of when we hit on this as we went through the week
is that once you leave here, you're going to hear other data and other things and criticism.
You get that any time in any endeavor you go into.
I don't care what it is.
And what you have to understand is you heard myself play a complete solo recital.
You heard a Tuesday solo recital.
I was with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
I was out here for the whole week.
It came in very easy for him just to fly in for the day and play it and leave.
He didn't have to be here the whole week.
He uses all of Claude's material at Curtis.
I know.
I've had students go back, not necessarily to Curtis, to the Philadelphia area and study with Frank.
They call me up and go, Dave, it's the same thing.
I'm like, right.
What you need to understand is that how this instrument works is what Mr. Gordon says.
It doesn't matter what you want to have come out the end of the horn,
how you're going to communicate, but what you put in it is only one way to do it.
You've heard phenomenal jazz.
You've heard great, legit.
You've heard everything in between.
How can anybody criticize that?
Just think for a second.
You've heard every style of brass playing that you can think of.
This man here has been doing this now for 14 years.
Sometimes it was a nonprofit organization.
You didn't intend it to be.
That's right, yeah.
The love that this man has for all of you and for teaching and for helping,
and to me that's the mark of a great teacher, is the love of the art of teaching.
What he's given to all of us, the hours he has spent with Larry and Carl and myself,
with all the students, and what's so neat is we've always felt we were his only student.
That's an incredible feeling to walk into a studio and feel like we're the only one this man's teaching.
That's an incredible amount of love that he's given to us.
The idea of this whole camp was to have you meet this man and feel that love that we've all felt,
and to get this technique, this learning technique that we've tried to communicate to you.
This man is a great, great man.
I owe and all of us owe him a great deal, and we always will.
I get embarrassed, you know.
Now, I've only got one thing to say.
Go home, please remember, get the sense, study, practice, practice, practice,
and be careful going home.
Enjoy your year, and I hope we see all of you again next year,
as we'll try and have another great program for you, and now go practice.
Thank you.