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Category: American Culture
Posted by: an okie gardener
Powerline links to two must-read posts by VDH on American culture.

03/11: Jazz Trombone

Category: American Culture
Posted by: an okie gardener
As regular readers of this blog know, I am a jazz fan. What I have not shared yet is that in my younger days I played trombone, including jazz. (At about the age of 15 I heard Stan Kenton at the Kansas City Jazz Festival pronounce it trum-bone and I've said it that way ever since.)

So who are the great jazz trombone players?

When I was in high school, the man to imitate was J.J. Johnson.

From 1991, he's still got it. Here from the same concert. From back in the day.

We also tried to copy licks from Kai Winding. With the 1949 Metronome All Stars. And Winding and Johnson together in 1982.

When I started playing jazz in high school, I tried to imitate Jimmy Cleveland. Here in an interview and solo from 1958. Only I had to cheat and double-tongue some of the riffs he could single-tongue.

And we would have imitated Bill Watrous if we had his upper register.

Trombonists never get the spotlight in the same way saxophonists and others do, but we know the value of the strange-looking horn with the slide. Artistry in Rhythmn, the Stan Kenton Orchestra, and Malaga.