After I had been in LA for a few weeks, I was reunited with trombonist Thurman Green. We had met about a decade before at the Naval School of Music; he was in the Navy and I was at the Army Element--both were based at the Anacostia Naval Station in D.C. Thurman quickly introduced me to
trombonists Maurice Spears and Donald Cooke. I remember meeting both at the weekly big band jam sessions at Grant's Music Center, in mid-town. It was one of 'the' spots to mingle and meet other musicians and, most of all, get known.
The reason Green started with the two musicians above soon became significant. Both were not just trombonists, Spears was a copyist and contractor and Cooke was a contractor/arranger. All things that were important to what I was in direct need of. Knowing contractors meant that your phone would be subject to ring more often than not when gigs became available. As a composer/arranger also, I needed to know other arrangers. Also, since I had a 'decent hand' when it came to writing manuscript; knowing a copyist came in handy too. The relationship between the four of us was rewarding musically, spiritually, financially, socially and personally for many years afterwards.
However, the main reason for this story is that I was thinking about how the four of us would meet every week that we were all in town. Sometimes two or three of us would meet. We played parts from big band charts mainly. Tightening up reading, phrasing, etc. Sat and talked of other players, bands and the like. We discussed who we thought the best arrangers were for trombone parts. You name it, we talked of it. We talked about about the trombone groups JJ and Kai had too. I even did a transcription of a chart--You're My Thrill-- for the group from a sketch JJ had given me when he lived in LA. A beautiful A cappella thing.
At the beginning of these gatherings we did the usual individual warm-ups and then decided what we would play that day. Before getting together on one of those days, I was thinking how cool it would be if after we got the horns warm, we could warm-up on something all together. I remembered a little booklet that my trombone teacher , Dr. William Cramer (FSU), insisted that all of his students kept in their cases. He would have us play from it in group sessions; it is how we warmed up. So, I drove to a sheet music store in downtown LA and picked up four copies of that little book. It was of Bach Chorales arranged for four trombones. Then, off to Spears' crib--that is where we met. After everybody begin to wind down their warm-up, I passed the booklets out and said let's do number 18, it's one of my favorites. Everybody was OK with it; I counted off and from that day onward, we never had a meeting where we didn't play from the little booklet; it was thin and about the size of a DVD case.
Years later, Spears would be one of the founders of "BoneSoir", a group that I made a couple of charts for back in the mid-90s. I feel certain that he had thoughts of us playing together since both he and Thurman were part of that band with George Bohanon and Garnett Brown.
Anyway, we always enjoyed those chorales--it was a break from the Jazz parts we played so often. Kind of a scale balance, if you will. No pun intended. We even noted that we would have made Bach proud. And, even joked that we were Bach's Trombones.
