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Topic: Reviews & Recommendations / Getz-Brookmeyer reissue (finally)

I just got the 1961 recordings of Getz and Brookmeyer from my daughter. Compared to the 1953-54 recordings I mentioned above, This session seems much more subdued. The artists have mature more, which is only natural, And there seems to be less urgency in their playing. The rhythm sections are very different. But both sessions 7 years apart are great. Maybe it’s just me but in the 1961 sessions i am already hearing that a major change in jazz is here or on it’s way at least. Many people put the “end of an era” so to speak at 1967 but I put in more like 64-65

Topic: Players & Bands / Tenor players deserving of wider recognition

This of course is higly arbitrary depending on your age, geographic location, the era you have in mind etc, My first picks are:

Harold Land
Hank Mobley
Jerome Richardson
Charlie Rouse
Gil Bernal
Jackie Kelso

Topic: Players & Bands / Herbie Hancock talks about his Buddhist faith

I am not big on organized official religions. I kind of look at religion like an “action painting” or free improvisation…you make it up as you go along incorporating everything up to the moment. But I did find this interesting. Here’s a snippet.

That was totally new to me. Because, to me, the idea of religion was always that you had to believe in it for it to work. But then I thought, Wait a minute. Gravity works whether you believe in it or not. And then, Should religion be weaker than natural science? And he said, “This religion is really based on cause and effect and actual proof.” So I said, “Well, I have nothing to lose. Sure, I’ll check it out.”

con’t here:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/225/story_22533_1.html

Topic: General Jazz Discussion / Jazz/Music Humor

Yogi Berra Explains Jazz

Interviewer: What do you expect is in store for the future of jazz trumpet?

Yogi: I’m thinkin’ there’ll be a group of guys who’ve never met talkin’ about it all the time…

Interviewer: Can you explain jazz?

Yogi: I can’t, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it’s wrong.

Interviewer: I don’t understand.

Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can’t understand it. It’s too complicated. That’s whats so simple about it.

Interviewer: Do you understand it?

Yogi: No. That’s why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldnt know anything about it.

Interviewer: Are there any great jazz players alive today?

Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead. Some would kill for it.

Interviewer: What is syncopation?

Yogi: That’s when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don’t hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they’re the same as something different from those other kinds.

Interviewer: Now I really don’t understand.

Yogi: I haven’t taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.

Topic: Players & Bands / Have You met Miss Kelly?

If not you really should. She is a monster at 15 years old. She does it all, plays alto, writes her own tunes, has a great vocal style and she swings. You can hear samples of her here:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/gracekelly3

What she’s accomplished in her first 15 years.

Recipient of the ASCAP Foundation 2007 Young Jazz Composers Award for the title track of “Every Road I Walked”

Winner of 2007 Downbeat Student Music Award, Arrangement “Summertime” (Every Road I Walked)

Berklee College of Music Superior Musicianship Award at 2007 Berklee High School Jazz Festival.

Winner of four 2006 Downbeat Student Music Awards, Jazz Instrumentalist, Pop/Rock/Blues Instrumentalist, Original Composition – “Fast Metabolism” (Times Too), Jazz Vocalist – Outstanding Performance.

Grace Kelly was the youngest ever winner of Fish Middleton Jazz Scholarship at the 2006 East Coast Jazz Festival.

Winner of two International Songwriting Contests in 2006 & 2007 for her composition “Filosphical Flying Fish” (Every Road I Walked)

Grace Kelly was judged the top woodwind soloist and the top vocal alto soloist at the 2007 Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival.

Grace currently studies saxophone with Lee Konitz, Jerry Bergonzi, and Allan Chase. Grace has also studied jazz with Cedar Walton, Phil Woods, Jimmy Heath, Dr. Billy Taylor, Dr. Nathan Davis, Curtis Fuller, Chip Jackson, Winard Harper, Carmen Lundy, Rebecca Parris, Steve Wilson, Willie Jones III.

Grace has completed the four year certificate program at New England Conservatory Prep School as well as Brookline Music School

Some Notable upcoming performances : Dave Brubeck Quartet,
Twin Cities Hot Summer Jazz Festival, Dakota, Marblehead Jazz Festival,
Tanglewood Jazz Festival, Detroit Jazz Festival, Pittsfield Jazz Festival,
2008 Kennedy Center Mary Lou Williams Woman in Jazz Festival

www.gracekellymusic.com
www.myspace.com/gracekellymusic1

Topic: Players & Bands / Me'n Modern Art

Already released are two different concerts; One called “Vol I the Abashiri Concert” and another “Vol TT The Last Concert”.

She released them through “CD Baby”

http://cdbaby.com/cd/artpepper

Topic: Players & Bands / Me'n Modern Art

I was lucky enough to meet Art Pepper as a youngster growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950’s. I guess I was about 16 at the time and just beginning to find my way around the tenor. So one night I was with a guy who was about Art’s age and he was pretty good friends with Art at the time.. His name was Dave Nagata. He was a commercial artist at the Saul Bass studios and I think he was instrumental in the title design for the film “The Man with the Golden Arm”. Dave was a friend of my parents but he took me under his wing so to speak. At that time we were living on Larissa Dr. and Dave lived on Descanso so I was at his house a lot and he had a great record collection that he let me listen to. Well one night he asked me if I’d like to meet Art Pepper. Well you can imagine the reaction of a 16 years old that was into jazz. So Dave took me with him to see Art. At that time Art was living pretty close by on Fargo. It started out all wrong because I hated driving on Fargo. it scared the hell out of me when I tried to drive up it myself and now I was in the car with a maniac driver going up this hill with the engine straining and me thinking the engine would die and so would we.. But every thing turned out fine and we got to Art’s house but Dave made me wait in the car when he went inside. I was in the car for what seemed like ages then they both came out side. Well it was like seeing Superman. I got real nervous and it was Mr. Pepper this and that till he told me it would be a lot easier if I just called him Art. We sat there for a while smoking cigarettes and he asked me what horn I played and who I was listening too. An pretty soon it became real easy to talk or to listen . I’d ask a question and he’d give me a really detailed but understandable answer. I think Art’s love of the music and his craft would have made him a really great teacher but at that time he was too busy playing. Anyway it was a really beautiful night, the talk, the atmosphere and I remember the smell of jasmine especially because I was from the East and I never encountered that smell until we moved to California. The best advice he gave me wasn’t about soloing it was about reading. He told me to practice reading until I could sight read fly shit off of a wall. And the next time I saw him he repeated that to me. I guess he knew that it was easier to blow out all your fuses than to sit there and study sight reading.
We smoked a couple of joints that Dave had brought along but there was no talk about heavy stuff. As a kid I never remember any of the musicians who were horse rustlers talking about that to me or my friends. A lot of people said that it was hard to talk to Art Pepper but I never found it so. The same was true of Miles Davis. In those days a 16 year old kid didn’t know how to talk too much and become a pain in the ass. The other thing was that back then musicians were accessible. They walked around. They lived what they played and played what they lived and that’s why I think, they played with much more passion and urgency than my generation. That was an important night in my life and even now, some 50 years later, it is still as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. Now that I think about it, it was a good thing we smoked a little because between the grass and the conversation I don’t even remember going down Fargo to get home.

This was originally part of a letter I wrote to Laurie Pepper when I found her on the Net. I revised it and sent it to a few good friends and Ted suggested that i put it here. Laurie and I grew up around the same time in LA and she has a great web site dedicated to Art’s work and her own. The book “Straight Life” is as much Laurie as it is Art. Art Pepper fans, you wont be disapointed. And you’ll find that Laurie is quite a person on her own. Check it out.

http://straightlife.info/

Topic: Players & Bands / On Chet Baker

A couple of days ago someone told me that they thought that Chet Baker was not an important figure in jazz. So I went to revist Baker but realized I had lost the Lps of him that I had. So I downloaded some of my favorites from Amazon:
From “Chet Baker Quartet wuh Russ Freeman
Russ Job
Happy Little Sunbeam
Isn’t It Romantic
Maid in Mexico

From the Sextet album:
Little man You’ve Had a Busy Day
Dot’s Groovy
Tommyhawk

From the first “Chet Baker Sings”
But Not For Me
Look For the Silver Lining

When I see my young friend I’m going to stick these tunes in his ear.

Topic: General Non-Jazz Music Discussion / Jazz World Confronting Health Care Concerns

By Nate Chinen
Not quite a month ago the alto saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo had a major
seizure while driving his elderly landlady to a store in Brooklyn. “I
was convulsing all over the place,” he later wrote on his blog,
“grabbing onto the steering wheel violently, biting my tongue and
basically acting crazy.”

Fortunately, the driver behind him recognized what was happening, and
after quite a bit more drama — in the ambulance, Mr. D’Angelo
apparently tore through the straps of his gurney and tried to strangle
an emergency medical technician — he underwent testing that revealed a
large tumor on his brain.

Within days he was scheduled for surgery and had started writing about
the experience at andrewdangelo.com. He was clear about the fact that
he had no health insurance.

The health of jazz, as a topic of conversation, has long inspired a
lot of hand wringing among sympathetic parties. When the focus turns
toward the health of jazz musicians, the discussion assumes a
different, less abstract character: solicitous and supportive. Most
people who play jazz for a living are accustomed to self-reliance.
When that system fails, they lean on one another.

“Since I’ve been on the scene, there have been benefits for musicians
that were in need, unfortunately, because so many of us are,” the
guitarist John Scofield said in the rear stairwell of the Village
Vanguard on Monday night. Along with the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano
and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, he was playing a benefit for the
bassist Dennis Irwin, who has recently been struggling with a spinal
tumor.

“I’m lucky enough that I can afford health insurance,” Mr. Scofield
continued, “but a lot of people can’t. On a jazz musician income
they’re getting by from gig to gig, keeping the roof over their heads
and feeding a family, and insurance doesn’t happen for them.”

Mr. Irwin, the regular bassist with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and a
seasoned sideman who has logged extensive time with Mr. Scofield and
Mr. Lovano, is another uninsured musician.

The sudden struggles of Mr. Irwin, 56, and Mr. D’Angelo, 41 —
musicians equally beloved in different sectors of the New York jazz
grid — have abruptly brought the issue of health care to the
foreground within jazz circles. Their stories have resonated with
musicians, who tend to absorb news of this sort with a tribal concern:
jazz is a collaborative art, after all, even if its artists are the
ultimate individualists. It may seem negligent that so many jazz
musicians lack basic health-care coverage, but monthly fees through an
organization like the Freelancers Union easily run to several hundred
dollars, and these days many gigs in New York literally involve a tip
jar.

The Vanguard sets were a great success, financially as well as
musically (it was Mr. Scofield’s first time performing with the
orchestra, and he nailed it). There will be another, bigger chance to
support Mr. Irwin on March 10, when Mr. Scofield and Mr. Lovano
spearhead an A-list benefit concert in partnership with Wynton
Marsalisand Jazz at Lincoln Center. Proceeds will go to the Jazz
Foundation of America, a nonprofit organization that provides aid to
jazz and blues musicians.

Mr. Irwin, speaking this week from his Manhattan home, said he had
just completed radiation treatments. His ordeal began in December with
a mysterious back pain. The Jazz Foundation referred him to the Dizzy
Gillespie Cancer Institute and Memorial Fund at Englewood Hospital and
Medical Center in New Jersey, which regularly provides free treatment
to jazz musicians. (Dr. Frank Forte, the institute’s director and a
jazz guitarist, treated Gillespie there during the final months of his
battle with pancreatic cancer in 1993.)

The Jazz Foundation does considerably more than steer musicians toward
services. Its mission also involves protecting musicians from
eviction, malnutrition and other misfortunes.

“We get 60 cases a week like this, each having its own urgency and
desperation,” Wendy Oxenhorn, the executive director, said. Referring
to Mr. Irwin, she added, “I’ve never seen an outpouring of so much for
one musician.”

If that’s true, Mr. D’Angelo runs a close second. “I knew that I was
loved,” he said this week, “and I knew that this musical community was
close. But I had no idea the compassion ran this deep, and I mean that
from the bottom of my heart.”

Mr. D’Angelo is a key figure in Brooklyn’s underground jazz scene, and
part of a peer group that includes the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, the
drummer Jim Black and the saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Speed. He
has a strong new album, “Skadra Degis,” on Mr. Speed’s label, Skirl,
with Mr. Black and the bassist Trevor Dunn. Its release party had long
been scheduled to take place Friday at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope.

The gig is still on, but now it will be one of more than a dozen
benefits for Mr. D’Angelo, spread across the United States and Europe.
Mr. Black, Mr. Speed and Mr. Dunn will perform, as will the
multireedist Oscar Noriega and the drummer Matt Wilson, two more of
Mr. D’Angelo’s close compatriots. A separate benefit is scheduled for
next Thursday at Barbès, also in Park Slope.

Mr. D’Angelo has received financial support from both the Jazz
Foundation and the MusiCares Foundation, a program of the National
Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. His operation was a success in
the sense that most of the tumor was removed, with no adverse effects.
But further analysis revealed that he has an especially serious form
of brain cancer.

“The doctor said that without treatment, I will live for five years,”
he wrote last Friday, after receiving the news. “Seems dismal and I’m
unwilling to accept it.” He is likely to begin radiation treatment
shortly, having ruled out further surgery.

Apart from the dramatic nature of their stories, Mr. Irwin and Mr.
D’Angelo are sadly not exceptions. A few years ago, for instance, the
tenor saxophonist Michael Blake had two operations for a ruptured
appendix. Having no insurance, he chose Bellevue Hospital Center for
its sliding-scale fee; he also received assistance from MusiCares. He
still has no insurance, though he is obviously aware of the risks. (He
just spent the weekend at Bellevue watching over Scott Harding, a
prolific record producer and engineer who was critically injured in a
car accident last week. Mr. Harding does not have insurance either.)

The situation is the same for Mr. Speed, who has spent a lot of time
visiting Mr. D’Angelo in hospitals lately. “A lot of my friends,
myself included, don’t have insurance, which seems really idiotic,
especially now,” he said. “But it’s also very expensive to get
coverage.”

It should be noted, too, that even musicians with health coverage
encounter serious financial needs; this is one of the major areas of
concern for the Jazz Foundation. The costs associated with an illness
can go well beyond the literal costs of treatment, because a musician
who is not working usually translates to a musician without an income.

Last October the pianist George Cables, who does have private health
insurance, had simultaneous transplant operations, receiving a new
liver and kidney. While the procedures were covered, he has not been
able to earn a living during his recovery. So he was fortunate to have
two all-star tributes presented in his honor recently, in San
Francisco and New York. He received about $12,000 from each, he said.

But the money wasn’t the only benefit, so to speak. “One of the best
things for me was how people came together, and expressed their
concern, and expressed their support by coming and playing,” he said.
“That was better than anything.”

Benefits for Andrew D’Angelo: Friday at the Tea Lounge, 837 Union
Street, near Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 789-2762,
tealoungeny.com; Feb. 28 at Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue,
Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177, barbesbrooklyn.com. Benefit for
Dennis Irwin: March 10 at the Allen Room, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz
at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 721-6500, jalc.org.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/ar…ic&oref=slogin

Topic: Books & Magazines About Jazz / West Coast Jazz, Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960 by Ted Gioia

Alan, that’s a great post. Brings back many memories again. Like you I never got tangled up in the East Coast vs West Coast thing and neither did any of my friends in LA. Back in Rochester N.Y. There were a few who did but I never really got with them. Just moving to LA was good for me as a kid. It opened my mind to many things i might have otherwise missed. Alan pardon me for asking but if it’s not too much could you tell me when you moved to LA? It sounds like we are about the same age. If you moved there in the 50’s we may have a lot of common ground around us.

Topic: Books & Magazines About Jazz / West Coast Jazz, Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960 by Ted Gioia

I haven’t mentioned how I found this site but it was all because of one of the finest works available on the subject of West Coast jazz. And that is the book by the same name by the founder of this site Ted Gioia. It is a very complete history, the most complete to date. I was most fortunate to be growing up in Los Angeles in the fifties and I got to meet many of the players Ted writes about. Most of the time I met them in a simple daily life way. In those days people were far more accessible then they are today. There was no paparazzi nor were there any stalkers etc. Life was different then, more simple and more direct. I have a million wonderful stories about that era. That’s is essentially why I bought the book. I wanted to share those stories with my children so I started to write each adventure down and email it to then together with an appropriate piece of music of the era. Ted’s book filled in many of the details that I had forgotten. I thought this was a way better thing to tell my kids than try to answer the question “Daddy what did you do in the war?” Ted’s excellent writing style makes the book an enjoyable read that you just can’t put down. It is the first time in decades I have made notes in the margin of a book or underlined specific passages. The book also helped me from exaggerating things that were foggy in my mind. I am not the kind of person who tell you they caught a six foot large mouth bass (I almost did but that’s another story) but time works on the mind.

When I opened the book the first thing that greeted me as that wonderful picture of Art Pepper walking up Fargo Hill. He lived on that street and I lived pretty close by . Fargo Street,, BTW is the steepest city street in the world. When I saw that picture I knew I had to have the book.

Ted takes you from the wild days of Central Avenue to the more subdued atmosphere of clubs in Hollywood at the beginning of the 1960s. From the romping tenor battles between Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon to the “chamber” jazz of Chico Hamilton and Jimmy Giuffre The journey is well worth your time and you’ll find Ted is a great guide and I should know because I walked those very streets and haunted those clubs all during that time.

Will you finally be able to define West Coast Jazz when you finish the book? Probably not. It’s mystic is its charm to a great degree. If I push it, maybe West Coast Jazz should be called L.A: Jazz because that’s where it was born and was bigger than any of the other cities on the coast. Or maybe West Coast Jazz is simply jazz played on the West Coast, at least some of it certainly is in places like the California Club and on Central Avenue. There are a lot of parts to be put together and Ted’s book is a great help in doing so.

Maybe another part of it was the arranging as done by the musicians who lived on the West Coast at the time. On the East Coast the lines were generally played in unison or with simple harmonies between the horns but West Coast players built different textures, some what richer and thicker I would say, with harmonies like Mulligan, Giuffre and Shorty Rogers. These three, along with Kenton were the ones who were the kernel, so to speak, of the West Coast movement. For a great comparison listen to the Pacific Jazz recording of Tiny Capers by Clifford Brown. Here the East Coast sounds like the West due to the arrangements of Jack Montrose, a musical compatriot of Rogers and crew. Then listen to “Trickeydiddler” by Shorty Rogers. They are two different tunes but with the same air one by a West Coaster and one by and East Coaster. Coming to the West Coast did something to most people. It took off that sharp edge that the East Coast had. It made folks more laid back. “Relaxin at Camarillo” maybe?

Sometime I think these guys were just playing what they saw and what they lived. The expressed what was going on in the street, the air and attitude of LA 1955 through their music. When I hear this music now the images I see are palm trees, MacArthur Park, people strolling rather than hurrying like we did in Rochester New York. I feel the climate and the sea breeze from the Pacific. That is a key “pacific”. They played what they saw and who they were. When i was 16 I heard Ornette for the fist time in a concert for kids at Jazz City. He asked me what I thought. I said that I liked it but didn’t understand it. I said it was confusing to which he answered something like, “Hey kid have you been out in the street today?”

Ted’s book brought all of this out in me and I am forever grateful. Thanks Ted for a great adventure in reading and in sound.

Topic: General Jazz Discussion / Jazz/Music Humor

Thank you Stefano for making a home for humor.

Topic: What's Happening? / Harmony's night out.

C, E-flat and G entered a bar.

The bartender said, “Sorry, I don’t serve minors”.

The E-flat left and the C and G had an open fifth between them.

After a few drinks, the fifth was diminished and the G was out flat.

An F entered and tried to augment the situation but was not sharp enough.

A D entered and excused himself to the bathroom, saying “I’ll be just a second”.

An A entered but the bartender wasn’t convinced that this relative of C was not a minor.

Then the bartender noticed a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar. “Get out right now’ he yelled “you’re the seventh minor I’ve found in this bar tonight”.

The next night the E-flat returned to the bar in a 3 piece suit. The bartender said “You’re looking sharp tonight. This could be a major development”.

This was the case, when the E-flat took off the suit and stood there au natural.

Eventually the C sobered up and realized he was under a rest.

He was brought to trial, found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and was sentenced to ten years of D.S. without the the possibility of a coda.

On appeal, he was found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, because the accusation was bassless.

The bartender decided he needed a rest—and closed the bar

Topic: Reviews & Recommendations / Getz-Brookmeyer reissue (finally)

Great clip. Thanks.

Topic: Reviews & Recommendations / Getz-Brookmeyer reissue (finally)

If you’ve never heard these quintet recordings you are in for a treat. They were recorded in 1953 ans 1954. They were originally recorded by Norman Granz for the Verve label. Now a British company called Avid has remastered them and released them. Getz and Brookmeyer are both at the top of their game. Two different but equally effective rhythm sections. This double album is an import but available from several different American sellers. It’s dirt cheap and well worth the investment.

Topic: What's Happening? / A little humor from the brass section

WASHINGTON D.C. – Each year thousands of people are killed, maimed or annoyed by trombones. The statistics of head, neck and even shoulder injuries sustained by reed players, french horn and string sections seated within reach of the deadly seventh position are truly shocking… not to mention forced early retirement due to the ever-increasing hearing problems reported by classical musicians of all types who are forced to play the music of Wagner, Mahler and Brahms, as well as hundreds of alumni of the Herman, Ferguson, and Kenton bands and devotees of Kid Ory, Jack Teagarden, Abe Lincoln, Jim Robinson, and Lee Gifford.

There is current legislation pending in Congress to restrict the sale of trombones and equip them with child-safety devices. The influential trombone lobby is, of course, opposed to this. There have even been several proposals for requiring a so-called “trigger lock” on all bass trombones!

Every year there are reports of hundreds of innocent children, attracted by the shiny brass and smooth, seductive curves of an unattended instrument on a stand in the corner of a room or in an unlocked case who are traumatized for life by the attempts of a playmate to get a sound out of it, or who may suffer a collapsed lung or the effects of hyperventilation by trying the same effort themselves! The owner’s feeble “I didn’t know the slide was unlocked” is no excuse! Trombones should be stored out of reach of children.

Efforts to enact a mandatory 10 day waiting period to purchase a trombone – which would simply allow a reasonable period of time for law enforcement officials to cross-check the purchaser’s name against an international list of registered trombone offenders and Slide-O-Mix addicts, have been repeatedly thwarted by the powerful Conn-Selmer-Yamaha(CSY) lobby. Law enforcement officals are particularly alarmed over the increase in crimes involving use of the “sawed-off” trombone or “sackbut”. Legislation is also pending in several progressive states, including New York and California , to make carrying a concealed alto trombone a Class A felony!

Some governors feel that there are sufficient laws already on the books that simply need stricter enforcement- such as the 1932 nation-wide ban of screw-on bells, the indiscriminate use of Pond’s Cold Cream or KY Jelly and unsupervised emptying of spit valves on public property. Filthy unsanitary habit which will help spread the flu this year. One popular response to the spread of delinquent behavior is the imposition of mandatory longer sentences for those using a trombone while committing a crime (“Use a trombone – Go to jail”). Surveillance video tapes have proven especially effective in identifying violators of this statute because career criminals have often tried to avoid convictions by having their lawyers insist that what eye-witnesses reported as a trombone was really only an AK-47 or other legal assult weapon. Strict enforcement has been especially effective when used in conjunction with the new “Three sharps, you’re out” statutes that have already been approved by many state legislatures.

Of course the automatic and semi-automatic valved models – both piston and the Middle-European rotary, are much more dangerous than the traditional single valve trombone. Interpol has also reported the sudden appearence of rear-blasting Cavalry models that were thought to have been completely eliminated during the Great Confiscation mandated by the 1918 Treaty of Versailles signed by representatives of every civilized country of the period. You may recall that those instruments were melted down and became an integral part of the Trans-Atlantic Telephone Cable that helped to unite America and Europe .

It is believed that the new sources of these WMD’s are isolated factories in rural China . The awesome destructive power of the double trigger bass trombone could never have been imagined by the founding fathers when they granted us the right to keep and bear arms.

Remember: When trombones are outlawed, only outlaws will play “I’m Gettin’ Sentimental Over You”.