© -Steven
Cerra , copyright protected; all rights reserved.
Lead players,
those who perform the principal line/melody in a big band, rarely get much
notice or attention from the broader Jazz audience.
There is usually
one in each section of a big band – trumpets, reeds and trombones – and “in
addition to playing the high part, the lead player decides matters of phrasing
and articulation for the section as a whole. Lead playing is a specialty
requiring particular skills, and lead players are frequently not as adept at
improvisation as others in their sections.” [Robert Witmer, The
New Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz].
There are of
course exceptions to this last point , but even in Randy Sandke’s excellent
essay on The Trumpet in Jazz in Bill
Kirchner, ed., The Oxford Companion to Jazz,, lead players such as Maynard
Ferguson, Cat Anderson, and Ernie Royal are mentioned more because of their
prowess as section leaders and their ability to hit stratospheric high notes, rather
than as soloists who have contributed as one of the instrument’s stylists.
Thanks to a friend
in southern Oregon
As a result, and
with special thanks to him, we learned that trumpeter and flugelhorn player,
Buddy Childers, became a triple threat over the years: lead player, soloist
and, ultimately, big band leader where his skills were on display in both
capacities.
Interestingly, as
Harvey Siders explains in the following segment from his insert notes to Just
Buddy’s CD [Trend/Discovery[TRCD -539], Buddy’s first big band under his own
leadership didn’t happen until he had been in the business almost 30 years.
“You can take a
trumpet player out of a big band, but you can't take the big band out of the
trumpet player. Case in point, Buddy Childers, whose trumpet and flugelhorn
skills have graced or goosed many a big band: Count Baste, Woody Herman, Benny
Goodman, Quincy Jones, Benny Carter, Charlie Barnet, Georgie Auld, Clare
Fischer, Bob Florence, Frank DeVol, Les Brown, and above all, Stan Kenton.
How many musicians
can boast of beginning a career by breezing through an audition with Stan
Kenton? Childers can.
He left high
school in Chicago Man.
Misplaced modesty.
Even then there were few trumpeters who could touch him, how else could he
explain accumulating eleven years with the Kenton band whose complicated,
demanding charts separated the men from the boys - and often separated the men
from their chops!
What separated
Childers from his life-long ambition to form his own big band was a series of
activities that tend to rob the talented of their most precious commodity:
time. In Childers' case, they included playing with many bands and combos,
writing for so many of them, becoming involved with photography as a full-time
occupation, and his obsession with flying. (Childers has been a licensed pilot
for nearly 40 years.)
All those
time-stealing detours also kept Buddy from issuing his first album as a band
leader. (He did front quartet and quintet albums in the 50s.) He had to leave Los Angeles
Buddy eventually
moved back to Los Angeles
Along the way, hhe
made a beautiful recording with composer-arranger Russ Garcia that really
showcased his talents as a soloist.
The recording is
entitled Buddy Childers with the Russ Garcia Strings and on it Buddy
displays the fluid facility that is a characteristic found in the work of many
of the more widely recognized Jazz trumpet soloists.
What isn’t often
heard in the solo work of others is the beautiful, “legit” sound that Buddy
gets on the horn, his precise execution of the technical aspects of playing the
instrument, and the complete command of breath control that allows him to play
long phrases and embellishments with ease.
If you will forgive
the play on words, Buddy was certainly The Man when it came to The Horn,
whether it was the lead or the solo chair.
After listening to
Buddy’s beautiful sound it’s no wonder that the clarion call of the angels was
Gabriel’s “trumpet.”
Here’s a video
tribute to Buddy that features him performing Matt Dennis’ Angel Eyes from the Buddy Childers with the Russ Garcia Strings CD.
