Post 449: BAND-LEADER'S HEADACHES

I have written before about how hard it is to be a good and successful band-leader. Special skills are needed, as well as the capacity to remain cheerful and optimistic even when things are going against you. I think it is very important for all musicians to be supportive of their leaders. It is the leaders who obtain the gigs and who have all the hard work behind the scenes.

I would not want the job. I don't consider myself capable.

However, I receive an occasional request (perhaps once a year) to provide a band for an event; and I do my best to oblige.

I was once asked at about a month's notice to provide a band for a birthday party to be held during a Bank Holiday (i.e. a national holiday here in England). I contacted some fine musicians and they all agreed to play. So I replied to the enquirer that I would provide a band. But in the week that followed, two of the musicians found they could not play after all. Oh dear.

I struggled to find replacements. As the gig was on a Bank Holiday, when there is a great demand for bands, most other musicians were already booked. Two string bass players were available but I obviously could not use both of them. It was almost impossible for me to recruit a satisfactory balance of instruments.  Eventually I managed to put a band together, though it involved one player kindly switching from his usual instrument to his 'second' instrument which he had not seriously played for a couple of years.

Luckily, in the end, The Pops Coffee Cappuccinos worked well together and the gentleman and his guests were very happy with our music. We were warmly received and made to feel part of the party. In addition to being well supplied with drinks, we also enjoyed the bonus of an excellent meal.

But the experience had given me a further reason for admiring our regular band-leaders and sympathising with the headaches that are part of their job.

Post 211: TELEPHONE BANDS

Maybe you have heard the expression 'telephone band'. Even if you haven't, you can probably guess what it is. There are plenty of telephone bands operating in the field of traditional jazz.

What happens is that a bandleader builds up a list of traditional jazz musicians in his region (several for each instrument) but does not decide on the personnel for a particular gig until after he accepts the booking.

He then phones round among the musician contacts, taking into account the need to have a balanced band, with the appropriate range of instruments, and also considering which musicians live nearest to the venue, thereby avoiding long-distance travel. The chances are that all the musicians on his list are already players in other bands, so he can book them only if they do not already have a gig on the date in question.

Such bandleaders and agents are in a sense 'fixers'.

Even some well-known bands are in effect 'telephone bands'. You may notice frequent changes of personnel. This is because the leader has a pool of musicians from whom to choose.

Usually it is musicians who have gained wide experience and met many players over several years who decide to run one or more telephone bands. One - or more? Yes, we have a famous fixer in England who sometimes puts out two or three telephone bands to play in different places on the same date - for example on New Year's Eve, when there is great demand.

Obviously a telephone band is a strange animal, because musicians can find themselves playing a gig with others they have never met before.

Such bands will not have had a rehearsal and the tunes they play will probably all come from the straightforward core repertoire. It is unlikely that any of the musical arrangements will be very complex. But audiences tend not to notice these things.

However, the standard of a telephone band can be high. This is because such musicians are usually very experienced and competent. With a few brief words, they can agree the way a tune is to be treated. (For example, the leader might whisper: 'Play A - B - C - then back to B and stick on B').

They can even look like a regular band, especially if the leader requests them all to turn up in shirts of the same colour.

The musicians themselves derive pleasure from meeting, listening to and working with each other. They can learn much and also with good teamwork produce some high-quality music.

There are dozens of telephone band performances in England every week; and I guess the same must be true of most other countries where traditional jazz is played.

If you are thinking of setting yourself up as a bandleader, this is one way of going about it.

By the way, a telephone band is in some ways similar to a 'pick-up band', though not quite the same. Pick-up bands are put together for special projects, such as a providing a backing group for a recording, or accompanying a singer on a tour. They are likely to be technically highly-skilled; and they are also likely to rehearse seriously together before undertaking the work.

Post 121: OLD MEN PLAYING JAZZ

I was invited to play a jazz gig recently in a band that had been put together just for the occasion - a 'telephone' band, as you might say.

When I turned up, there was no trombone player, but we had two reed players - clarinet and saxophone.

We three were required to be the 'front row', with the rhythm section behind us. So I had the clarinet player on my left and the sax man on the right, with me in the middle playing cornet. Before we started, we had a chat and commented that we were obviously quite elderly.

We all revealed our ages and - guess what - the combined total of the three of us was 243 years! We wondered whether that was a record for the front row of a jazz band.

My guess is that there are plenty of bands these days whose front rows could beat it.