Swing Fever Blog

I have performed at more than 500 weddings and I have booked other bands for many more of the big events, and I still love them. I come to this topic with a bias; I love live music and I sincerely believe it ads a tremendous amount to the overall event. Depending upon how large a budget you have there are a plethora of entertainment ideas and combinations you could choose from. One of the most memorable parts of your event will be the entertainment. You and your guests will still be remembering the fun that was had, long after guests have misplaced (or eaten) the chatchke or chocolate at their place setting.

If you are having a wedding party you will need some entertainment. There are serious foodies that invest in very fine food and wine, perhaps a celebrity chef, the dinner is the entertainment. That is rare and they are generally a smaller group of close friends and family. For most events, music will play a role; how big a role and whether you decide to use live or prerecorded music are generally the big questions. I will make the case that live music ads visual stimulation as well as listening pleasure. If a guest does not dance, he/she will enjoy watching a good band, along with watching others dance. If the band has a PA system they will play recorded music on their breaks and sometimes you can arrange that the PA stay up an hour after the band stops. Whatever songs you want, that the band doesn’t cover can be provided that way.

Ideally, some decisions about music should be made before you sign on to a venue.  There are certain venues that are music friendly; they have very few restrictions about music. There are others that are music friendly, but have terrible acoustics (this usually can be lived with, if you choose the right professionals). I know of a number of venues that do not allow any amplification. If you have your heart set on a vocalist, such a venue would make vocals impossible.  Examine your priorities and expect to compromise to get an overall best result.

There are some venues that are acoustically challenging, though they may be very grand.  As with all of the decisions you will face planning a wedding, you have to sacrifice some part of what you’ve dreamt of, so that another part of the dream can be fulfilled. You will be examining your priorities through all of the planning process. If it’s live music that you want, skilled, professional event musicians are the best route for overcoming bad acoustics. They can put out the energy that you desire at a low volume. Many venues prefer recorded music as they feel they can have better control of the volume with only one DJ to go to with their concerns and directions.  Unless it is a venue rule, their preference does not have to affect your decision.

Outdoor venues pose a different set of problems. If the weather changes you will have real humans who want to stay dry and warm – if you can do it for your guests, you should be able to do it for the band as well.

• Is there a dry, hard, level surface for the band to set up on? If there is no electricity and no drums involved, then the need for dry, hard and level shrinks.
• Is there electricity; can it be accessed from the spot you want your musicians to set-up?
• Do you have a favorite kind of music or a favorite band that you see in clubs? If you think that your favorite band or style of music will be enjoyed by your guests, go for it.  But it will make your choice of venue even more important. Bar bands have very different issues to deal with than events bands, choosing a more flexible venue, and a venue with better acoustics may be paramount.

In choosing a band, some of the questions you could ask yourself would be:

• Do I have people of different ages and tastes to please?
• Do I want music at the ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner and party? Most professional, events bands have a musician (or two or three) that can play for your ceremony; some can do classical music, some might suggest jazz standards or pop ballads. The most cost effective way to get live music for your entire event is to find such a band and have them start as a solo or trio and then ad to the group. Generally the full band is booked for four hours (dinner and then dance sets), the additional couple of hours (ceremony and cocktails) are done with one, two or three players.
• Do you have a group of guests that would enjoy dancing? Or would background music or more of a show be preferred? Only you can answer those questions and if you can’t, then I can tell you that generally there is a wide range of ages, and usually at least some guests want to dance.

Today, more than ever entertainment choices are affected by budgetary considerations. There are excellent bands that have worked for years, but perhaps don’t have the name recognition of other bands and you can save some money there. Many bands work in different sizes; a six-piece may work as a five-piece, and cost less. Though prices vary around the country, I will posit that professional bands run between $1500 on up to $10,000 – with the bulk of great bands between $2500 and $5000.

Because events bands and bar bands are by and large separate entities, most couples don’t come into the process with a band in mind. I recommend a reputable booking company. They can present many alternatives in style and price. Such a company should be licensed, have insurance, and have a good reputation with their former clients, with venues and with musicians. Musicians often charge booking companies less (because they get consistent work) and therefore using a company should not greatly increase the price of the band.

A little perspective related to the fees charged by professional musicians.  A serious musician has spent quite a bit longer studying music than a lawyer has getting his BA and then studying law. That said, if you enjoy grunge rock and your family and friends will enjoy that too, and you can find a venue that is ok with it, you might cover the band for very little money. But on the other hand, if at your ceremony you want the Four Seasons, by Antonio Vivaldi, then jazz for the cocktail hour, dinner jazz or pop ballads while guests dine, then swing, ballroom, Motown, disco and current material, you will need a professional, variety events band.

December 14, 2010 is Clark Terry’s 90^th Birthday. For those for whom the name rings only a distant bell, trumpeter Clark Terry has been one of the most respected and renowned players of the past 60 or 70 years, having served long apprenticeships in both the Ellington and Basie bands, and led many versions of his own band, resulting in countless recordings.

Two of those recordings were with Swing Fever. Both were studio recordings done in San Francisco, and came at the culmination of numerous concert dates touring around California. (Both are available – just ask us.)

Our first meeting with Clark, grew out of our determination to honor Pee Wee Claybrook, the fine saxophonist who played with Swing Fever for many years, but had never recorded. He and Clark had known each other since the early says of WWII. Clark loved the idea of joining us on a CD. It turned out to be just in time, as Pee Wee died shortly afterward.

Knowing Clark has been one of my great personal thrills in my 32 years of Swing Fever. One indelible memory is driving Clark over the Sierra and through Feather River Canyon – the shortest route between two concert gigs – while we played a tape of Duke Ellington’s Bal Masque concert. Clark had been part of that concert, and his running commentary on the performance should have become a CD by itself. One thing that stood out is Clark’s delight with Billy Strayhorn’s arrangements for that performance.

Among Clark’s virtues is his effervescent humor. In the be-bop era it was considered taboo by the serious frowners (Miles, etc.) to display humor onstage or in the music. Dizzy Gillespie, for one, attracted criticism for his clowning, but got away with it because he was Diz. The same can be said of Clark, who followed humor-wise, in the tradition of Armstrong and Fats Waller, at the same time as his music hued closer to Charlie Parker. It’s a playfulness, scarcely diminished by numerous physical ailments as Clark has aged.

Another memory grew out of our first recording where, due to Clark’s failing eyesight, I had the trumpet parts blown up to double size. However, the printer had mistaken my instructions, and expanded the parts to a factor not of two, but of four. Having no time to correct the error, we arrived at the Mobius recording studio, and presented Clark with trumpet parts on huge posters. Some artists of Clark’s renown might have taken this as a colossal insult, but Clark laughed about it then, and hasn’t stopped yet.

I will include the recollection tomorrow in my telephone birthday greeting. If it doesn’t elicit at least a chuckle, I’ll know I have the wrong number.

Here’s a reflection for us:  Dave Brubeck, who just celebrated his 90^th, and Clark Terry were born just days apart. What a contrast in backgrounds – hardscrabble in St. Louis, horse ranch in California – and in their contributions to American music. My only encounter with Brubeck was the one I recounted on the previous entry (though treated to numerous Dave and Paul stories by Joe Dodge, Brubeck’s early drummer and ours) but I grew to know Clark quite well during tours and recordings, and later a visit to his and Gwen’s home in New Jersey.

And then just a very few years ago, my wife Laurie and I met them in Manhattan for dinner at the Jazz Standard, where Frank Foster’s Big Band was playing. Frank was then recovering from a stroke, and was unable to manage his saxophone, but yanked out a trumpet, which he could operate with his good hand, and lured Clark to the stage for a trumpet duet. The place was full of musicians. The great thrill for Laurie and me, besides the music, was sitting with Clark as musicians crept over by ones and twos and threes to pay tribute, reminisce and chat. The camaraderie among those players, mostly younger, mostly black, seemed tremendous. It felt like community.

Today, December 6, 2010 is Dave Brubeck’s 90th Birthday. Many Swing Fever fans will recall that Joe Dodge, Brubeck’s drummer in the mid-1950s, (Jazz Goes to College, etc.) was our drummer for 15 years. So I was treated to a lot of Brubeck and Paul Desmond stories.

My favorite is one Dave Brubeck told himself. I have it on tape somewhere. It was during the days of the Brubeck Trio, which was doing quite well as a trio, with no notion of adding a saxophone, but this pesky guy named Breitenfeld, who’d recently changed his name to Desmond, kept coming around trying to latch on. Brubeck had been shooing him off, but one day the doorbell rang, Dave’s wife, Olie, went to answer the door when Dave said, “If it’s that Paul Desmond, for God’s sake don’t let him in.” But Paul, who always had a way with women, charmed Olie, who weakened and suddenly there he was standing in the living-room.

Then one thing led to another, as Dave Brubeck tells it. Very soon afterward we began hearing the Dave Brubeck Quartet.
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My own personal Dave Brubeck story goes back to 1960 or ’61. I was 20. Hitchhiking around the country, I had parked myself momentarily with an old family friend in Westport Connecticut. The mother in the family was a horse trainer, and one afternoon the phone rang. It was Dave Brubeck whose ranch was nearby. He had looked her up in the phone book.

He explained that Playboy Magazine had awarded him, of all things, a Shetland pony. It was there at that moment running in the field. While it wasn’t exactly ornery and mean, it was very certainly untrained. Could Mrs. Barnard come over and have a look at the pony? He was worried about his boys. They were crazy about the pony, but it was strong and wild, and they might get hurt.

Mrs. Barnard asked if I wanted to come along. Pass up a chance to meet Dave Brubeck? Was I crazy?

While Dave and his wife talked with Mrs. Barnard, I went out with the boys, two young teenagers, to run the pony. It was more a matter of the pony running us. At one point it bolted ahead with me holding on to the rope. I felt I didn’t dare let it go, and suddenly I was running, being pulled really, at what felt like 45 miles an hour. Let go? Was I going to be known as the guy who let Dave Brubeck’s horse get away, and maybe run clear to the turnpike to be killed by a passing truck? Not me!

About 100 yards down the pasture the pony jerked sharply to the left and I, still holding fast to the rope, swung out on a long, treacherous arc, skinning my knees. But that brought the pony to a stop.

The boys took me back to the house to attend my skinned knees. Dave and his wife were more sympathetic than Mrs. Barnard, horsewoman that she was, who thought I ought to know better. Not one of them seemed to realize what a hero I’d been. I’d held on. I’d held on and, what’s more, I had saved Dave Brubeck’s horse.

Bryan Gould
Bandleader, Swing Fever

Swing Fever celebrated Billie Holiday’s birthday with their show at the Panama Hotel, in San Rafael California, on April 7th, 2009; as we have done for most of the last 20 years.

Billie Holiday may be the finest singer jazz has produced. She is surely the most legendary. Her recordings with Teddy Wilson’s studio groups in the mid-1930s startled the jazz world and brought her attention that rarely faded until her early death in 1959 at age 44. Her problems with men and dope brought notoriety along with fame. That became part of the legend too. The recordings made in her declining years continue to fascinate fans sixty years later, a fascination that sometimes approaches necrophilia, as Billie became known as not only jazz’s greatest singer, but also its most publicized victim. In the early recordings her songs are, for the most part, fresh and hopeful. Later the songs reflect mistreatment, self-sacrifice and her failing voice reflects a hopeless grinding downhill journey. Every one of us knew where it would all end. Her death (she was arrested for narcotics addiction on her death bed), resulting from her problems and at a relatively young age, was the capper, stamping her legend in bronze.

And still there is the music. Billie’s forte was not the Blues, as popularly supposed, but the standard American popular song, and how she could enhance, imbue and transform the best and even the most trivial of these songs still brings a thrill to both ear and heart; at least my ear and heart.

Our Billie birthday tributes give the band a chance to crack out many of the songs that she sang so beautifully. Most of them, such as “Foolin’ Myself,” “This Year’s Kisses,” “I’ll Never Be the Same,” have dropped almost completely from sight. The easy conclusion is that the songs didn’t last because they didn’t stand up as quality songs, but that’s far from the truth in the case of the three that I just mentioned, or for many others.

Billie Holiday started to catch the attention of the jazz listening public with those early Teddy Wilson recordings. In 1936 she was a distinctly new experience. She did not possess a large voice or have a large range. She, like Bing Crosby before her, was perfectly matched to the new development, the microphone, which was merciful to smaller voices and introduced intimacy. Al Jolson and Bessie Smith had to project to the back row of a theatre to be heard. Suddenly singers were singing in natural voice. Billie was also absorbing the lessons of Louis Armstrong and, more directly, the tenor saxophonist Lester Young, and the result was fresh improvisation and phrasing. Not always to the composer’s satisfaction, Billie bent melodies to make them right for her. In some cases this was driven by her lack of range. The Cole Porter song “Easy to Love” stands out. The melody went beyond her comfortable range and to avoid the problem, Billie never sang the composed melody, but simulated it, ducked the highest and lowest notes, and put the emphasis on expressing its lyrics and making it swing. She did the same with many songs, whether in her range or not.

My favorite Billie Holiday is the many records made in the mid-30s under the direction of pianist Teddy Wilson as leader. Those records were some of the early thrills for me, all the more so because of wonderful solos by Bunny Berigan, Lester Young and the rest of the pickup groups, glued together by Hammond and Wilson. I listen to them now and the same thrills return, as well as new ones.

The old story passed around for years, is that a lot of sappy pop tunes were thrust upon Billie in the early years, and that the only dignity brought to this ephemeral commercial pabulum was Billie’s singing. It’s true, some of these songs, as songs, were genuine forgettables. In some cases they were dashed off by a few pop writers and were never intended to survive more than a day. A few of the songs were already standards (“Love Me or Leave Me,” “Summertime,” “Am I Blue”) or became standards through outstanding band recordings or by Broadway musicals, or when vocalists like Crosby and Sinatra bullied them into prominence. And then there was a third kind, the many more songs that deserved to survive and didn’t. Whatever became of “Easy Living,” for instance, or “I Hear Music”?  Some songs like these never became hits, or if they were hits for a moment you didn’t hear them two or three or five years later.

In the 1940s the quality of Billie’s songs grew as her singing and popularity ripened. The songs were also more doleful, reflecting the blue side of love and life, and one, “Strange Fruit” starkly political. And then came the decline, the sound of brake shoes digging into the drums.

Billie Holiday died at 44, her career spanning a scant 25 years. Jazz is famous for short careers. Think of Nat King Cole, Bunny Berigan, Chu Berry, Bix Beiderbecke, Charlie Parker. But compare Billie’s with the long careers of, say, Big Crosby, Frank Sinatra (more than 50 years), or Tony Bennett, still singing in his 80s, and Herb Jeffries, in good voice at 96. Nearly all of Billie’s 25 years were, for both music and lifestyle reasons in the spotlight. Some of it, most of it, is great music. But for me, none of it recaptures the freshness of her early songs and those eternally precious Teddy Wilson recordings where “Ooo, Oo, Oo, What a Little Moonlight Can Do” could become a classic.