Defcon Level: Trombone

I want to talk about risk. No, this doesn’t pertain to national security.

Today I took a risk by not taking my phone with me when leaving the house… Let me explain. Today I decided it would be the day I would get my main horn fixed. I have had this weird dent in the lead pipe of my trombone and finally decided to get it fixed, after months of playing my backup “Custom Z” horn. When I was leaving my house, I was listening to the Fabulous Slide Hampton album with Joachim Kuhn, Nhop, and Philly Joe Jones. While I took a couple of steps away from my house I could tell that the music was starting to turn static, as I was walking away from my house. I had two options. 1. Play it safe, go back home, and get my phone. 2. Go on with my day and deal with it. I chose option two. I’ve never done this before, so although it might not be as big of a risk as other things, it was still a risk. I had to ask people on the street to google the location of the brass workshop, and easily enough a kind bystander just said, “take the 2 to Coxwell and go west”. Just like that, I was now dropping off my horn to get it fixed. Instead of being in my own musical world where I listened to music while I traversed the city, I did it for the first time without. That risk paid off. My ears were open to the sounds of the city, focused on the nice weather, and not needing that pressure of “internalizing a trombone player's sound” while I walk, rather than just enjoying the walk for what it is. I could practice the trombone without looking at my phone, and I only decided to go home because it was starting to get dark out. A stupid risk is leaving home on an empty stomach! Like I did…. 

More importantly, I am going to talk about a range of trombone players that took various levels of risk in their playing. Since we are talking about the risk, this is going to be about Jazz trombonists. Not that playing classical trombone doesn’t include a lot of risks too! They are just different kinds of risks.

Tommy Dorsey is Defcon Level 5 

Jack Teagarden is Defcon Level 4

JJ Johnson is Defcon Level 3

Slide Hampton is Defcon Level 2

Frank Rosalino is Defcon Level 1

At Defcon level five we have Tommy Dorsey. Defcon level 5 is described to be “fast pace”. This correlates to little to no risk. A normal state. You can tell that the DEFCON levels correlate to the periods in which the trombonists come from. Tommy comes from the “safest” jazz background. Jazz swing big band. What I mean by this has nothing to do with the proficiency of the trombone player, as everyone on this list is a trombone master. Tommy was just a player that played beautiful melodies and swung sweetly. He wasn’t an improving trombonist like everybody on the list. I could listen to him playing “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” for days! He is considered the “safest” player for me as we remember him for singing beautiful ballads, and other songs on the trombone. That's why he makes this list. He is simply one of the tasteful trombonists in my opinion, and it stands the test of time.

At Defcon Level 4 we have Jack Teagarden. Level four is “double-take”, a state of gathering intelligence on a possible attack. Jack is a trombone player to check out, and gather intel on! Jack is the obvious next choice in my mind. When I was in my second year at the University of Toronto, I had the pleasure of doing a paper on him. Although Jack is a virtuosic trombonist, I still think he is generally pretty safe. When he first came to the trombone, his arms were too short, so he played it safe by playing in the upper register. For the rest of his career, he would be known for this staple. It is quite amazing the level of musicality he was able to create, with both his groups and more famously with Louis Armstrong. He has a beautiful voice, and I could hear him sing and rip the trombone for weeks! Some of the risks he took in his life had to do with alcoholism. I think it's just as important to acknowledge the history of drug abuse in the American jazz tradition. He drank himself to death, as Stan Getz said Jack taught him how to bend his right elbow. As we all know, Stan would go on to be a notorious drug user. His favorite album of mine is Jazz Maverick.

At Defcon Level 3, we have my personal favorite, JJ Johnson. Defcon Level 3 is described to be a “Roundhouse”. This means that the US can deploy forces in 15 minutes. In my opinion, JJ Johnson is one of the greatest people to hold the trombone, period. I don’t want to underscore the importance of some of my other favorite trombonists like Grach Moncor the third, Jimmy Cleavland, and Julian Priester, but the weather just brings attention to the sheer greatness of him. He changed what it meant to play the trombone. This doesn’t mean that he is automatically better than everyone that comes before and after, but his dedication to the music is hard to beat. From a young age, he lifted a lot of Lester Young. He hit the road with various swing bands and eventually made it in New York. When he got there, he quickly got work as he was leaving count Basie's band, and was getting to know Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins, and others. He was the most famous, and perhaps one of the only, trombonists to record with Bird. He got work in Miles Davis's All-Star Band which set him on the right path. Although this path included a heroin addiction, which led him to get his cabaret card revoked. JJ was making large strides, playing with Bird, Clifford Brown, Jimmy Heath, Kenny Clarke, and The Cats, and then he went to work a factory gig. He eventually came back to Kai Winding and from there, it's all history. He arranged for film, massive brass bands, and JJ was not only a monster player, but a monster arranger. My favorite album of his is The Trombone Master. You might be asking yourself, with all this high praise, why isn’t he at the top of the list? Well, it's because this is a list about risk! JJ Johnson is an amazing trombonist, but there is no question that he had his language, and he would choose to stick with it more than the other trombonists on this list. That's a very brief generalization, but if you're a trombonist, you’ll get the gist of what I’m saying.

At Defcon Level 2 we have Slide Hampton. This Defcon level is entitled “fast pace”. This pretty much means there is an imminent threat of war or nuclear fallout. Yeah, that's a good way to describe Slide. I would like to mention that Curtis Fuller is an honorable mention in this section. After all he is the trombonist on Blue Trombone, which is probably the second most popular jazz album next to Kind of Blue. Without being said, Slide Hampton is a killer on the horn. Although I am admittedly less familiar with Slide than JJ, he makes me feel different from the way JJ makes me feel. Especially on the album The Fabulous Slide Hampton, when Slide moved to Europe for a decade. While JJ revolutionized the Bop trombone sound and there was truly nobody like him at the time, Slide is like the next step and has a stronger modern sensibility than JJ in my opinion. For example, Slide started as a player that was in the same vein as JJ, playing straight-ahead jazz that came out of the Black American music tradition. But while JJ made the move to Hollywood to score for film (while facing racial discrimination from the film industry), Slide went to Europe to become a musician in a place where it was cool to be a musician! Rather than in a country that birthed the music, and arrests Black American musicians outside of their gigs. I don’t want to generalize racism in America, as I am not qualified to write a blog on that. I can only be aware, be informed, and intolerant to hate. Continuing, Slide adapted the style of “modal jazz”, and took far more risks than JJ did in regards to his jazz playing. You would hear far less repetitive language (or “grips”), and you could hear him going for stuff. It was like a “fuck you” attitude he brought to the music. He swung his butt off, played really clean modal language, but there was an element of the history of the Jazz trombone there. My favorite album of his is the one I mentioned, but also A Day in Copenhagen.

At Defcon Level 1 there is Frank Rosalino. This level is a “cocked pistol”. This means that the US is in a state of war and that nuclear annihilation is imminent. Not much explanation is needed there…. Frank Rosalino is simply a mad genius when it comes to the trombone. What is most notable about it is the sheer mania he had towards the music, and he approached the trombone from an angle others haven't. I would like to mention Bill Watrous as an honorable mention. You might say…. What? Well everyone loves to hate Bill, and for good reason (may he rest in peace). Bill was a dick, but he was also a really good trombone player. Maybe the best. Even though some of his albums are quite silly and include novel additions like bike horns, and “cheesy 80’s nostalgia” no-one can rival his trombone players for his time. Sorry for the rant, but I have to state my trombone opinions! To just say he was a "microphone stuffer" is a massive understatement, and he usually gets this criticism out of jealousy in my opinion. This is a trombone blog after all. But to go back to Frank, he simply approached the trombone different from everyone who came before him. I would call him a polar opposite to JJ Johnson. JJ said that he was the kind of player that needed at least a half-hour to warm up, while Frank is the kind of player to play pedal tones, and straight lip flexibilities to warm up more quickly. This tops the list of riskiness as he didn’t give a shit. I am fortunate to study with Steve Wallace, as he told me some stories of Frank in our lessons. It was really hard for me to get into Frank at first because his playing was so bizarre to me. It wasn’t until Mike Fahie poked me to listen to the album Freefall that my life as a trombonist changed. If you don't believe me and you’re skeptical check it out and let me know! The way that he is so precise with his language while navigating uncharted trombone waters by playing all over the horn (mainly his high playing), really fast, and is sometimes just unrecognizable. He of course has a dark ending to his life, so I will just let you figure that part out if you're unaware because if you know, you know.

In terms of Modern Jazz Trombonists, I would classify them as follows:

Defcon Level 5 Bob McChesney

Defcon Level 4 Conrad Herwig

Defcon Level 3 Micheal Dease

 Defcon Level 2 Marshall Gilkes 

Defcon Level 1 Elliot Mason

But that is a blog post for another day…..