I really enjoy the Big Band/Swing era.   Yeah I know WWII, but the music is just so cool.  And I am a Glenn Miller fan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92ATE3IgIs#noexternalembed

Glenn Miller may have been one of the most missed of all the casualties of that war.  That being said, I'm still a big fan of Benny Goodman and Claude Thornhill too.

Just for you, Tekla.

People ask me what the best live thing I've ever heard and I don't even have to think, it's Sing, Sing, Sing (with a Swing) from the January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall.  Benny, Harry James and Jess Stacy were pronominal, but Gene Kruppa gave a lesson in playing drums that night that no one has touched yet.

You mean...

Yeah, that song, but the live version, from that show, the 12:02 minute version.  It's on a Sony release I think.

A friend of mine played Clarinet. Benny Goodman was his hero

He also played all kinds of big band, swing, jazz and dixieland stuff. Last I heard from him he was giggin' in Hawaii

That doesn't seem to compute.  Big Band and Hawaii.  The lucky bum. 

Big Band music is world wide. If you get hooked into the circuit, your gonna travel

I also remember him often playing "In The Mood" - Glen Miller rather often

Of course, if the is a demand then you go where the gig is.  It just I never really thought about Big Band and the island.  But then again there was Pearl Harbor.  So I guess I never really thought about it.

Does he play in a hotel?

The only trouble with running a big band is that they are big, and a gig is a gig, and the money stays pretty constant - so in the end that just kinda less for everyone.  Still, you do get to play real music, which is something most of the people I work with can't say.

Quote from: tekla on January 19, 2010, 11:13:52 PM
The only trouble with running a big band is that they are big, and a gig is a gig, and the money stays pretty constant - so in the end that just kinda less for everyone.  Still, you do get to play real music, which is something most of the people I work with can't say.

Hm... kinda sounds like fun.  Maybe I should dust off the sax, hehe.  Inches of dust by now I'm sure =/.

There is just some thing so universal about the Big Band sound.  Something so up lifting.  People know when Janet cleans because it is up load. 

Yeah, it's kind of funny people come over to see me and the first time they somehow expect me to have this huge rock collection, when in reality I don't.  Mostly I have lots of classical string trios, quartets and lots of cool jazz (1955-1965 or so)  Really can't listen to enough Miles and 'Trane.  But I have a bunch of Big Band.  I love the Goodman live, its just the awesome sauce, and I have a huge spot in my heart for April in Paris, by Count Basie, perhaps the last really great big band record (recorded in '55 and '56), but a decade or so this guy found all these old V-discs that Miller recorded with the Army Air Force Band during the war, one is a 3 disc set called The Secret Broadcasts, the other The Lost Recordings.  Check them out.

I will.  It would be nice to heard something that would sort of be new.

It will sound very new.  Not only did he have an all star band, he also had something he always wanted but could never aford, a sting section.  And, there are lots of classic Miller tracks, but there is a lot of popular stuff to, stuff you've never heard him perform.

Here is a listing of both
http://www.parabrisas.com/m_millerg2.php
http://www.parabrisas.com/m_millerg3.php

I have to try and find them.  Thank You Kat.

Yeah, I do what I can, but those are pretty awesome, so its easy to recommenced them.

I became involved in other things for a few years and unfortunately lost contact with my friend

When I got back into music I was hanging out with various rock bands and playing guitar and singing

Oh, I started out on trombone in Jr High. that's how I met my clarinet friend
Plus he lived across the street

I suppose it makes me kind of shallow but my favorite BB music is actually in the movie Xanadu

there was something about the way they worked this together that I thought was outstanding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts9GdyGD5e4#noexternalembed

and this is just classic, IMO, even if it was from a cheesy movie instead of the 40's...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vsfpw3qKKc&feature=related#

Yes it was an tremendously flawed film but it's amazing how many really wonderful moments there are within that pile of mistakes...

But like I said - aficionados will consider this a pretty shallow interest in the genre...

Rightly so.