[Dixielandjazz] Audience requests

[Charlie Hooks]

on 10/27/02 11:09 PM, Bill Horton at horton4jaz@earthlink.net wrote:

> During their first set on Friday at the Pismo Jubilee By The Sea, Chicago
> Six did a really great "St. Thomas."  It's a catchy Caribbean-type tune and
> almost demands a flute,

    Yes, it does, and I've been giving it one for almost 20 years, ever
since a substitute drummer requested it as a drum solo and it brought the
house down at a OKOM joint here in the Chicago suburbs.  The owner would
request it every night after that, and I really came to enjoy it.

    The requesting drummer was a guy in his thirties, half black, half
Latino, and he played a long passage just before the out chorus using every
Afro-Cuban rhythm he could bring to it.  Fantastic.

    I play flute--but with a clarinetist's sound (!), so long tones are not
my best showcase; but the flute is so agile and the fingering so much
simpler than clarinet that I can smoke through those lines on St. Thomas
like I was on fire.  Rusty Jones, my drummer, will play gratefully for as
long as I'll let him, and trumpet players also like doing the bullfight
sound--or the cup-mute show-off lines.

    We work it into most concerts, even for the Dominicans: I tell them we
tried to find a tune for St. Dominec, but St. Thomas was the closest we
could come.  And that it's not about the saint, but about an island.  And
written in Harlem.

Charlie

Charlie