[Dixielandjazz] Ellington and non-reading

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

>From what I gathered, Johnny Hodges was another not very good reader. Scott Hamilton says the same about himself, but when he was with the World's Greatest Jazz Band with Messrs. Lawson, Davern, Haggart he had the most amazing effect in ensemble. I suppose it's like what Harry Edison said about the earliest Basie band, just find notes nobody else is playing --- which in both cases (unlike most) would be the right notes. 
The other Ellington reference is to Tubby Hayes, whose own life was none the better or the longer for activities the same as those which got him various gigs filling in when Paul Gonsalves had taken the activities beyond where he could still play. 
Tubby observed (BBC radio again) that Ellington called a number, and there was no sheet music.  Presumably Jimmy Hamilton or Harry Carney answered him to the effect that there never was any sheet music for that number. 
Years after I saw Ellington with Hodges I saw film of Ellington holding up sheet music as Hodges soloed and remembered being puzzled by this as a boy (only time I saw Hodges) -- it was supposedly a joke about Hodges not reading well, and indeed Hodges had only had 25 years or so in which to learn 'Daydream' after he first recorded it. The same theme would make a lovely slow drag number of the sort associated with this site's name, given a sufficiently beefy trombonist and a really lethal tempo.
 
       
---------------------------------
Sent from Yahoo! Mail.
A Smarter Inbox.