[Dixielandjazz] The legendary Steve Marcus - Who?

[Steve Barbone]

Steve Marcus passed away in 2005. He was a great reed player and fun to
know. After a varied career he ended up with Buddy Rich's Band and often
defended Buddy's temper tantrums saying that the band played better because
of them. Below is a post from another list about Marcus and some incidents
with the Rich band.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Eric Miyashiro writes this about Steve Marcus...
[quote, with a few typos corrected]

Steve Marcus didn't even change his own reed. Our lead alto player
would check Steve's reed from time to time, and if needed, he would
change it for Steve.

Steve's sax was unplayable by others, pads were leaking, keys were
out of whack, dents everywhere. But he could play his butt off every
night on it, go figure!!

We did a Sinatra gig at Carnegie Hall, and Steve's book called for a
clarinet double. He took out his clarinet from deep under the bus,
which he had not touched in years. When he opened it, the clarinet
was missing the bell.

We didn't have time to go to a music store as it was Sunday night,
and nothing was open, and the gig was on in about 45 minutes, no time
to even call someone as we were late getting in to NYC.

So Steve went and found a Styrofoam coffee cup, covered it with black
duct tape, and replaced it as the bell of his clarinet.

It sounded fine..........go figure again!!!

This is not the end of this story.

The gig called for tuxedo, which was really rare for us.

When Steve got his wrinkled-up tux from the bus bay, it was missing
the bow tie.

So Steve goes somewhere again, returns with a piece of cardboard,
black marker pen, and a pair of scissors. He then cuts out a "bow
tie", colors it black with a pen, and duct tapes it to his shirt.

No one including Buddy noticed the clarinet and the bow tie.

Steve was a fantastic musician, he knew thousands of tunes, could
play in any style. He had incredible ears and a photographic memory.

I heard when he joined Kenton's band (when he was just 17), he
memorized all of the charts in the book in about week. Gabe Baltazar,
the lead alto, would ask him to at least open the book on the gigs,
because it made the other saxes look bad.

Steve was the sweetest man you can ever imagine. Always full of smiles,
jokes, never got dark, and kept Buddy happy everyday.

Sure miss him.

You can see the Steve Marcus Obit (worth the read) at:

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/10-23-2005-79610.asp