[Dixielandjazz] Venus HB

[Ken Mathieson]

Hi All,

Marek wrote 

" I am pretty sure that it is the same number that onthe "Benny Goodman Today" album  is called "Venus HB" (because it's played on pencils), and in brackets as "Turkish March."

As Gerald points out it's Mozart's Rondo a la Turque aka Marche Turque. The Goodman recording featured my old pal Bobby Orr, a wonderful drummer, whose party piece (well one of them anyway) is to play tunes on his teeth with a pencil held across the mouth. The fingers of the had holding the pencil drum on it to the rhythm of the melody and the pitch is altered down or up by changing the shape of the mouth to increase or decrease respectively the air space within the mouth. It's quite easy to do with simple tunes, but it takes a real expert like Bobby to do it at fast tempi with complex melodies. Bobby was part of a fine bigband of British musicians recruited by Benny Goodman for a European tour, which also featured another old mate, the marvellous idiosyncratic trumpeter Johnny McLevy. Johnny passed away a number of years ago, but Bobby is thankfully still to the fore.

It's rumoured that the drummer in the Muppet Show band, Animal (with the bright red hair), was modelled on Bobby, who also has (or maybe it's had now) bright ginger hair. Bobby was also known in the business as "Early Scottish Man", a nickname he picked up on the Goodman tour for his willingness to take on ridiculously unwise and dangerous dares. Having said all that he is a wonderfully musical drummer equally at home in bigbands and small groups with a great technique acquired in his youth as a side drummer in pipe bands in Scotland. If all that's not enough, he's a lovely good-natured man. 

Cheers,

Ken Mathieson