Golden Years


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I note with some amazement that on or about this date 50 years ago, I began playing trombone. I was 8 years old and in the 3rd grade, so you do the math. :-) I'm still puffing on the darned thing and pumping the slide in and out, and Disneyland has seen fit to give me a weekly pay check for over 21 years now, so I must have figured out a few things about the horn.

I did a lot of recording sessions and jazz gigs in Nashville in the 70s and 80s, not many here in Southern California the past 20 years. But the few I've done since signing on with Disney have been quality projects. I'm especially proud of the jazz solos I did on the Don Miller Orchestra CD ("This Swingin' Life"), one of which was used on the trailer of the dvd of Jerry Seinfeld's HBO special ("I'm Telling You for the Last Time").

My great joy these days is to play trombone with the Side Street Strutters Jazz Band. We did a CD of dixieland tunes, "Back to Bourbon Street," back in April, and I can get anyone interested a copy of it for $15. The same goes for my duo jazz CD, "The Art of the Duo" (with pianist Ben DiTosti), but you may wish instead to order it from CD Baby.

I'm doing two road trips with the Strutters shortly, so I'm going to think of them as my Golden Anniversary celebration. We go to Idaho this week for a concert and two school clinics in Caldwell, then four days at the jazz festival at Sun Valley. (Woo-hoo!) Next week we go to Florida for two concerts north of Orlando, after which I stop in Nashville for three days to visit three of my kids and four grandkids.

Life goes on, and life is good.

REB

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Thanks for the kind words, Ted!

I'm nearing the end of a wonderful four days in lovely Sun Valley, Idaho, and once again, I find that playing jazz and drawing inspiration from other excellent musicians is "where it's at" for me.

On Monday, it's back to the "Magic Kingdom," doing very little of a creative nature, but paying the bills, qualifying for medical insurance, and salting away a good lick toward my pension, which begins in just a few short years.

There are times when I am frustrated and in despair when picking up the trombone -- but they are usually the no-creativity situations, where the "lowest common denominator" of entertainment prevails. Sad that this has happened in some places that originated on so much higher a plane of artistic nurturing.

But the years are still golden, so I will continue to puff air and ideas through the brass tubing, hoping to please myself and my ideal audiences at least some of the time.

REB

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Roger, it sounds like a great lifestyle...doing what you love, getting a chance to travel, etc.!

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