The Tuba players

[JSngry]

HA!

[JSngry]

Thinking about Roger Bobo led me to ask myself whatever happened to Harvey Phillips.

Well, I guess the same thing that happens to everybody.

Roger Bobo, don't know if he could improvise (or if that was a p[rerequisite for being a tubaist in Eliis' band), but anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=658N-oJwvTI

[jlhoots]

Ray Draper on Max Roach's Deeds, not Words.

Also with Jackie McLean.

Wasn't Anthony Braxton writing something for 100 tubas?

[mjazzg]

I'll be checking some of these names, keep them coming

I shouldn't have forgotten UK's own Oren Marshall heard to great effect on the recent (Arthur Blythe inspired) The Grip LP

On 'The Complete Braxton' there's the piece performed by The London Tuba Ensemble which has 5 players (95 to go)

[Head Man]

Julius Watkins on........

French horn, maybe?

Oops........

[king ubu]

Don Butterfield is on "The Blues and the Abstract Truth" as well - wonderful playing!

Black Saint & The Sinner Lady, maybe?

Of course that's what I meant to say - guess my brain was wrongly wired last night, thanks for correcting!

[Larry Kart]

Don Butterfield can be heard in fine form on this Gil Melle album, which includes one of the catchiest lines I know, Melle's "Threadneedle Street:"

http://www.bluenote.com/artists/gil-melle/vol-4---five-impressions-of-color

Album also features one the the two fine guitarists that Melle brought to notice, Lou Mecca. The other was Joe Cinderella.

[jeffcrom]

Wasn't Anthony Braxton writing something for 100 tubas?

On 'The Complete Braxton' there's the piece performed by The London Tuba Ensemble which has 5 players (95 to go)

Composition 19 (For 100 Tubas) was written in 1971. It has been recorded and is available for download on Braxton's site. Among the tubists on the recording is at least one who has been mentioned here, Jose Davila, and those interested in contemporary jazz are likely to have heard of several of the other players.

The piece is kind of a mess, in my opinion, but it's an interesting mess.

Later: Looking at the personnel list again, I see that Joe Daley is there as well.

Edited October 31, 2014 by jeffcrom

[JohnS]

A footnote on the London Tuba Players. On a visit to London in the 70s Howard Johnson assembled most if not all of London's tuba players (including the very top classical guys) to play a gig at the 100 Club. Eight tubas plus rhythm, what a noise.

[clifford_thornton]

Daley still sounds wonderful. I've enjoyed him with Ted Daniel's International Brass and Membrane Corps.

Among the younger players, Ben Stapp is a hell of a musician (and a fine composer too).

[felser]

[MomsMobley]

comments sections on youtube tuba battles are often excellent too

[jazztrain]

[paul secor]

Joe Venuti tuba (or maybe bass) story:

It is approximately 8:00 p.m. on Broadway in the bustling metropolis of New York City. The year is 1926 . . . or is it 1946? No one knows for sure. As theater patrons hustle to their evening’s entertainment, dozens of men dressed in tuxedos, carrying instrument cases larger than themselves, begin to assemble on the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The musicians with their instruments mix with the bustling theater crowd and evening traffic to make the sidewalk and the street practically impassable. From across the street, inside the old Brill Building, a man watches these disruptive events and enjoys a hearty laugh. The man is Joe Venuti, both one of the world’s greatest musicians and practical jokers. According to legend, Venuti was the person who called the musician’s union to hire 36 bass players for the evening and instructed them to meet on said corner so he could sit back and enjoy the ensuing chaos. Some version of the story have the number at 48 musicians and some others have the instrument as tubas instead of basses. It doesn’t matter. Any version you choose gets the point across that Joe Venuti was not your average violinist.

Venuti’s joke turned out to be a rather expensive one as the union forced Venuti to pay each player their evening rate for the phony gig. It didn’t matter to Venuti. He got what he wanted out of it – fun, laughter and pandemonium

[sgcim]

My fave was Ho Jo on Frank Strozier's "Remember Me".

[JSngry]

[Ligeti]

Misha Mengelberg enjoys a bit of Tuba - he has a recording on Hat Art.

I'm pretty sure I have a CD around here somewhere of another Tuba player on Hat Art... I recall the back cover had a shot of the guy playing - with all kinds of tubes and valves hanging out of his tuba...... not sure where it's filed though.....

[David Ayers]

Not jazz, but Øystein Baadsvik has made quite a solo career, including tuba concertos and recitals recorded for BIS. Several of the concertos appear to have been written for him.

[paul secor]

Ransom Knowling, who played bass on many blues records, played tuba (brass bass) on a 1942 Doctor Clayton session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pdYc3Ba3lc

Thanks to my friend Doug Price, who hipped me to this.

Edited January 21, 2015 by paul secor

[paul secor]

I don't think that anyone has mentioned Don Butterfield on Jimmy Heath's Swamp Seed.

[sidewinder]

Just about everything Bill Barber recorded with Gil Evans, from Birth of the Cool onwards, was brilliant. His sound is also very distinctive.

[paul secor]

Just listened to Johnny Wick's Swinging Ozarks, which would have made a good name for a western swing band. However, they were a sax/piano/bass/drums quartet backing a blues singer, Preacher Stephens, who was probably the only blues singer who doubled on tuba - and did a pretty fair job of it too.

[DougFelt]

Thought this might be of interest:

 

[Larry Kart]

Jim Self, the Hollywood studio and classical tuba stalwart who, among other things, gave us the tones for the mothership in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," has made several nice jazz albums -- his model as an improviser being Art Farmer. Also, one of Self's classical albums has his setting for tuba of Debussy's "Syrinx" -- as he says in the notes, "it's 44 semi-tones below the notated pitch." The results are quite beautiful, though what a snake that would have been.
 

This one is quite good:

[optatio]

RAY DRAPER featuring JOHN COLTRANE: A TUBA JAZZ. Full album on YouTube: