jazzrob! I logged in here this morning just to see if you gave me a reply. Thanks for that.
Australia? I know more about Australia, but you're right up there with New Zealand as a place I'd like to visit.
You country is so big and has so many climate and geographic zones, I can't imagine where you live.
I hope you don't mind a lengthy reply.
You must have been as strange a child as I was, if you were trying to write down music and play trumpet.
I had a harmonica that wasn't chromatic, and carried that with me everywhere I went.
I was playing slow songs to be easy, "The Days of Wine and Roses", "The Shadow of Your Smile",
songs I liked from my parents albums, but I had to sing the sharps and flats there weren't in the harmonica.
When I was standing in line with my parents at the bank or shopping market,
people would comment on this little kid playing such sad songs.
I learned "Silhouettes in the Shade" by Hermans' Hermits and the theme from "The Chipmunks" to be faster.
What you said about being not sure about my comment about swinging harder could go both ways.
I was thinking you need to be playing with other musicians to work up a swing sweat,
when dubbing together parts gets in the way of that.
What you did bubbled along, percolated along, and you pulled off the song, where it's at for me.
And your use of technology is beyond me. I'm just a word processor who likes doing photos,
even if I recently made some YouTube videos that haunt me.
A flute playing friend and I hitch-hiked in February in the middle of winter to Toronto.
George Benson was winning best jazz guitarist polls in Downbeat Magazine, even if I never heard him.
For the first time in my life I wanted someone to help me make up my mind about playing guitar,
left-handed, right-handed, and what was too easy for me, left-handed upside-down,
basically a lefty body with a right-handed neck.
After the first set I tried to go over to the table where he was sitting,j
but the bar was divided down the middle with a railing, whites on one side, a hippy audience,
even mothers breast-feeding children, and a dressy... uh... afro-American audience on the other.
Two big big men, looking impeccable in green rough silk suits, standing on either side of the aisle in front of the bar,
with two more in the same suits sitting behind them, wouldn't let me pass. I didn't make a scene.
I went down the railing and started talking out loud to Mr. Benson, talking about my '64 Stratocaster and Marshall,
saying I didn't know about playing left-handed or playing with the bass strings on the bottom, what I liked,
and after I said my flute playing friend and I hitch-hiked over a hundred miles to see him he turned around.
As he turned around the bodyguards moved forward and he waved them off.
He asked did you really hitch-hike over a hundred miles. I said yes. He said where are you from.
I said Welland, near Niagara Falls. He said that's over a hundred miles and got up, waving me along.
He took me backstage to his dressing room where we traded his 1955 Gibson L5 back and forth.
He moved my fingers into positions for barre chords I didn't know and laughed a lot, me too.
He said I could hold down chords he had a hard time with, and asked me to slide them up or down.
When I did that he would laugh.
He said the pads of my fingers were there to hold down the bass strings when I learned jazz chords,
and were there to deaden more strings when I was using feedback for lead solos.
He said I didn't have to scrunch up my fingers to play leads, just fluttering them up and down the neck,
and I was pulling the strings to bend them, being able to stretch them in ways he couldn't.
He also said some of the best guitarists he knew played like that.
As he was looking at me, thinking, I said Mr. Benson, can I say something about you. He said sure.
I said you've got a very soulful voice, he said thank you, and I said you only sing along with your solos.
Why don't you start a band singing songs with a bigger band and back-up singers,
and create more jobs for your friends back home, something I'm sure you could do and stand up behind a mike.
He got a big smile and said that was something he was working on, getting his vocals up for singing songs.
After a while he said it's time to start playing again so we should go, in their over twenty minutes.
What was as amazing was walking out onstage with him, not using the door we entered with.
As soon as we got out you could see the entire club turning to look at us, sharing that attention.
Men were waving and waving money at him, holding up drinks, and women were waving handerchiefs,
and the hippy side looked like they were frozen, just staring. That was an incredible moment.
My friend and I couldn't afford to keep buying pop at the intervals required to keep our table, pop at liquor prices,
and if we stayed past one we still had to hitch-hike home.
We walked for a half hour to get to the end of Younge at the Q.E.W. highway on-ramp,
and as we turned to hitch-hike the first car stopped and it was a high school baskeball player I knew.
He gave us both a ride home to our houses, a perfect end to an amazing night.
When my friend asked me what happened backstage I said I'm not sure,
but I'm going to be left-handed all the way.
I bought a trumpet from a pawn shop, really nice, but I have soft puffy lips and gave up.
My high school teacher said I couldn't play French Horn because of that, another instrument I liked.
I don't have a lot of money, that's for sure, and I'm not a collector.
If I bought that guitar I'd want to install a Stratocaster tremolo unit with a P.A.F. Humbucker by the neck.
And it would just be a beater guitar for me, something to carry around outside.
Guitars that thick are hard to play, and it doesn't have contours for working my arm.
Here's some photos of my first and second semi-solid-bodies, my inventive guitar.
You can see it's basically a Stratocaster shape, the perfect form for performance.
I am a little jealous of you as a trumpet player.
If I had a smaller instrument I could carry on my bicycle that didn't need an amplifier,
I'd be sitting in the shade along Lake Erie playing over the waves.

