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A.B. Spellman: All right, I won't waste a lot of your time
by giving you a biography on these people. You know who they are.
They are all very, very accomplished men, and they are people who
have left such a lasting imprint on the music that they can say,
they can be said to have changed it. So just in the order there's
Joe Wilder. (Applause)
Candido Camero. (Applause)
Quincy Jones. (Applause)
Gunther Schuller. (Applause)
Tom McIntosh. (Applause)
All right. I'll start with Joe Wilder, one of the greatest trumpet
players of an age of great trumpet players. He did a lot of work
with Lionel Hampton, and everybody who's ever played with Hampton
has great Hampton stories, so could you give us one? Can you give
us a Lionel Hampton story? I know everybody who's played with him
has some. Joe Wilder: Well, Lionel Hampton, he was I think in a sense he
was a giant, at the same time a midget. He had a bunch
of wonderful players in the band. He had a good band and everything,
but it's unfortunate that he treated most of us like well, you know, if
you weren't here you wouldn't have a job at all. And no matter how much
you tried to contribute to the band, to the betterment of the band, it was
just like well, so what? There are 500 other guys out there who can do
what you're doing better if they want to, and so forth. You felt so
uncomfortable, no matter how long you'd been there, you know. But I must
tell you. I guess some people have heard about the mythical figure, Barracuda.
And we'd have a rehearsal for instance, and we'd get some nice arrangements,
and somebody in the band, somebody wouldn't play - couldn't play the part
very well. So as rehearsal would end you'd hear somebody saying "You know,
I think Barracuda is going to get this arrangement." We'd be in the bus,
and we're doing like 80 miles an hour going on the highway someplace.
You'd feel a draft. Somebody had taken the third saxophone part and hung
it out the window. We'd get to the job, the job where we're going to use
the music, Lionel would call that particular arrangement and so you'd have
have guys say, "Well geez, I can't find the first trombone part. What happened
to the third alto part?" This is the way it would be. And one of the worst
things Gladys, his wife, took him to a Stetson hat store and got him a hat.
It just looked great on him. The guy put it on, and when Lionel, he put it
up on the rack on the bus and when we got to our destination he took it out
and he put it on. Instead of the brim being like this, the brim was going this
way. All twisted. And somebody said "You know, it's a shame that hat looked so
great when he left the hat shop. I think Barracuda will probably get it before
the night is over." Sure enough, we're going home, you hear this breeze coming in
through the bus. There went the hat down the highway.
A.B. Spellman: Now when you were coming up, musicians had the opportunity to
hone their skills doing section work in bands. Most of the musicians of course
of your generation did develop their talents that way.
Now, today's young musicians don't have the band opportunities
that your generation had. Do you think something is lost in the development of musicians
by not having the experience of sitting around other people who have done this
longer and are more accomplished than you?
Joe Wilder: Right. I think you're right on that. During the time I was coming
up of course there were so many different musical groups around, and you had
rehearsals and things you could go to, and you could learn from the fellows
who were older than you. Today, they don't have those opportunities because,
for instance, during the big band era people went to ballrooms and they heard
bands and your children and middle-class children and so forth. You could go
to these things and hear music and it would inspire you to try to emulate what
they were doing. Today there's no...people don't want to go to ballrooms and
these because they're not sure they'll get home after the dance is over or
something like that. But I think in that respect we've lost a tremendous
connection, but at the same time you've got a lot of young musicians who are
extremely talented. And they in the schools especially with this organization
where you're promoting jazz and so forth, at my age remembering when my father
was a musician how jazz no matter what source it came from - and race had nothing
to do with it - was just jazz per se, was the devil's music, and it didn't
belong anyplace but in some alleyway, something like that. The whole act of
jazz in itself has been raised to such a tremendous level, and I appreciate what
all of you have done. And when you look at the crowd that we have out here,
you have a mixture of different people and so forth. With jazz at this era
is contributing more to the understanding and the cooperation, and a profession
for people who are like ourselves, all of us. And it's a nice thing to see.
I think it's raised the level of social understanding in this country and
others, and I think you all can be given great credit for it, and I am really
happy to be one of the people involved with it.