Jay Beckenstein with his Saxgourmet alto

Good news around here, because here's another of my favorite players, Spiro Gyra's Jay Beckenstein, endorsing Saxgourmet saxophones.

Basically, Orpheus is looking at Tom Scott on the west coast and Jay on the east coast to spread the good word, although both are players of international stature.

Look for them to visit at the Orpheus booth at the upcoming trade shows on either of the aforementioned coasts: IAJE and NAMM.

Disclaimer: they might not make it if they're too busy making a living, but who wouldn't miss either of these shows if only for the hang?

A little teaser

OK, I'll be leaving Friday the 1st of December to join Star Princess for a couple weeks.

These last few weeks have been very exciting times for me, because of all the fuss over the Saxgourmet alto and tenor. Now this! Here's a photo that I was sent of Tom Scott playing with perhaps the best band I could imagine putting together nowawadays.


From the left, Terrance Blanchard, George Duke, Tom (cradling the alto he received after the tenor arrived, see previous post), Steve Gadd, and Marcus Miller. I wish I knew the circumstances under which this picture was taken, and as soon as I do I'll throw them out to the group mind on this blog.

They do appear to be having a great time, which probably means everybody had a look and a listen to that alto Tom's holding and sought a way to express their approval. And that does seem to be what they're doing.

More on this later . . .

I'll be bringing one of these wonderful altos with me when I play on the Star. I'll be able to add to this blog when I'm out in the Caribbean, courtesy of a couple dollar an hour internet places in Cozumel.

I'll also be bringing me new Pearl flute, a Pearl piccolo (anybody want to buy and Opermann?), and a Pearl alto flute if I can squeeze it between my Javascript and PHP books.

And when I get back, I'll have some great news about a fantastic new place where you can come out and try out many of the instruments I've been telling you about, in Austin, Texas.

RIP The Woodwind

AP News item+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


South Bend musical instrument seller files bankruptcy


South Bend, Ind. - A California company has offered to buy one of the country's largest sellers of musical instruments after it filed for bankruptcy protection.

A company official says South Bend-based Woodwind & Brasswind is expected to continue operating with all of its 240 employees during the bankruptcy proceedings.

Woodwind & Brasswind filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday following a nine million dollar court judgment against it from a lawsuit filed by the former owners of an instrument seller the company bought in 2002.

Court documents say California-based Guitar Center offered on Wednesday to buy Woodwind & Brasswind. Dennis Bamber, Woodwind & Brasswind's president and chief executive, says four other firms also have expressed serious interest in the company.

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Well, interesting times. So here we are, a couple years after the end of Mars a couple weeks after the last Brook Mays/H&H store was padlocked, and the biggest of them all, The Woodwind, goies under. Cripes. Not a good time to be the biggest store in the world, although Guitar Center (through its subsidiary, Music & Arts I should think) is stepping into the breach, plunking down a $2 million deposit on the assets of the company.

My equipment closet is stuffed with goods from the Woodwind. I bought a clarinet there in 1984, when the store was packed like a sardine can into a former barber shop in South Bend. I was on the road with the Modernaires and I needed a clarinet that could take some breath without closing up on me when I went from bari to lead clarint. (Thanks to Ernie Caceras of San Antonio for making this double possible!) The place was stacked to the ceiling with instruments, but Dennis knew where everything was and found me a large bore Yamaha. He bought my grey-market Selmer Series 9 and sent me on my way. I remember sending him a letter (which we used to do before email) expressing my thanks and wondering if he'd heard anything about little computers that could track his inventory.

Over the years it grew from a giant catalog operation to a website, and then it swallowed Music 1-2-3 whole, which was its undoing when the former owners secured a judgment against it last week.

I feel sorry for all the folks who are going to lose their jobs, but I feel VERY sorry for those down in the supply chain who are left holding the bag in worthless invoices.

It's no fun being the fastest gun in the west, as again this has proven.

CSI San Antonio

It all started almost exactly two weeks ago, when our band was booked for a wedding in the Alamo City. We started at around twilight, and it was one of those Texas fall evenings that starts out as a day in he high eighties, then the wind changes and all of a sudden it's 40 degrees and blowing a Force Seven gale. Any Texan has been through the majesty of the weather changing dramatically and gained knowlege and respect for its force thereby.

I was looking forward to this wedding, which paired up a groom from Switzerland (like Andre, a trumpet player we used in the past) and a Tejana from the valley (there being one valley around here, the Rio Grande). I had a feeling that this would be an interesting wedding. I was right, but for some of the wrong reasons.

I was looking forward to the gig because Tony Campise was playing with us. I've known Tony since the earth cooled. When I joined the Kenton band, Tony pretty much left the day before. Since I moved to Austin I've played every chair in his big band at one time or another, and I have a whole lot of respect for Tony's abilities as a player. So when the need arose to perhaps do a couple Italian numbers from the low saxophone chair, I knew only Tony woud do. Nobody sings the various versions of Che La Luna better than Tony. (That's Tony on the left with his eyeglasses--ochiali--defying gravity, next to Monte Mann, intrepid guitar player and all-around professional musician.

So there we were, the horn section of Jimmy Shortell on trumpet, Urlican Williams on trombone (a new grad student at UT, and a tremedous player, a swell guy and a ships' bandsman to boot on Celebrity and Norwegian), Tony, and me.

Now if you're like me, let's say I'm sorry for you. I keep a canvas shopping bag around and when I get to the gig I often place inside it all the important small things inside which defy organization. In this case my piccolo, wallet, checkbook, some sheets of music I'd written last minute, a couple fake book pages I ran out on the way out the door, and god knows what else I stuffed in there as I was stepping into the dinner set. (This was the first time I'd played the new Pearl Alto Flute on the dinner set. Add to that an alto and tenor saxophone, clarinet and flute.)

Remember that canvas bag. I got it when I worked at South by Southwest a few years back, as their database manager. The job was a curious mixture of terror and kicking back. I had a whole different definition of the word "musician" than my co-workers. The peak expereince was talking my boss into bringing Dr. Demento to the show in 2002 and willingly and enthusiastically taking the side job of Dr. Demento's handler for his time in Austin.

The thing about SXSW is they give away a LOT of canvas bags, with colorful designs submitted by artists all over the world, who get paid nothing when they win. It could have been a Central Market or Trader Joe's bag, but it was a SXSW bag that I grabbed that day.

We played the dinner set. I will write a little homage to the alto flute's ability to shut up the rhythm section soon. But it was time for the band dinner, to be served in the basement of the venue. We were set up outside, by the pool, and it was just a few steps to the basement. The basement looked like a gambler's rumpus room, and no wonder, for this venue was the Red Berry Mansion. Red Berry was a notorious gambler, and that's why there were blackjack tables and one-armed bandits in the basement.


We were fed after the guests, which was fine with me. My brother had a chance to practice his check-writing skills. And, remembering we had some tunes in the canvas bag we needed to review, I pulled them out and Jimmy Shortell and Leroy pulled out their accordions.

What happened next was a boneheaded mistake on my part. When we got called up to the bandstand, I spaced out on my canvas bag. The one with my wallet and chargecards in it.

I didn't think of it again until we were outside the fence and down the hill by the AT&T Center, where the Spurs play. I came this close to turning around and going back, but I thought surely Jimmy (Fenno), who always does the idiot check, would have gone back and recovered it.

I called him on his cel, but he said he didn't remember picking it up. So back to Austin the horn section went, me worried.

On Saturday, after looking in my van and not finiding it, I started calling the venue, but nobody picked up my frequent voice mails.

By Thursday I cancelled one of my charge cards and started getting worried. Then a funny thing happened. Turns out, the groom from the wedding we played the preceding Friday night was the party planner at the Mansion. He had gone out of town briefly with his new bride right after the wedding. So he contacted me. He said he'd looked for the bag in the basement without result. Then he said that he wanted me to have a look at the tapes the security cameras made that night. No problem, I'd be coming down the following day. With a time agreed to, I hung up the phone thinking that things would be changing big time in a hurry.


Next day I downloaded some photos I'd taken the night of the gig and discovered a shot with the bag itself showing up. That's it over to the left of Javier, the young guitar player, right before we were called back.

We reviewed the security tape soon after I arrived at the mansion. And there was nothing conclusive, because of the angle of the two cameras shooting the furniture where the band was sitting.

I was distraught. Not so much for my wallet, but my piccolo is an Opperman that's really worth something. How much? I was about to sell it so I could buy the alto flute I was playing AND a pic AND have a little left over.

A couple hours later my phone rang. It was the groom/detective from the Mansion. He decided on his own to review the tapes made the NEXT night. when there was another wedding in the Mansion. And there it was, the smoking gun. The Saturday bride's mother was walking out with my bag! He said he got on the phone and called her right away and she admitted she had it and promised its timely return. He suggested that she run it by his house sometime on the ensuing weekend. She agreed.

And that was the last he heard from her, despite repeated efforts on his part to raise her on the phone. Then I had a stroke of brilliance. I told him to leave a message that I was pissed, a crazy man musician from Austin, and that I would be calling the police because we had that tape of her walking out with my bag and its contents. A couple hours later (by now it was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving) Well, that did the trick. Unfortunately, by then I was entering the Austin City Limits. But I called my sister in San Antonio and she and Larry were kind enough to meet the groom at the Mansion and get that bag, its contents intact.

Tomorrow I go down to their house for day after Thanksgiving. And I will finally be reunited with my bag. And I will be giving a thank you gift to the groom--perhaps a gift certificate from HEB?

It's a brave new world when you can figure all this stuff out from surveilance tapes. The question remains, though: why did the Saturday bride's mom take my bag, and why did she keep it? And if we didn't have those tapes, would she have ever contacted me?

The Split E Dilemma

Like most saxophone players, I started early on flute and clarinet. I also did some time in school on both oboe and bassoon, although most was lost on me when I realized that the future for players of double reed instruments was one of reed whittling and endless tinkering.

But my sister Noreen had a flute, a Boosey & Hawkes with a light brown case that my parents had bought from Sightsinger & Clark Music at the corner of Bristol and Edinger in Santa Ana, California. It was a plain flute, nickel plated, and like most young saxophone players picking up flute, the first few times I played it my breathing was all wrong, resulting in lightheadedness.

I spent my college years in Santa Cruz, California, where I went to the University and played for pleasure in the Cabrillo College Jazz Ensemble. In addition to being one of the best big bands I ever played in, the saxophone section which I anchored on baritone was led on alto by Paul Contos, a tremendous flute player who was at the time getting notice from people like Elvin Jones for his efforts. I still played plenty of doubling parts down there on the other side of the section, but I'd been hanging out with several university flute players (you know the type--stiffs, know-it-alls) and I decided to model myself as far as I could (stopping just short of practicing six hours at a time) and switch from a closed hole, plateau model Armstrong flute to a Gemienhardt 3m, which sort of looked, if you squinted just right, like the Powells and Haynes of the classical set because of its open holes and inline design.

And so it was that I went through a succession of not always wise choices of flutes, all of them open-holed, French models. I finally ended up with a Yamaha 581H, which is a wonderful flute, but for one little problem, which I'll presently get to.

In Central Texas, where I now live, the pawnshops are part of the financial fabric of society. In the great days before the internet changed everything, I bought several high end Yamaha flutes in the same pawnshop, culminating in my purchasing a 581, then another a couple weeks later, again at the same pawnshop. I chose between the two and sold the other one on eBay, then a new thing, and I made out very well, thank you, in the deal. (Now don't get preachy about it probably being hot. The cops come around to every pawnshop with hotlists and clear every item before they can sell them.)

And so it was that I had what I considered to be a great all-silver flute. Life was good for me as a flute player, as long as I didn't have to take a solo that had a high E. That was all right, because often I was playing a lower flute part to Tony Campise, Paul Baker, or any number of strong flutists in the pits of Austin who played parts higher than mine. I was content to play baritone and bass sax, bass clarinet and low flute parts.

Then I got a gig playing on ships. There were only two reed players on Princess ships, and often as not I was the alto player, and that meant FLUTE 1, and sometimes FLUTE ONLY. Although I knew some of the tricks to make that note pop out, they required nerves of steel, which are sometimes hard to summon on a moving ship. And so it was that I decided that my 581 was no longer cutting it. I knew that there was an alternative--an offset model with a split E. This key, which can't be engineered.

I tried some Sonares, which are made in China and made very well indeed, with a headjoint made by Verne Powell's shop in Boston. But I found that something was missing from the Sonares. I like a little shimmer in the top of my tone on flute, and I wasn't getting it.

Then I tried some Pearl Flutes when I was visiting Orpheus to pick up a new Saxgourmet alto saxophone. Jerry showed me several flutes (student-model Pearls range start at $550 and pro flutes range to $10,000 and up). I selected a midrange Elegante model. It has a great third octave that I can hit all the notes in, including but not limited to my old friend, High E.

I'm now ready to try the thing out on a show gig, but we're just doing parties and weddings for the whole month--no shows. That's the real telling of the tale on High E, but I can already tell that it's going to work for me, based on practicing and plating dinner sets.

For all you saxophone players who modeled yourself as a flutist after the lovely girls who played flute around you in college (and you KNOW who you are), it's time to reconsider offset keys and a split E. Pearl makes several models in inline and offset models, so if you take a trip to San Antonio or you're at one of several upcoming tradeshows (Midwest, IAJE, winter NAMM, TMEA) you can A-B them.

Once that evil note is out of your life, you'll have plenty of time to play with your kids, mow the lawn, or even whittle oboe reeds. Your life will change, and you'll have Jerry at Orpheus to thank.

Santy to Marshal to Jody

A little history here: For my 12th birthday my parents brought me to Disneyland, but not so I could ride the teacups, see the blinking eye in that Monsanto ride, or hurdle down the Matterhorn. The Basie band was playing. My dad knew what he was doing. I'd been playing the saxophone on school for a few months. Maybe he was thinking about lighting a fire under me so I'd be more serious about my practicing. So we got there early and settled down near the front, the better, it seems to me thinking about it 40 years later, to hear Marshal (one "l") Royal lead the saxophone section, and by extenstion the whole swinging band.



Marshal Royal played lead alto saxophone for the Count Basie Orchestra from 1951-1971. During this time, the Basie Band established itself as one of the definitive forces in big band jazz as it emerged from the embers of the Big Band era with the seemingly impossible combination of wild swinging abandon with textbook precision. That was Marshal's contribution, I later learned.

Marshal was born in Sapulpa, Oklahoma in 1921 and was raised in Los Angeles. His father taught music and led a band, his mother played piano, and his brother Ernie was a well-known jazz trumpteter. From the 1930's through the seventies he performed with Lionel Hampton, Earl Hines, and Duke Ellington, besides his time with Basie.

Needless to say, the Basie band, which was at the height of its powers--they had recently recorded "Live at the Sands" with Sinatra--touched me deeply. They put a hurtin' on me, as Joe Williams said. My father was an arranger, Dick Fenno, one whose best-selling chart was called "I Remember Basie." On their honeymoon night, my parents heard the Basie band at Storyville in Boston. I guess you could say I was genetically predisposed.


By the time I was 12, my dad's publishing business was going so well that my sister and I had after-school employment there, fulfilling orders, transcribing labels from school directories for the next mass mailing, and collating parts into complete arrangements. Our most frequent auditory companion on my father's Magnavox is a vinyl copy of "More Hits of the Fifties and Sixties."


A couple years ago I am spending some time basking in the light of Santy Runyon. We are talking about how the 28M, an innovative horn he had a lot to do with the design of when he worked for Conn just before World War II. I knew that part of Marshal's thing was 28M. Santy tells me that Marshal, whose sound has never left my brain since he drilled a hole into my head when I was 12, had a specially modified Conn Comet he played with his 28M. The original design was pure Santy Runyon, the modificatons for Marshal by Santy Runyon. I love it when modest people stumble across a genuine achievement in their lives. In an autographed photo which Santy produced, Marshal's Conn Comet is the amber color of my grandfather's cigar holder. The shank is a bit long, probably a long lay.

At this time, Santy has an enthusiastic student flying down from New York to take lessons in the black art of mouthpiece modiification. I drive with my daughter to Lafayette, Louisiana for Santy's 94th birthday party and I meet Jody Espina, a hard-blowing post-Bop alto player on a mission to come up with completely new mouthpiece designs based on the best neglected designs of the past. At the time, nobody is more neglected than Santy, nor as generous with their knowlege.

The result of Jody learning the trade is that he owns JodyJazz, a mouthpiece company in Manhattan. Jodyjazz mouthpieces are played far and wide, and are based on a number of seemingly contrarian designs. I myslef play an ESP on baritone, a DV on tenor, and my favorite, my Sapphire (aka blue) JodyJazz Classic Alto Mouthpiece. I just love walking into a strange new musical experience (as so many are, here in Austin) with a blue mouthpiece on the end of my horn (especially now that my horn has abalone keywork), Because of the Spoiler, the little gizmo that sits inside the mouthpiece making a shortcut for the air, I feel like I actually have the edge on the old guys whose Comets could only play with one single sound. (Of course they didn't have to play at today's volumes either!) At $127, shipping free, this mouthpiece is a bargain. Not only that, Jody spells out a plan on his website whereby your credit card payment won't be processed if you decide it's not for you and send it back in a timely manner and in perfect condition.

One of the real advantages in dealing with Jody is Jody himself, who has much in the way of received and emperical knowlege and an encyclopediac level of recall for problems relating to mouthpieces. If you're having mouthpiece problems, he can suggest a solution.

Yes, they all laughed when I pulled out my JodyJazz Sapphire Blue Classic. But whether it's channeling Marshal Royal when I'm playing lead in a big band, or doing the full-tilt boogie with the Fenno Brothers wedding band, that's the mouthpiece that works best with my Saxgourmet Model 6 alto.

One Person Connecting All These Things

Lest we forget, there is one person whose encouragement and unfailing good humor inspired each of the people whose products have been mentioned so far (and, I must add, Jody at JodyJazz Mouthieces). He inspired all who contacted him.

That person is the dearly missed Santy Runyon, who passed a couple years ago, well into his nineties.

I remember calling him a couple years before his death. His wife answered and told me, "He's practicing right now. Can I have him call you back?"

Practicing? Such a great player needs to practice in his mid-nineties? That's the kind of yeomanlike musician he was, and maybe it was at once the source of his great humility and warmth. We all miss Santy.

Thanks to Paul Coats for the photo.