If I WereA Bell

I wrote this chart for the Telluride Jazz Festival and Camp. We played it a few times, and the band always had trouble with it. The guys said I sucked, the chart sucked, it "didn't hang together" (a quote from my good friend Dave Turner :-)

Then my dear departed friend Frank Mantooth needed a chart for an album project he was doing with Art Farmer and a band in Vienna, and asked if he could buy it from me. He changed a few of the voicings, and gave me a really good arranging lesson.

This is when I discovered I was a real throwback - I would rather write a chart like Neal Hefti or early Thad Jones (in the basie style) than some hot shot college big band crap. It led to "Good To Me", which was my best (and last :-) big band chart.

Oh, yes, the band at Telluride, with some notable exeptions (like Frank, Ed Soph, Bill Prince, Willie Hill, Henry Wolking and Dave Glenn) sucked, and couldn't read the menu at McDonald's if their life depended on it. So there, assholes :-)