My Shining Hour

I had this student/friend/collegue named Jeff Nuss - he put together a big band to promote his various contracting gigs in the Bay Area with some really fine players. I had actually written this chart for the band at Foothill, but right at that time I began the Music Technology Program and so got out of jazz ed. permanently. Jeff wanted to make a CD at Foothill so I gave him this chart and wrote "Good To Me' as an arrangement.

Turned out really well! The band played great, so it became the lead track on the CD "Art Attack", which is still in print and available at CD Universe.The sax soli is a compendium of Coltrane's solo from the "Coltrane Jazz" album, one of my favorites. The head is transcribed as Coltrane played it as well.

The original shout chorus for this chart was one of my angst-filled, unplayable constructions that characterized almost all of my previous charts. The lead trumped player, Louis Fasman (who's a great player and a good guy) made some smartass comment about it at rehearsal, so I went home and tried to write a shout the Tonight Show Band would play (like Tommy Newsome). Hey presto! It worked and this chart gets played all the time.