Dr. Campbell’s Christmas Trombone Sextet Album

The trombone section in the Count Basie Band. The Chicago Symphony low brass section, especially with with Frank Crisafulli and Arnold Jacobs. And Los Angeles studio musicians! Those are probably the best trombone sections I have heard on recordings.

Studio musicians from other towns have related stories of how they could not get a track recorded correctly after many hours, only to have the producer fly to LA and have it done first or second take. Were the LA studio cats really more expensive if they could do it in 1/10th the time?

I am not sure what Dr. Charles Campbell had in mind when he assembled an especially good crop of his trombone students and recent alumni from the University of Miami at the Blue Smoke Studios of Miami Dade College. I cannot even remember the arranger. My wonderful dad, Jim, had the idea of repeating each of the very short recordings for greater effect, and some recordings are incomplete. It was just a phone call one afternoon and showing up to play whatever they put in front of me. I played the bottom part on my single-valve Earl Williams model 10 Bass Trombone that was left to me by my friend Fred Carter after he passed away too soon and too young.

(If a single an open symphonic tenor earl William is a model 8, and it becomes a model 9 with the addition of a valve, wouldn’t that make a double-valve Earl Williams Bass Trombone a model Eleven? Too late; the bell has been stamped!)

I am not sure what the other guys were thinking, but I was thinking of George Roberts, Dick Nash, Tommy Pederson and the LA studio trombonists-no one better in the world! Enjoy!

ALBUM V Trombone Sextet!

01 “Jingle Bells”