1/30 Tuesday. Up early again. Breakfast at the University hotel where we’re staying is accompanied by yet more snow. The dusting is deep enough to dissuade me from going back to the downtown area to wander and shop. Instead, I accompany Scott while he teaches a master class to Northern Arizona University low brass students, on the history of jazz trombone stylings. He describes the eras and styles of jazz and players and illustrates this by playing in many different trombone voices, while sharing the development of both the instrument itself and the innovations and musical choices of players. It’s a history lesson in a nutshell that we hope encourages students to start listening to players they might not have been aware of before.

By 12:30, we are racing out of Flagstaff, accompanied by the snowfall (as usual!) We have a gig in Tucson at 7:30. However, to add a little drama, Scott has also found that the Arizona Jazz Academy has also booked him to lead a trombone clinic with some of their students at the club venue just prior to the gig.

Phoenix traffic is a terror at 3 pm, and we arrive with no time for dinner. Doug Tidaback’s Dixieland band kicks off the first set at China Rose, and I sing “All Of Me” with them. Ray Templin played piano, brothers Marco and Dante Rosano played clarinet and trumpet respectively. Evan Dain played banjo, Sly Slipetsky played tuba, and young Arthur Vint played drums. The place is packed, which adds to a lot of confusion for the restaurant staff about where to seat people.

Sly Slipetsky, who played an excellent tuba in the Dixieland jazz band played piano for our duet sets. Evan Dain played bass this time, and Arthur on drums rounded out our neat little trio.





Taking the stage, we can see folks standing in the back because there are no more seats. We kick it off with Scott’s “Come To Me” little bossa invitation to come spend a little time… We sang Maceo Pinkard’s 1928 “Sugar” next, since this seemed to be a Dixieland crowd. Wolf and Landesmann’s “You Inspire Me” was especially fun because there seemed to be a lot of folks in the audience who knew Jackie and Roy. Scott has been evolving a scat section of our “fight song” , Irving Berlin’s “The Best Thing For You”, so this tune has been especially challenging for me to “keep up with” in terms of finding space to “reply” within the conversational form. We had the most fun ever with it tonight… Many thanks to Doug Tidaback and family, Rodney Burton, and the Arizona Jazz Academy for all of their efforts in putting this program together!