Saturday, June 27, 2009
Jack Sheldon
I found myself browsing for Jack Sheldon clips the other day and reflected on this very unique survivor of West Caost jazz and sixties and seventies media and culture. When I came home from school in the early seventies, I would check out the Merv Griffin show, but usually just the first fifteen minutes or so because Merv would hang out with the Mort Lindsay Orchestra, mainly bass genius Ray Brown and the irrepressible Sheldon.
Sheldon was also a favorite of Portland record store owner and deejay Bob Dietsche (who later went on to write Jump Street, a great history of Portland jazz.) Dietsche would play Sheldon's irreverent and bizarre comedy bits as well as his virtuoso trumpet playing and his one of a kind vocals. Sheldon's singing always reminded me of an Anglo version of what Louis Armstrong's vocals whether it be on Schoolhouse Rock, the soundtrack of Robert Altman's Long Goodbye or the way he could swing an standard and make it his own.
The clips I have embedded here show his unique ability to interpret the great American songbook. I don't think Mancini ever swung quite like it did in this poor image but fine audio capture of Days of Wine And Roses from a Beverly Hills concert last year. And, believe it or not, his take on Just in Time with Merv Griffin and Alf the puppet during Alf's short-lived 2004 talk show is a terrrific appearance. Show me another 72 year old man who can still play trumpet like that with the notable exception perhaps of Clark Terry.
I briefly encountered Sheldon twice when he doing gigs up in Portland during the eighties. The first was after a long evening of music with Red Holloway and he was pretty disoriented. I found his trumpet for him. Another time he was much more sober and comprehensible taking a smoke break at intermission in a door way. If I recall it was a dampish evening and the traffic on SE 39th was sounding like brushes on high hats. I don't remember much quick kind of fanboy encounter but I do remember him saying: "It's still hard work to get music out of that horn."
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:37 PM
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