Review

Julie Gendrich
Bonanza: Insight and Wisdom from Professional Jazz Trombonists:

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Publisher: Advance Music
Date of Publication: 2011

Primary Genre: Jazz Material - method
Secondary Genre: Study Material - book

This book is an invaluable resource for the international trombone community. It includes transcriptions of interviews with forty working professionals, many of whom have been featured at various ITA events. The author became a familiar face at many of these events, cornering musicians for interviews in what was then intended to be a dissertation project. But it grew! Reading these interviews is like a combination of private lesson, fireside chat, and beer talk, minus the beer. Ms. Gendrich's questions are fairly consistent: the predictable nuts-and-bolts How-to-do whatever, which usually touch on matters of vibrato, articulation, formative influences, plus the recurring, "Who are your seven favorite trombonists of all time?" There is also an extensive discography after each interview, plus photographs. An appendix includes a bibliography of published jazz trombone materials. The book is 563 pages, therefore approaching encyclopedic proportions. But it isn't a novel. You can skip around, pick and choose, and hopefully enjoy as well be enlightened and inspired. 

Now for the quibbles, bones to pick, if you will. There are forty men, almost entirely Caucasian, with a few notable exceptions. Each chapter heading identifies them as "Mr.," i.e. Mr. Bill Watrous, Mr. Mark Nightingale, etc., which seems a bit stilted as well as redundant. Also, the "selected" discographies run 6-7 pages in some cases. The big caveat, however, pertains to book-making, maybe just the review copy but possibly the entire run. From p.320 to p.360, the pages are badly scrambled, i.e. out of sequence, so in the midst of the Ed Neumeister interview, one of this reviewer's favorite trombonists, you have to hopscotch twice to finish the interview. The glitch similarly affects Paul McKee, John Mosca, Larry O'Brien, for whom 2 pages are missing, and Mark Patterson. If possible, try to examine a copy before purchase. My other quibble is predictable: the omissions. As Tom Everett once advised, there comes a point in any project where you must circle the wagons and go with what you have. Or, to quote the infamous Donald Rumsfeld, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you'd like to have." Ms. Gendrich, in her Introduction, admits failing to corner Slide Hampton on four separate occasions, saying, "I apologize to anyone who is not here but should be." Nevertheless, this reviewer visited New York City frequently during a 15-year period when the most interesting trombonists were George Lewis, Ray Anderson, Gary Valente, Steve Swell, Joe Fiedler, Wycliff Gordon, Scott Whitfield, Luis Bonilla, Jimmy Bosch, and Marshall Gilkes, all missing in action. Thank God she caught up with the likes of Sam Burtis, Chris Washburne, Steve Turre, Conrad Herwig, Earl McIntyre, Bruce Eidem, etc., but I miss the others. Presumably, similar oversights exist for the West Coast, with which scene this reviewer is less familiar, plus the Father of Us All, URBIE GREEN, who was Mr. New York City for an extensive chunk of his career. Was he that impossible to corner? I doubt it. Part II, The Sequel? Cheers.

-Gerry Sloan
University of Arkansas