Wow. First, to Newbee - I'm sure that you probably perceive me as being more condescending than Frogman, and I would totally understand that. His justification that we are teachers by nature and therefore cannot stand by in the face of misinformation could not be better stated.
O-10 - first, I agree with you 100% that Clark Terry's Color Changes is a really great album. Julius Watkins was an amazing guy. Not your typical horn sound, but he could play. There are a couple of albums he made as a leader, believe it or not, but unfortunately they are very hard to find on LP because they happen to be Blue Notes, so the Japanese collectors go nuts and drive the prices up to outrageous amounts. The group is called the Julius Watkins Sextet on those albums, I'm sorry I don't remember the titles. Too tired to type more about Julius Watkins at the moment, but if you like, I have MUCH more to say about him - very interesting life he led. I also have a discography of his somewhere, so I could look up those album titles on it, now that I think about it. One of the most hilarious albums he made, by the way, is called French Horns For My Lady - if you ever see that in a record store, buy it (Philips label)! More about that another time, if wanted, too.
OK, there was one comment that I cannot let pass. "Since he was performing three nights a week, there was absolutely no need for some kind of ritualistic practicing." No, no, no, no, no. This is dead wrong. As Frogman and I have both explained, one MUST maintain one's chops to keep one's playing level to a certain standard. So if your friend was not practicing that summer, that doesn't mean he couldn't play/perform - but it does mean that he was nowhere near his top playing level. There is absolutely no way on earth he could have been, simply because the muscles must be kept in top shape. Just like an athlete's, believe it or not, except we use much weaker muscle groups that have to last for much longer careers - you have to put in your daily routine, we call it, though it is not necessarily ritualistic, most of us vary it quite a bit. There are definitely about 20 minutes worth of "warm-up" type exercises that I do in exactly the same way every day, but beyond that there would be another 20 minutes worth of exercises that would be varied depending on what type of playing I am doing at work, or have coming up in the near future, or even distant future sometimes. And if we don't practice, that is the same thing as an athlete not working out - they get out of shape VERY quickly, and so do we. Again, I am not saying this means you can't play (though for a professional brass player, you would never take an entire summer off, it would take a too long to get back to where you were - the most I have ever taken is one month off, and it took about three weeks after that to get back to top shape) - you are nowhere near your top level. You have mentioned that your friend was very close to the end of a long life and career, too, which means that his playing was almost certainly not at his peak anyway. Just like with the athletes, this is one very unfortunate thing about being a musician - your mind and your musicianship are more highly developed than ever, but you can't do some of the stuff you used to do anymore. I am just young enough to not quite be at that point in my career yet, but I am fast nearing it. I'm at least several years behind Frogman in age, possibly even a decade. I hope to have another twenty years in me, though it may end up being more like fifteen - as a brass player in particular, you never know for sure.....
