Trumpets - A Ramble

Band started for me in the 5th grade when I was 11 years old. I wanted to play an instrument small enough to fit in my back pocket so I chose a picolo. We trooped down to the music store downtown, maybe Parker Music, and I was dissuaded from the piccolo and persuaded to try a flute. Somehow that did not work out for me and I switched to cornet. My memory of these machinations does not include how long this all took.

Anyhow, my folks bought me a used Eklhart cornet and just like that I was in the band.

This is where my embouchure got screwed up. The band director was a string player and he told the brass players to smile and blow. Yaaarggghhh.

What I remember most about band in elementary school was getting the cornet to and from school on my bike. I would put the handlebar of the bike through the handle of the case and try not to have the case hit my knee as I pedaled or screw up my steering. This mostly worked but occasionally led to a spectacular fall.

The cornet and its case did not fit together well and the cornet bounced around in its case. When I had a bike wreck with the cornet aboard, the impact with the ground would cause a secondary impact inside the case and the curved pipe leading from the valves to the bell would get dented right by the mouthpiece receiver. This was a vulnerable place and had been dented before so it was easily dented again. Getting it straightened cost about $10 or so - a big sum at the time. My dad wanted me to stop putting it on my bike and just walk to school. I was stubborn and kept biking.

By the sixth grade I was a newspaper carrier. I had a canvas pannier that had bags for the news papers on each end of it. It could be worn like a pancho with bags front and back or it could be hooked over the handlebars of my bike with bags on each side of the front wheel. I actually used it both ways, over my shoulders to walk the route or on the bike to ride and ‘throw the route’. It was perfect for holding the cornet case on the way to and from school.

I was between mediocre and good as an elementary school player.

Junior high had a 7th grade band and a combined 8th and 9th grade band. The 7th grade band was just band lessons. In the 8th and 9th grade band we marched at football games and in a couple of parades downtown.

In the 7th grade since we did not march, I was not exempted from PE and I hated every aspect of PE. I was large and clumsy and got picked on and harassed by the older bullies.

Marching in the next two years was actually quite fun. We wore white shoes and white pants and were issued grey uniform coats and gray military style hats. One of the downsides of marching in the parades was that often the Jr High bands followed the horses with the obvious degradation of our white shoes.

I was never first chair but I played solos and got medals in the UIL contests.

Every cornet player wants to be a trumpet player. At some point in my jr high years I upgraded from my used cornet to a student grade trumpet. I bought this trumpet on time (financed) from Parker Music using my salary as a news carrier.

High school band was an upgrade from jr high. More challenging music, more intricate marching, spring concert band contest and better players. The band director was Red Burgess and I think he did a really good job of making band worthwhile.

I remained a mediocre to good player - mostly because I was too lazy and unmotivated to practice and be better. I was also hampered by my poor embouchure.

Some of the better trumpet players during my high school years were John Roy, Danny Clark and Richard Kimball.

There was a band nerd clique that I belonged to that included: Patrick Sullivan (played Cello in the orchestra and drums in the band - he was the drum major our senior year), James Cole (clarinet), Brad Norton (clarinet), Gail Runyon (clarinet), Della Willard (drums).

The band marched at almost every home and away football game. 

In my jr and sr years I was in the stage band and we played big band jazz music. I loved it and still love that style of music and sound.

I described elsewhere in this narrative how my sloth kept me from being a band officer in my senior year.

During my senior year in the early spring, Pat Sullivan and I visited Charlie Helpinstill (google Ezra Charles for more on Charlie) at Rice. During the visit we sat with the Owl Band at a basketball game and I heard Nelson Hatt play for the first time. Nelson was an extraordinarily gifted player - the best I had ever heard.

My freshman year at Rice I was in the Marching Owl Band and in the same trumpet section as Nelson. He and I became good friends. Kinda shows his heart that he could befriend an average player despite his virtuosity.

The band met in the band hall in the basement of the Rice Memorial Center and practiced our marching routines in an open field across the street. This field is now occupied by academic buildings.

The band director was Holmes McNeely. I liked Holmes and thought he did a good job of choreographing the half time shows. Band scholarships of $50 or $250 a semester were given out to band members. I did not know about this until the end of my freshman year when I was settling up with the bursars office. What a nice surprise. Holmes used this scholarship fund to bring in ‘ringers’ to augment the band. He brought in one trumpet player who was a Rice graduate and really a good player and very humble. I can see his face but his name eludes me. He also brought in a high school student, Mike Mauldin, with whom I became a good friend.

One band trip I particularly remember was a trip to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to play the University of Arkansas. We flew on DC-3 aircraft! The plane was older than I was.

In the spring we had concert band.

My sophomore year was another good band year. I made friends with Jim Roberts from Idaho, a good player who was eventually a roommate in the Branard house. Holmes brought in Larry Martinez, a professional trumpet player who was in the same class as Nelson and Nelson’s buddy from San Antonio, Jimmy Bell. With Nelson, Larry and Jimmy we had a screaming trumpet section that could compete with any band in the southwest conference.

Unfortunately, associating with these really good players did not materially improve either my embouchure or my playing ability.

In the spring of ‘66 Nelson got me a job at the Houston Speech and Hearing Center where he had worked part time for a couple of years. He left his job and Houston to attend grad school at the University of Pittsburgh.

Nelson came back to Houston in May of ‘67 to get married. He moved in with us in the Branard house. He played in a Mexican band called Eloy Perez y su Latinos for some extra cash. That summer he got me into that band. Nelson, Mike Mauldin and I were the trumpet section. Mike got me to practice more so I could endure the four hour gigs. 

We played a Mexican night club called the Pan American Club just north of downtown and we played a regular Wednesday night session at the Club Seville on Washington Avenue. These were both rough parts of town. I have some stories about just how rough. We played outdoor gigs on Cinco de Mayo and the Mexican Independence day in September. Over that summer I got a lot better.

At some point that summer I bought a new Olds Trumpet, again ‘on time.’

Over that same summer Holmes McNeely retired as band director of the Marching Owl Band. He was replaced by Bert Roth who was one of the forces behind transitioning the Marching Owl Band into the MOB. Google the MOB to get an idea of how the band changed.

When I started playing with the MOB in the fall of ‘67, I was way better and could blow long and loud despite the crummy embouchure and sustain my lip for the entire football game.

Note that the summer of ‘67 was a pivotal year in my love life. I was completely hooked on Kathy. I made three trips to St Louis that summer. I proposed to her on the second trip. And we got married on 23 November that year.

That summer I also committed to go to grad school so I stepped up my studying.

So in the fall of ‘67 I was playing in the MOB, playing in Eloy’s band, working part time at the Speech and Hearing Center, going to Rice full time with a 21 semester hour load and courting Kathy. Something had to give. I had a goal written out that if I wanted to go to grad school I had to make the dean’s list the rest of my time at Rice.

By about October I left Eloy’s band.

By the time Kathy and I got married on 23 November I had decided that I needed to focus on marriage and school. I had to work to support us so I left the MOB.

By spring of ‘68 we were tight on finances and the trumpet payments were a burden so I sold the trumpet and cleared the debt.

For the first time in 10 years I was no longer playing…

I still loved military marches, especially Sousa, big band jazz, ensemble jazz…

In 1970 I made my first trip to New York City for a business conference. I had gotten a note from Nelson that he was playing at the Roseland Ballroom (famous place - Google it). My hotel was about 4 or 5 blocks from the Roseland so I walked over there and sent my card in to the band. Nelson came out and we caught up. His graduate advisor at Pitt recognized that he was a talented trumpet player and that was where his heart was so he advised that Nelson leave Pitt and play. 

During my business trip I went to the conference during the day and hung out with Nelson in the nights. He took me to the Village Vanguard (google it) and then we took the subway up into Harlem and walked about 10 blocks cross town to a club where Clark Terry was playing. Clark recognized Nelson and I got to meet him.

Nelson played with several big bands (Glenn Miller, Woody Allen and others) and then finally became a studio cat in Los Angeles.

Time passes…

In the early 80s Britany decided to follow her father and play trumpet in the school band. We got her a student grade trumpet. In about 84 Kath and I decided to get her a better trumpet. I had a business trip to Los Angeles so I met up with Nelson again. I wanted him to help me buy her a good trumpet. After some wrangling he gave me a silver Yahama and I forced some money on him. Britany loved the trumpet and played it thru her time in high school.

Meanwhile my friend Nelson had married for the third or fourth time, but this time he found a really sweet soul mate. By the time I got the trumpet the was ill. She was diagnosed with a rare cancer and was dying. Nelson got her into an experimental program at M D Anderson in Houston. She balked at making him leave Hollywood because he was so happy playing for movies, commercials and TV. He convinced her that he was done with the studio rat race and wanted to be a band director in Spring, Texas.

So they moved to Spring, she got the experimental treatments and Nelson survived by teaching band, tutoring students and playing pick up gigs.

Sadly she died. Heartbreaking for Nelson.

He moved back to Hollywood and tried to break into the studio rotation again. Having been at the top of the list when he left, he had to start over at the bottom. He was working his way up when he died suddenly of a stroke following heart surgery. I am still sad to this day at the loss of this talented friend.

This is from the LA Times: Nelson Hatt, 51, a latter-day big band trumpeter who played for films, television, recordings and commercials. A native of San Antonio, Hatt graduated from Rice University, where he studied bio-acoustic music. But he quickly switched to trumpet and in 1969 established himself as a professional musician and private teacher in the Houston area. Hatt specialized in music from the heyday of big bands, playing the works of Woody Herman, Harry James, Buddy Rich and Glenn Miller. After settling in Los Angeles in the 1970s, Hatt became a session musician and produced, among other work, a memorable television commercial about cars featuring Miller’s 1940s hit “In the Mood.” On Dec. 8 in Glendale of a stroke after heart surgery.

So in about 2017 Britany gave the Yamaha back to me and I began fooling with it…but not seriously.

I am writing this in January 2021. I just found a youtube video on how to form a correct trumpet embouchure and I am stoked to do this and start playing again. We will see…

Now in 2025 - I came to my senses a couple of years ago and realized I would never be better than a mediocre player.  With Britany’s permission, I sold the trumpet and used the money to upgrade my Sony camera.