Take a look at the Overture from Cat&Cat…
Overture
A Pot of Coffee & a Fistful of Aspirin
Posted September 10, 2010
Quarter Notes Cut the Deepest
I’m taking a break today from unsolved murders, missing persons, con men, and cults to address my other, happier passion. Regular readers to this blog know what I’m talking about. Jazz music.
Tonight, the Forest City Jazz Orchestra honors one of its own at storied Severance Hall: trombonist, arranger, and educator Ross “Hot Shot” Hostettler. Not to name-drop, but back in the late ‘80s I actually had the honor of sharing a bandstand with Ross when he sat in with Tony Emilio’s Big Band down at the 100th Bomb Squadron restaurant. I was playing fourth trumpet (barely) with Tony, and to this day I distinctly remember a cold, wet chill sparking down my forehead when Ross appeared, shook hands with Tony, and proceeded to take out his horn.
At that same instant, I’m pretty sure every other musician on stage experienced the same mixture of elation and trepidation. Hot Shot wasn’t just a local cat who’d made it out of Cleveland. He’d played with Art Blakey, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, The Tonight Show Band, and most recently Natalie Cole. Back then, my dad and his musician cronies all had their own Hot Shot story. Everyone, it seemed, had jobbed with Ross when he was a kid, which if true made him the most booked trombonist in the history of music.
Ross played phenomenally that night. We had this hokey chart in the book, “Stranger on the Shore,” that featured Ollie Spillman, our alto man on clarinet. I dreaded when Tony called the number because for six minutes all I did was blow whole notes while Ollie meandered around the chord line and wiggled his eyebrows. To my shock, Hot Shot asked if he could take the lead, and before my very ears he transformed the lamest tune known to man into this sweet, soaring, swinging tour de force.
The band never sounded as good as it did that set, at least not during my six-month tenure. Afterwards, I grabbed my pay for the night, which consisted of a free drink at the bar, and found myself standing next to Hot Shot. After I ordered a bourbon and water, Ross nodded at me, said “That sounds good,” and asked for Maker’s Mark and water. The tanned, twenty-something bartender had no idea who he was and snidely replied that musicians got well drinks only. “Sure, okay,” Ross replied, not fazed in the least.
Of course, I inserted myself into the exchange and offered to pay for his Maker’s Mark. Come on, you’re Ross Hostettler… He just grinned at me and said, “Booze is booze. After the first one, you can’t tell the difference anyway.”
We struck up a conversation, then. He politely told me I played well. I risked some musician’s humor and asked him which note he liked best. Hot Shot liked that one. He motioned me to an empty table, and we made our introductions over cheap bourbon.
He needed no introduction, of course. I told him my name, “Chris Telamon.”
“Are you related to Lenny Telamon?” he asked.
What?! “Yeah,” I nodded. “That’s my dad.” Oh my God… “You know him?”
“I worked with him on a job years ago…”
“At Mansfield Prison?”
“You know about that?” He seemed amused.
“My dad tells that story every time your name comes up.” I can’t believe this…
“I’ve told the story a few hundred times myself.” In just a few words, we were no longer strangers. “I still remember, I was eighteen. It was one of those Musicians’ Union Trust Fund jobs. They’d just send you out to play with a bunch of other cats. Strictly pick up. Your dad was there with some trumpet player…”
“Johnny Trumpe,” I filled in the blank.
“Yeah, yeah,” he nodded his head. “The guy nominated himself leader, and he starts calling tunes. Everything he counts out has this real fast two-step feel—”
“Businessman’s bounce.” I added, recalling my dad’s version of the story.
“Yeah, yeah. Businessman’s bounce. We’re playing to this room full of killers and God knows what, and he’s calling out shit like he’s Lester Lanin at the Society Club. After three songs, your dad turns to these inmates and says, ‘Sorry. We were just warming up.’ Then he calls out
‘Watermelon Man.’ Place goes crazy. The rest of the gig, he’s calling every old R&B tune in the book and honking like Eddie Chamblee.” He shook his head. “Jesus, Lenny Telamon’s kid. So what’s your story?”
I filled him in on my history degree and my less-than-stellar music career before getting back to his real war stories. “Do you know how I got the nickname Hot Shot?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“I took a gig with Al Grey, you know…?” he started.
“The trombone player,” I nodded. “Master of the plunger mute.” For those of you who don’t know, a plunger mute is exactly what it sounds like. A trombone or trumpet player takes the business end of a plumber’s helper, fans it over the bell of his horn, and makes a wah-wah sound.
“Al was a great guy,” Ross smiled. “He booked me and two other trombones for a month of Wednesdays at Pablo’s on 57th Street. Al Grey’s Trombone Four Plus Rhythm. I was just off the bus from Buddy Rich. Back then, I wanted to be called Boss Bone or Ross the Boss. I had a pretty big head. You know, Berklee to Blakey to Buddy. I looked at Al’s gig as a chance to make my name as the next big bone player in town.
“The other cats with me, Lars Trellin and Cliff Eddington, they’d been playing with Al for a year already. These cats were monster players. I was actually more intimidated by them than Al. Al had maybe the best three young trombonists in town with him, and he knew it.
“I respected Al’s playing back then, but I was a kid, you know…? Honestly, I knew I could play rings around him. So could Lars and Cliff. But they didn’t. ‘Don’t ever try and cut him,’ they warned me my first night. ‘If he gets you in one of his duels, just lay back, play tasty, and let him get the applause.’
“Al used to love doing that. He’d call these feature numbers, you know, ‘Symphony Sid’ or ‘Gone Fishin’.’ And he’d start trading 8s and 4s with us, trying to cut us to ribbons. We could be playing the lights out, and it didn’t matter. Al would just go wah-wah with that plunger and the crowd’d be on its feet. That’s why Lars and Cliff told me just to lay back and let him have his fun.
“But I was a kid, and I just couldn’t accept that. I mean, here we were, three great young players, and we spent every night playing in this guy’s shadow. Well, on our last gig, I decided to go out with a bang. Al called ‘Centerpiece’ to close the first set and the cutting session started. Lars led off, followed by Cliff, and then I was up.
“Well, I was gonna be damned if I let him show me up again. I’d been waiting four weeks to blow the old guy away. I threw everything I had out there, stuff I’d been wood-shedding on and saving just for this one occasion: triple-tonguing, doodle-tonguing, two-octave skips, circular breathing, all of it ending on this insane dog-whistle quadruple B-flat.
“When I was done, the crowd exploded. Al started his solo, but you couldn’t even hear him under all the applause. I stood up there, soaking it all in with one ear and listening to Al with the other, curious what the hell he could possibly do to top my virtuoso display. I heard a few notes bubble under the clapping, and as the room gradually calmed down, Al’s playing grew louder.
“B-flat, B-flat, B-flat, B-flat… He was playing B-flat quarter notes on every beat, through the 1-4-5 changes, building it louder with a crescendo, you know, warbling it and bending it with his plunger.
B-freaking-flat quarter notes. He kept that up into his second chorus. B-flat, B-flat, B-flat, B-flat… By then, the crowd was on their feet, chanting his name on the off-beat, stamping their feet.”
By this point in his story, my body quaked with helpless, hyperventilating laughter.
“The guy cut me to a bloody pulp playing quarter notes on the tonic,” Ross was laughing even harder than me. “When the tune ended and Al’s introducing the band before the break, he points to me and says
‘Ross Hostettler, the Hot Shot!’ You know how musicians are. The story got around, and the name stuck.”
We erupted in another round of howls as Ross pantomimed Al playing the quarter notes. Anyone sitting around us in that bar must have thought we were drunk, insane, or both. Eventually, we returned to our bourbon, and after a thoughtful silence Ross imparted one last thought before returning to his life: “Always remember, no matter how good you are, there’s always some cat out there who can still cut you…”
Some twenty years after his comeuppance, Ross “Hot Shot” Hostettler shared his wisdom with a complete stranger, a goofy twenty-something kid barely holding the fourth trumpet chair in a second-rate big band working for well drinks. And now, twenty years after that, he’s back in his hometown again, finally getting his just deserts at Severance Hall with the Forest City Jazz Orchestra. I only hope I can catch him after the show and buy him that Maker’s Mark. By this time in my life, I finally have some stories of my own to share.
You are listening to “Monk’s Bounce”by the Greg Waits Group…enjoy!