Sugar Rum Cherry

This is not the original album artwork - it was later combined with Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suites and re-released. This is the album I first heard it on.

When a friend suggested I check out Substack as a place to share and enjoy longer-form content, I shuddered at the thought of another social media account. But months later, here I am. In addition to starting my newsletter, I have discovered and subscribed to (too) many interesting writers with passions that are a welcome vantage on subcultures. One is Robert C. Gilbert’s “Listening Sessions - Thoughts From A Music Lover.” This week, he wrote about one of my favorite Duke Ellington recordings, The Nutcracker Suite. This 1960 adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s famous Christmas ballet stands as one of arranger Billy Strayhorn’s masterpieces, and the record is one of the later Ellington band’s finest. Robert provides detail and context that share an essential perspective on Ellington and Strayhorn as modern American composers, not just “dance band guys.”

This is a picture of me working with Kristen Toedtman on the Gumbo Family Holiday Album in my Venice Beach apartment/studio. For those with good eyes, I recorded it using Logic. That’s a Kawai stage piano in the back and a Wurlitzer 140b with a Hammond XK-3 on top of it.

In 2008, during a glorious, extended stretch of unemployment, I produced “The Gumbo Family Holiday Album,” a 14-song CD featuring 25 musicians/singers in my Venice Beach apartment studio—for less than $400 (I had to rent some microphones and pre-amps), in four weeks. Proceeds benefited Students Run LA. The opening track is my re-arrangement of Strayhorn’s “Sugar Rum Cherry” (i.e., “Sugar Plum Fairy”) for a brass band; I put it in a horn-friendly key and made it a second line—pretty much the extent of my vision as an arranger. It features a fantastic tenor saxophone player and my good friend, Matt DeMerritt. I’m playing Bari, and I think the alto part…I can’t remember off the top of my head.

“From the very first song on, it's readily apparent this is genre-busting stuff. The "Sugar Plum Fairy" kicks off the album, which itself is a bit more than bold, as how many rockers really cover Tchaikovsky? But when they add that New Orleans Second Line, that's when it becomes the kind of carol I'd go shopping on Black Friday to hear.” – The Argonaut.

This album is a snapshot of a time, place, and community of musicians I loved, and I’m still good for one nostalgic, post-Thanksgiving listen per season. It’s on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music. It was a tremendous amount of fun to produce.

SHOP NEWS

I had an emergency oboe repair this week that required some thought and creativity, but I got it done, and another school band holiday concert performance was saved!

The left-hand pinky key, which extends over the tenon connecting the two halves of the instrument, dropped and snapped in half. I drilled a hole in each broken piece and soldered them back together with a tiny length of a saxophone spring holding them together. I also soldered a small brass plate on the underside of the key, covering the break, and cleaned it up. Once I had sorted out what I needed to do, the job only took an hour and fifteen minutes—and it came out looking great!