SST Blog

11/5/18 Just before his untimely death, I enlisted my good friend and lyricist Paul Mendenhall to express things that could be helpful to us composers and arrangers. Here’s what he had to say:   From a lyricist’s point of view, the first requirement of a musical arrangement is that the words be intelligible. This may seem self-evident, but take a listen to most popular songs today: how many of the words can you understand? Are you sure? As someone who has spent years not only singing the wrong words to various pop songs, but even having the title wrong, trust...

10/26/18 There is a famous old story about Ben Webster coming to a complete halt in the middle of one of his great tenor saxophone solos. When asked what happened, he said, “I forgot the words.” And then there was Sonny Rollins who insisted on learning the words to every song he played. Frank Sinatra said that when he learned a song, he always learned the words first before he even sang one note. Do you ever wonder why jazz stopped being popular? One reason is that we stopped singing and playing the words.   When I was in high...

10/11/18   I recently was surprised to read the results of a study that concluded that people’s peak creative years had little to do with age. Some people hit their stride in their 20s while others could be in middle or even old age. I’ve been thinking about this subject for many years.   A long time ago I noticed that almost all the greatest instrumental jazz records were made by men in their 20s: Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens, Lester Young with Basie’s Old Testament Band, Roy Eldridge with Krupa, Dizzy and Bird, Freddie Hubbard with Art Blakey,...

10/4/18 I'm not joking. It's true. The New York Times article revealing Fred Trump's serial tax fraud and other frauds including his children proves it. Just look at our national history. Bear with me while I try to figure out how we got here. My apologies to my readers who only want me to write about music, but I need to say all this before I can get my mind back on that subject. We (the United States) stole our country from the Native Americans by pushing them farther west, promising them that we would allow them to live on that...

Or is he being Borked? 9/30/18 To Kav: verb, meaning to physically assault a woman with the intention of rape, but be too drunk to rise to the occasion and complete the task. This term has entered the entitled frat boy vernacular this week along with ski (short for “brewski”), Renate Alumni, Devil’s Triangle and other hateful misogynistic references.   Full disclosure: I am a white college-educated male. I went to school on a number of scholarships (awarded based on my intelligence and musical talent), worked summer day jobs and played gigs at night year-round. I went to public schools...