Meanwhile, back in the music business . . .

Last Saturday night The Original Recipe Horns and my one-and-only brother played a show in Dallas with Mary Wilson and The Supremes. It was a hastilly assembled gig, but we were up to the job. The book was clean, the MD (Don, who used to play with Tower of Power!) knew his stuff.

Actually, John VdG and I were the only steady ORB horns on the gig, but Matt Walker played trombone--a guy I've been trying to work into the rotation for some time now. The tenor player, Stan Killian, is a frequent collaborator too. They needed a name for the horn section, so, looking around and counting noses, I found that we were pretty damn close to the ORB Horns. So be it. And so it was announced on the stage.

Jimmy played percussion, and he did a great job locking grooves with The Supremes' great touring drummer and bass player. This is the first time Jimmy's done work like this -- there was a lot of reading -- but he was more than equal to the task. He's got a long history of less than fulfilling gigs which usually are based on the blues, especially when the evening's pay is distributed. Now he's got a whole new standard by which to judge a gig, and that involves how well the band was treated, how much fun the gig was, what the pay turned out to be, what the "hang" was, and a lot of other subtleties. This gig for him was long overdue and richly deserved. Of course he KNEW ALL THE TUNES and that helps too! His encyclopediac knowlege of pop tunes astounds me. There's not been a gig I've been on with him that he hasn't saved at least one tune by dragging the rhythm section through a break they're unfamiliar with or saving a singer's bacon when a brain lock results in a dropped lyric.