Author: JazzBariSax Curator, Andrew Hadro

I don’t always post when there’s a new transcription now that we have over 150, but there have been a few recent entries I want to highlight.

First a neat (and fast!) Bruce Johnstone solo from a Maynard Ferguson album on the song “Superbone Meets the Badman”. Thanks to Mattew Stevenson for this one.

There’s also a new Ronnie Cuber transcription on his tune, Passion Fruit. Giovanni Contri provided this one.

And lastly, and maybe most interestingly we have our first Bob Gordon solos care of Zachary Spondike! Bob Gordon is a very under-represented baritonist with an unfortunately short career but could play the hell out of the baritone. He died awfully young in a car accident, but the recordings we have are excellent. These two transcriptions – one on “Have You Met Miss Jones” and one on “Dot’s Groovy” both come from an album with Jack Montrose. You can read what Jack wrote about Bob Gordon on his page here.

Head to the Transcriptions Repository to grab these new solos, and enjoy them.

Traveling with a baritone saxophone is becoming impossible. Also, since music stores are closing left and right the ability to try out a baritone before purchasing is quickly disappearing. That being said, there are many baritone saxophones out there – and many of them are sitting idle.

So I’d like to create a network of baritones so that musicians can find a horn either in their area or where they need to travel to that they can access. I’m not trying to create a system of borrowing, baritones are expensive so I think rental and payment might need to be involved. That being said should you have a baritone on offer it would be between you and the borrower to figure it out.

Do you have a baritone you can rent out? Fill out this form and JazzBariSax.com will have a public listing of horns available for people to reach out to.

https://forms.gle/g9L3cit2giPcYLKv5

JazzBariSax.com and myself (Andrew Hadro) will have no responsibility for the rental – payments, agreements, damages, insurance etc. I highty recommend you have a well written, signed agreement in place before renting any equipment. It should cover any possibility of damage or any other contingency clearly and explicitly – but I am not a lawyer so you will need to do your own homework to make sure you are covered.

Dr. Evan Smith has provided a new transcription – another hard hitting solo from Leo Parker – on the tune “The Lion’s Roar”. He’s got a nice analysis along with the transcription posted on his site.

Head on over and have a look.

Brett Stuckel forwarded me this short fiction piece he wrote. Its wild and very amusing. All fans of the baritone should have a read.
Read the full piece here.

Check out a snippet:

The history of jazz isn’t complete without the story of Lou Palmer. Yeah, yeah, you say, never heard of him. That’s expected. Lou never stepped on stage. Well, maybe, arguably, once—we’ll get to that. He didn’t write, he didn’t run a club, he didn’t sell drugs, he didn’t help guys get clean. Lou was just an average Chicago law clerk who could smell a baritone sax from miles away.

At first, Lou’s talent was a curiosity, a party trick. He could tell you how good a show would be hours before the curtain. If some no-name kid from Muncie showed up in town with a splattery honk, destined for greatness, Lou knew as soon as the kid stepped off the Greyhound.  He fed his finds to the highest bidding band leader.

There are two recent transcriptions added to the repository – Bastian Contreras delivered Pepper Adams‘ Falling in Love with Love from a Red Garland album, and an alternate transcription of Cecil Payne‘s solo on ‘Bringing Up Father’ from the album, ‘Patterns in Jazz’ care of Guillaume Orti. Head over to the page to have a look!

We now have over 150 transcriptions, for free, in the repository. And possibly more impressive – there are now over 500,000 downloads!

But possibly most importantly  – as of January 2024, this website has been online for 25 years! Head to the About page to read the history.

Thank you to Matthew Stevenson for sending in a new Ronnie Cuber transcription. This one is on Arroz Con Pollo from his album ‘Cubism’.

Have a listen below and then head to the transcriptions page to download a copy!