Watrous, Rosolino, Fontana

[mickael57280]

Hi, something bother me and I would know your thoughts.

Bill Watrous, Frank Rosolino and Carl Fontana are wonderful players, but when I listen an album from one of them, I drift away fairly easy, it's like if the music is beautiful but don't have that snap that touch my soul.

But when I listen Curtis Fuller, J.J. Johnson, even if I'm in an other room doin' something else and hear them play, I run to the room thinking who the hell is playing this solo!

That effect is similar with all the music that have a "soft like popish" feeling, it's the same with soul, can listen motown stuff, it's too soft, but I'm crazy of Otis Redding, Etta James, James Carr stuff.

[Posaunus]

It NEVER bothers me to listen to the wonderful music produced by Bill Watrous, Frank Rosolino, Carl Fontana, Urbie Green, Dick Nash, J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding, and many of the other greats. Not too "soft" for me!

And I also enjoy many contemporary jazz trombonists
(Just to mention some of those I've heard live: Andy Martin, Scott Whitfield, Rob Stoneback, Alex Iles, ...).

Chacun à son goût!

[imsevimse]

All those are great players, but it's nice we appreciate different things, different styles. I like all those soloists but if you want me to say who's first man on my list from bottom up it is Curtis Fuller. Not that he is bad, it's just the others attract me more. We all dig different things.

/Tom

[baileyman]

In one of Bill Crow's books he told a story about Carl walking into a club where Jay and Kai were playing, then sitting in for a few.

[AndrewMeronek]

Sometimes it's about the construction of an album, not just the playing. An album with more variety in form will tend to be more interesting than an album that repeats the same form. This is my main criticism for a lot of bebop recordings: way too many of them stick to head-solos in the same order-head.

[mickael57280]

I think it's more the approch to the trombone.
When the 3 cited play a solo it's very fast lots of notes and not so much dynamic nuance.

[AndrewMeronek]

Only fast notes with not so much dynamic nuance is not a criticism of Carl Fontana that I've ever heard before.

[Posaunus]

I'm afraid that I don't understand the criticism of Watrous, Fontana, Rosolino, ....
Bill Watrous was able to play a little more gently himself:




Or check out Bill's cadenza in this number - not so slow and melodic, but ...:


And then there are Frank's ballads:




And Carl Fontana was no slouch:


Or how about Carl and Frank together:


Sit back and enjoy listening to these giants of the trombone world!

[mickael57280]

Sorry but I feel like this, don't know why.

[Wilktone]

There's nothing wrong with having preferences for certain musicians over others. It would be an interesting exercise for you to see if you can come up with some reasons that you can articulate in words. It might be that the players you mention are missing something that players you prefer have. It might be that those players you mention have something that you find too familiar (i.e., it's in your own playing) and perhaps you will learn something to help you develop your own style.

Personally, I love Watrous, Rosolino, and Fontana. Frank Rosolino and Carl Fontana are consistently in my top five favorite jazz trombonists.

On the other hand, some of my favorite jazz records to listen to don't even have trombonists on them. I know, it's blasphemous.


Dave

[sacfxdx]

Everyone has their own opinion. Nothing wrong with that. Saying you don't like something is different than saying "they are not any good". Some of the stuff I like makes other cringe. I like that. Everyone is different.

I would be happy to play like any of these 3.

Steve

[mickael57280]

If I tried to put words on why I don't have a feeling with what they play I would say that it most have to do with songs played by them.

When I heard them play It Might As Well Be Spring, for me it sound like a player who had a beautiful women or wife, woke up go surfing, never had struggle in her life and have a ball playing trombone but that's all, for me it's sound like pop-ish, I feel no soul in it.

When I listen JJ Johnson or Curtis Fuller or Lee Morgan or John Coltrane I feel the struggle of segregation, the struggling of finding money, the frustration of living in a tiny apartment and let all those things happen in their playing.

[jthomas105]

Frank Rosolino certainly didn't have a happy life. Watrous didn't have a very good relationship with his dad. In fact nothing he did with how he ever played was good enough for his dad. Just because a person's playing doesn't sound a certain way doesn't mean a person didn't have to deal with life issues. Maybe when they played it was the only time they were truly happy and didn't feel the weight of life and the world on their shoulders. I love how they make seemingly impossible, difficult, hard, challenging, etc. sound so effortless.

[Cmillar]

Watrous....ahh!...beautiful!.....nothing wrong with hearing a beautiful melody played beautifully and then folowed by a tasteful, beautiful solo which is very melodic at its heart.

My wife has great ears and knows music....she loves listening to Watrous.

She says the rest of us all sound like 'high school players' compared to him. ( yeah....and I still love her!)

I think the great jazz players can tailor their playing for the audience, too.

Like, you have to play differently with a jazz trio in a quiet restaurant as semi-background music compared to when you're in a bar and jazz lovers are there to hear something newish and exciting and full of what they perceive to be 'emotion'.

Depends if you have a microphone to play into as well. Then, you can play softer and go for more intricate phrases in the style of Fontana or Watrous when they're doodle-tonguing like crazy.

Ahh....lots of great trombone soloists around these days!

[Pre59]

Time was when Jazz (specialist) players would play the occasional studio gig and studio players played an occasional jazz gig. The only game in town now as a jazz player, is to be immaculate. If you're not, you won't get any studio work, because stepping out into a more creative space will scare the bookings away.

Would (stylist) Frank Rosolino play recording sessions today? I doubt it, because it's been suggested that even at the time of his passing his diary was not looking good, and this at a time when there was more room to have a distinctive playing personality.

[baileyman]

...
Would (stylist) Frank Rosolino play recording sessions today? I doubt it, because it's been suggested that even at the time of his passing his diary was not looking good, and this at a time when there was more room to have a distinctive playing personality.

A friend who knew Frank up through the the sixties said he really only got called for studio sessions needing jazz trombone. But what Frank needed was the workaday studio work to pay the bills. Yet he was a spectacular section player.

[imsevimse]

There is no shame in having an everyday job to pay the bills.

The only guys here who can live on their music either are employed in one of the few orchestras or they are travelling all over Europe to do gigs. Most jazz musicians are either poor or have other jobs too. Maybe a handfull jazz players can live on their work in this country and then they can barely do enough. If they are considered important enough they can get some money from the swedish state to support their work. The days with recordingsessions, concerts and TV- shows that pay bills are gone.

I guess Frank, Bill and Carl had to work hard to to make a living too in the end. After all playing trombone, even at that level is an art that very few really know how to appreciate. Trombone players do of course, but the rich people who can feed trombone players rather buy luxury cars or luxury boats, or play golf and if they want music there are a lot to choose from.

It's probably trombone players who buy records with trombone players. Just look at my record collection. I have hundreds of trombone records. I have several with Frank, Bill and Carl. I hope some of the money I spent landed in their pockets, but I'm sure there are others involved who also wanted that money.

/Tom

[Pre59]

There is no shame in having an everyday job to pay the bills.

I'm not saying that there is, and I've jumped through all sorts of hoops to make a living in music. It's hard to serve two masters when they are both as demanding without one being compromised in some way.

[BrassedOn]

Can we add John Allred?

check out Sweet Clifford on his album “In the Beginning”. Buy this album. I keep coming back to it.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/in-the-b ... 000595241
And Jitterbug Waltz


Here’s Sweet Georgia Brown.


His second album is called “Focused”

[Posaunus]

I think it's more the approch to the trombone.
When the 3 cited play a solo it's very fast lots of notes and not so much dynamic nuance.

Really Mickael?



No nuance?

[BGuttman]

It's pretty "notey" but the lines do make sense. Some of the high notes I couldn't even figure out

If you are looking for a slow melodic ballad, this isn't it.

[Basbasun]

nice
I love all the mentioned player, they are all personalitys.

[Basbasun]

and this one, an old beloved.

[Joebone]

This debate is inane. Lumping Rosolino/Fontana/Watrous ("RFW") together is over-simplistic. Rosolino had a rhythmic springiness to his lines, dynamic range, and and occasional shout and surprise in his playing that is not common to the others. Watrous played some amazing stuff - technically, and sometimes conceptually - but it always felt like it had been worked out beforehand and deployed as appropriate on a session or gig, and so little timbral variety... OTOH, Fontana blows me away with the way his lines are often complex but always conversational, like he's just a revered elder listening to you, but telling you how it's gonna go down, from a place of self-confidence rooted in experience rather than self-aggrandizement, without condescension...of those three, he seems the one least obsessed with showing he was the slickest guy in the room - he just made music, and did it! So why do they so often get lumped together - is it their mutual degree of technical development, the time period and common 20th-Century-American-Songbook material with which they prospered, or, to put it bluntly, a question of race?

Whatever...

[ssking2b]

There are enough great players to go around. Not everyone is loved by all. We all have different tastes. Nobody mentioned Urbie and he was completely in their class, and also the consumate commercial musician. Players get lumped together by styles, ages, and who they performed with. I feel that suggesting race is just out of the question. These guys all knew and respected each other...and that is what matters. Not some mythical division we think we see from today's world years later.