Blue Tango
I got calls for two nice Christmas orchestra gigs, one at First Christian (where I've played several times) and the other for a choral concert of Christmas music at Snead College in Boaz.
Tonight the big band plays for the UAH swing dance club. We haven't played for them in a long time. It's a younger group, and they wanted a mix between classic and more modern-sounding music: Beauty and the Beast, I Wanna Be Like You, a couple of Brian Setzer tunes, 25 or 6 2 4, and even Brickhouse. Even the jazzier stuff is upbeat -- Sidewinder, Jump Jive and Wail, St. Thomas, Oye Como Va (which everybody knows because they think it's a Santana song). Lots of switching between upright and bass guitar. It's going to be fun.
We are, however, playing Blue Tango. I hate Blue Tango. Hate hate hate. It was the first song we learned in seventh grade orchestra, and we played it 7632 times and I didn't ever want to play it, or hear it, again. The big band has a perfectly good arrangement of Hernando's Hideaway that actually has an arco (bowed) bass part, but somebody else didn't like it, so we replaced it with Blue Tango, over the strong objection of the bass player. How can you play 25 or 6 2 4 and Blue Tango in the same set?
Tonight the big band plays for the UAH swing dance club. We haven't played for them in a long time. It's a younger group, and they wanted a mix between classic and more modern-sounding music: Beauty and the Beast, I Wanna Be Like You, a couple of Brian Setzer tunes, 25 or 6 2 4, and even Brickhouse. Even the jazzier stuff is upbeat -- Sidewinder, Jump Jive and Wail, St. Thomas, Oye Como Va (which everybody knows because they think it's a Santana song). Lots of switching between upright and bass guitar. It's going to be fun.
We are, however, playing Blue Tango. I hate Blue Tango. Hate hate hate. It was the first song we learned in seventh grade orchestra, and we played it 7632 times and I didn't ever want to play it, or hear it, again. The big band has a perfectly good arrangement of Hernando's Hideaway that actually has an arco (bowed) bass part, but somebody else didn't like it, so we replaced it with Blue Tango, over the strong objection of the bass player. How can you play 25 or 6 2 4 and Blue Tango in the same set?