The JOI of Jazz

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This is a Kun V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

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You're listening to 91.5 Kun V jazz and more. And this is jazz outreach initiatives, the joy of jazz. I'm your host, Donnie Thompson, and this program is underwritten by d'agostinos tracheria, a small local, family owned Italian restaurant at the corner of West Flamingo and buffalo, specializing in classic, always scratch Italian favorites, handmade pastas and desserts. For more information, go to d'agostinos, tratoria lv.com,

Unknown Speaker 0:48
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of jazz outreach initiatives, the joy of jazz here on kunv 91.5 jazz and more, the joy of jazz, featuring conversations with local jazz artists and showcasing their music. I'm Donnie Thompson, your host. And in studio today are a couple of Boneheads. And by boneheads, I mean members of the band called The boneheads, a local band made up of the area's best trombone players, Kurt Miller and Ralph Pressler, welcome to the joy of jazz. Thank you. Thank you. That's great. Ralph Pressler, people may find it interesting. This band was formed way back in 1962 tell us a little bit about how the band was put together and maybe a little bit of its history, and we'll have Kurt Miller then step in, talk a little bit about the boneheads hiatus and its rebirth.

Unknown Speaker 1:30
Absolutely, 1962 here in Las Vegas, the I think musician, the musicians that were playing, wanted to have a place to actually expand some of their talents. And by getting together and playing jazz after the showrooms was a big thing for them, something that they wanted to do. And the fellow that actually put the boneheads together in 62 was Abe Noel. Abe had originally played with Spike Jones and had done a lot of work with Jerry Lewis and the telethon with actually playing and copying a lot of the music. So he got together with Charlotte Loper, who has been a stalwart in the Los Angeles studios, Bill Harris, who was let's see Woody Herman's on his first herd. And let's see Bill smiley, who's a former member of the Salt Lake City, or, I think, Philharmonic, and then also a Canton alumni. And what people now don't realize is that Abe wrote, actually for five tenors, five tenor trombones in one base. So the fifth part was a low tenor, and Pat Thompson was doing that. And when Dick McQuarrie came to town, he expanded it to four tenors and two bass so the two bass trombones anchored the bottom and played off of each other, which was great back in the day, the time that I got to meet Abe was in late 1967 so in 68 I became a member of the Las Vegas boneheads, a lot of fun, because there were people that were a member of this group that I had read about on record jackets, whether it be for Woody Herman or Frank Sinatra. And it was a lot of fun for me. You know, being a 23 year old and having these phenomenal musicians playing and me adding my voice to it. Of course, my voice was reading the spots, reading the notes, no jazz for the bass trombone. So anyhow, moving forward, I think the interesting parts of this was that in the mid 60s, there were two jazz clubs in town, I think, one on Paradise and one on Tropicana, tender trap that one. Tender trap was one, and I think the black magic was the other. And what would happen is the stars, once they finished their 12 o'clock show, they would go listen to the Boneheads. And so they started a nice following, and the people that were involved, actually, there were several really fine jazz players in the 60s of. One of which was Carl Fontana, another one was Bill Harris. They had a following of their own. So when they got together with the boneheads, of which the majority of the music actually arranged and written was by Abe Noel. The group progressed for a few more years, and then by the time I got here, the in 67 there weren't any live places anymore for the group to play, so we started playing on the stage of the frontier at the village pub, which was over on close to covid. And as a matter of fact, I've got a picture of one of the groups and the I think the lead trombone book was actually taken with two people. They traded traded places. One of them was Jim huntinger, who was Sinatra's lead trombone player, and the other one was Bill booth, who is John Williams, first call for all of the everything that John Williams has done, but anyhow, the bass trombones was myself and Bill Rogers, and that was a lot of fun for me, because Bill was a phenomenal bass trombone player and a Ranger the group always had, at that time, a rhythm section of three, piano, bass and drums, and at that time it was either Frank Collette or Mike Breen on piano and Hank Dobbs on bass and Stan Harris, who was originally, I think, from England, on drums. So we had a whole lot of fun. Now rounding out, I think Jim huntinger and Bill Booth was the former first trombone player with the Indianapolis symphony. His name was Phil arcury. And then a buddy of mine from Ball State was Dave pavolka, great jazz player. So anyhow, as we moved on into the 70s, we were joined by Eddie Morgan, great jazz from bone player. The group had different jazz soloists over the years, in the 60s, 70s, and then Kurt can tell you what happened

Unknown Speaker 7:38
before we cut into the balance of the history of the Boneheads. Let's actually play some music off of their album. Kurt Miller, Which song are we gonna play today? Tell us a little bit about it, what album it's on.

Unknown Speaker 7:48
So this is, it's a song called nervous Nelly on the 60 and still cooking CD. We started to record it right before covid, got about half of it done, and then finished it up after covid, and it celebrated the, basically the 60 years of the Boneheads. The nervous Nelly came from, I had just retired from my business, and I was a little nervous about the whole retirement thing, so I wrote this song called nervous Nelly. All right, so

Unknown Speaker 8:09
from the code poser itself. Nervous Nelly from 16 still Cooking on the boneheads album. You

Unknown Speaker 13:02
WELCOME Back. To jazz outreach initiatives, the joy of jazz, underwritten by d'agostinos tratoria. This is your host, Donnie Thompson, and I'm joined again by boneheads members, Kurt Miller and Ralph Pressler. We just heard a song from the album, and we're gonna pick up a little bit on the history of the Boneheads. They had a hiatus and a rebirth. Kurt

Unknown Speaker 13:20
they had a couple actually, it would sort of ebb and flow a little bit as the guys were available and not available. Ralph mentioned in the late 60s, it sort of dwindled off a little bit. But then, when I got into college in 73 and Bill booth, who Ralph mentioned, was my teacher for the four years in college before he moved to LA and became John Williams principal Tramon player. But anyway, I did get to hear the boneheads play at UNLV. It was unbelievable. It rocked my world. It was just incredible with Jimmy Hunsinger and Jim Trimble from the Buddy Rich band and all these guys. So I started playing with the band in like 7778 down at the old musicians Hall. And it was Carl Fontana would show up, Ralph, Jimmy Trimble, all these great guys. And it lasted until the early, mid 80s, until, you know, we started approaching the musician strike, and then it sort of disappeared. And it disappeared for 20 something years. It literally was gone. And then in 2007 Ralph, yeah, Ralph actually called me, and Ken Hamlin here at UNLV, the chair of the music department, reached out and said, we want to do a jazz cruise, and we want to put together the old boneheads band that used to play 20 something years ago, and let's go do a jazz cruise with famous tromonas, Bob McChesney. And we did that. We got a we got a bunch of the charts together, went out and did it, and I was it so moved by remembering how fun that band was to play in, that we kept it going. So it's been going now since 2007 and we recorded the first CD the group ever did, 55 years after the inception of the group. It took a minute.

Unknown Speaker 14:56
And now, obviously, if anybody's you know knows your name, you're really well known. Here, you're one of the Vegas first called musicians, of course, on trombone, but you, like many people that I've talked to around town, that wasn't your first instrument, was it?

Unknown Speaker 15:08
No? Well, you don't pick your first instrument. Your band director does depending on what they need. So they shoved a sousaphone around me when I was in junior high school. That didn't work at all, and so I picked up guitar, and then when I went to high school, I realized, like, they didn't have a guitar in the jazz band, and I was playing euphonium baritone horn, if you will. And he said, Well, you can play the valve tromone. So I bought a valve tromone Because I knew the valves on the euphonium. It was the same and but by the time I hit my senior year, he says, You're gonna have to learn the slider. You can't be in the band anymore. So that was my start. Little weird. That's

Unknown Speaker 15:40
cool. So the music that we're going to be listening to is this next one will be not a boneheads chart, but actually one that you did for it with a big band. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 15:49
it was just a project I was working on almost 10 years ago, just, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, people used to say, why don't you put a CD, CD out of your own? And I said, Okay, well, I'll start recording some stuff. So I've laid this down back about 10 years ago, and it's a great bill Rogers bass dronis that Ralph mentioned arrangement on Emily, which is a famous tune that Carl Fontana used to play all the time.

Unknown Speaker 16:11
All right, let's take a listen to Emily from Kurt Miller and his Big Band orchestra. Ta

Unknown Speaker 16:22
da Donna, welcome back to jazz outreach initiatives, the joy of jazz, underwritten by d'agostinos. Tracheria, this is your host, Donnie Thompson, and I'm joined again here in the studio with boneheads members, Kurt Miller and Ralph Pressler. Kurt Miller, in addition to being a great musician and sound engineer, you've also been a bit of a renaissance man, having established the UNLV recording studio, and then you, I believe, taught there, founded successful businesses in the IT world, and you enjoy also paying it forward through various efforts, such as your recent gift to the UNLV School of Music and your board service as president of the local nonprofit jazz outreach initiative. So I'm just going to use your own metaphor I've heard you use before, which is, what is it that inspires you to drive rather than ride the bust in all these efforts? You

Unknown Speaker 20:46
know, that's a tough question. I've always been somewhat of a kind of a go getter, and I think that's because of my music education. To thrive in the music business here in Vegas, in the showrooms, you had to be dedicated and good. And so that just becomes a way of life. I don't really take any credit for it, other than just you get forced into a position of really having to go for it all the time. So, and then when the big strike happened and the music started to dwindle, I didn't have much of a choice but to go into business. So that's sort of how that started. And it was like starting over. I mean, I kind of had to learn the ropes all over again. That

Unknown Speaker 21:17
was that was mine too. I was at UNLV finishing up my degree, and the musicians Union had its issues, and everybody was getting fired. And Frank galliardi said, What are you going to do? And I said, Well, I work at this tuxedo store manager. It was up for sale, and I thought, well, maybe I'll just buy it.

Unknown Speaker 21:33
There you go. That's how much we all got thrown into day gigs. Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. I started a business. Well, actually, I worked for a couple businesses, ended up as C level employee for them, and then started a tech company in 2021 22,001 and sold it in 2021 20 years later, and

Unknown Speaker 21:51
you're president now of the board of directors for jazz outreach initiatives. Tell us a little bit experience. How did you come into that? Boy,

Unknown Speaker 21:57
you guys in jazz outreach initiative invited me to run the sound for one of the essentially, Ellington festivals. I believe it was right before covid. So it was 2020, and I went in with the sound system and set it all up. And all the, you know, 1000 kids show up from high schools all over the west southwest here. And instead of them sitting there being on their phones and not paying attention, they're all screaming and supporting each other. And just the jazz on the stage was great from these high school kids. And I just had chills, like I do right now. And I just said, How do I get involved in this? This is amazing. That's that was it. I was hooked.

Unknown Speaker 22:31
Yeah. And, of course, you know, twice a month at notoriety, people could see you with the joy jazz orchestra. And Ralph, you're in that occasionally as well. Yep,

Unknown Speaker 22:39
we take the very best musicians from town, Ralph, being of certainly one of those and and we, yeah, we do the first third Wednesday down there at notoriety. And it's a great big band. So

Unknown Speaker 22:48
we're going to get back into some music. But before that, I want to talk a little bit about who else is on this album. What are the other players that are in the current lineup of the Boneheads. So

Unknown Speaker 22:56
currently the boneheads are myself, Nathan to Noe, a professor out here in the music department and incredible arranger composer. We also have David philippis Right now, and then he joined us recently. And then Nate Kimball, he was with Cirque du Soleil Zumanity for a decade, incredible jazz player. And then Sonny Hernandez on bass drone, and Ralph right here, on bass, hermone, and then on bass, we usually have Steve flora. These are all musicians you'll see in the jazz clubs around town. Steve flora, either Uli, Uli on piano, Uli geisenorfer. And I should say geisen dorfer,

Unknown Speaker 23:36
yeah, he's gonna get Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker 23:37
know Uli, I gotten so in the habit of making fun of that that that now I say it all the time. It's huli geisenorfer And then, and then sometimes it's David Loeb, also from UNLV out here on piano, and then on drums. We have, well, we have, usually, Johnny Friday, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 23:51
that's great. So what are we going to listen to next? So this

Unknown Speaker 23:55
is an arrangement on 6060, and still cooking CD of Cherokee, the famous jazz tune. And this one has a special guest, a longtime friend of mine and grade a studio music, you know, movie, a studio player down in Los Angeles named Andy Martin. He's a worldwide celebrity in the world of jazz hormones. So this features Andy Martin.

Unknown Speaker 24:14
So 60 and still cooking. Is the album from the boneheads, the Song Cherokee. Let's take a listen. You

Unknown Speaker 28:40
Welcome back to jazz outreach initiatives the joy of jazz. Underwritten by Doug castinos trachuria, this is your host, Donnie Thompson, and I'm joined again here in the studio with boneheads members, Curt Miller and Ralph Pressler, and you just heard a great music. Piece of music. We're going to talk a little bit about how we get more information. So Kurt Miller, for those interested in hearing more about the Boneheads. Where can they go find information on concerts and listen to more of this great music.

Unknown Speaker 29:05
Typically, whenever we have a gig coming up, we'll put it on our Facebook page. So that's facebook.com/vegas Boneheads. And then also, there's a long history of the boneheads on my website, which is Curt Miller music.com there's a right in the menu, it'll say Boneheads. So that's the easiest ways to find info.

Unknown Speaker 29:22
Thank you for listening today, and thank you again to all of our friends at Dave's Trattoria for underwriting this show. Thanks again to the boneheads members, Kurt Miller and Ralph Pressler for sharing some really great music with us today. Wes on sound, of course, Jason monarchy and the whole una v k, u n v team here in the office for more information about invents, concerts, e newsletters, subscriptions, volunteer opportunities and more@jazzvegas.org and we'll be back again on the third Sunday of next month, at 9am right here on K u n v 91.5 jazz and more the K u n v mobile app and wherever you get your podcasts. Until then, as always, make it a joyful day for you and for someone else.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai