He's a new guy, and you didn't trust him (and for all I know he was just playing wrong and that's not a good thing to do when substituting... Actually, it's just plain old bad form as a sub, even if he didn't drop one 16th note of time.)
That said, when I listen to some of the two or four bar drum solos at the ends of some of the original (Audio Fidelity label, Assuntos family) Dukes of Dixieland recordings - when Red Hawley would intentionally turn the beat around twice or three times, I would laugh my ass off.
tangential topic:
Norman "Red" Hawley left the Dukes of Dixieland and headed for Miami when the Gleason show moved from New York City to Miami and Don Goldie was set up as the lead trumpet/band leader for the Miami-based television show's band.
Both of them stayed in Miami and remained good friends throughout the rest of their lives. Twice in a row (two early 1980s Sacramento Dixieland Jubilees in a row - in the midst of Dixieland revival Roman numeral II) either they followed us or we followed them at venues. The first of the two years was a giant venue where by thousands of people were outside under a partially shading cover, and the second time it was in a smaller more intimate venue. Our last set on one of the nights was near this hotel that was sort of the center of the entire festival, and I managed to get in the door. Red saw me, hollered out "Hey Joe!", and signaled for me to come sit down. As I've said before, I really don't try to engage celebrities, and I certainly viewed him as one. I felt like the combination of him remembering my name and inviting me to his table were both huge compliments.
In the late 1950s into the early 1960s, he had flaming red hair that was cut into a flat top. When I briefly knew him, he looked more like this, except his hair was crazy long (yet white and thin as shown) and the wind blew it in all sorts of directions... Perhaps this picture was taken ten years after I knew him...(??)
Other cool things happened at those festivals:
- Don Goldie took me up to his hotel room because he wanted me to show his matching pair of gold-plated Selmer K modified trumpets.
- At another festival in San Diego (whereby Lawrence Welk's clarinetist, Henry Cuesta - having heard our band the previous year - asked our rhythm section to also serve as his rhythm section, obviously saving some airline fare, but us doubling up on pay playing with both bands) he took me up to his room and started pouring drinks (straight drinks, no water). About three minutes later (yes really) the Lennon Sisters showed up for the little drinking party in his room. My golly those people could drink.
I knew better than to try to keep up with them. I was probably one for four, ratio-wise.
oh yeah: (ON TOPIC) I didn't play crap today. I solved a very tricky problem involving installing a non-original latch (original totally unavailable) on one of those gray plastic Yamaha euphonium cases... and then involved myself in repairing the instrument itself.
These pictures of the Lennon sisters and of Mr Cuesta come pretty close to how they looked during the early 1980s:
...and Don Goldie.
(People always teased him about how much he looked like Mel Tome, so I avoided that.)
