A great idea!!!

BTW, speaking of Kenton, I have a good friend, John Harner, who was Stan's lead trumpet player, the last one Stan chose before he died. John played for quite a few years with Kenton and Stan always said he thought John was the strongest lead player he'd ever had...and considering his lead trumpet players over the years, that's something!

Actually, John's whole style was geared to be a Kenton lead player and that was his main goal in life, to play lead with Kenton. He had unbelievable range, screech player range, but with power! Phenomenal player. He took the lead job at age 23. You can catch him on several of the Kenton albums toward the end of Stan's life.

When I came back to Ohio State, John and I and Mike Egan shared an apartment an played a lot of small group stuff together as well as OSU's jazz workshop group and a pickup big band. Mike (trombone) had gone to high school with me and went on to play with Clark Terry, Kenton, and few others before doing studio work on the west coast. John ended up playing the Vegas house bands. I went with my other "thing"....cars. I've never really regretted it, but I wish I had been able to do both. It's a part of my life I rarely talk about, but I was a damn respectable reed player. Mike stopped at my house awhile back and told Karen all about it....she had never heard me talk about it much. I wasn't home at the time and he literally told Karen I had totally wasted my life!

Ah well........past lives........we all got 'em. At this point though, neither of them is playing for a living anymore....Both play some pickup stuff where they live and are in education.

Spaw