Description
It seems like the first dozen years of my musical life were spent inside a sousaphone. I began on a helicon in junior high, played sousaphone all through high school and in several local parade bands–then college marching band at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and ceremonial gigs with The U.S. Army Band in Washington, D.C. While there I started playing dixie-style sousaphone with George Graves at the Scarlet Garter (for $10 a night and all the beer I could drink). Playing sousaphone again is like being with an old friend–except that I have to sit in a sousaphone chair now. I wanted to write one piece for my (1st) My America CD — and what could be more American than a sousaphone song? It is essentially two battling sousaphone sections (eight altogether) playing funk bass lines over a hip-hop drum beat with quotes from Sousa marches and other famous march tuba parts. Them Basses, National Emblem, Washington Post and the piccolo part to The Stars and Stripes Forever and others all get trampled upon. These two walls of sound might knock you over if you stand too close. Finally, sousaphone players all over the world can have their own theme song! On the recording Drummer Bernie Dresel laid it down in “one take” reading from a tuba part. Then I overdubbed 8 sousaphone (4 on each part). Famous as the groovemeister for the Brian Setzer Swing Orchestra, Bernie plays great throughout the CD. Check it out! It can be played with 2 sousaphone (or tuba) players or with many on a part–or with drums or a marching band drumline. FUN, FUN, FUN!
Jim Self is a Los Angeles free-lance musician, a veteran of thousands of motion pictures, television shows and records, and tuba soloist on many prominent movies. He is Principal Tubist with the Pasadena and Pacific Symphonies, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the Los Angeles Opera and Opera Pacific orchestras. His compositions and arrangements include works for solo tuba, brass quintet, and other brass and woodwind chamber music.
More about Jim and his recordings can be found here:
Basset Hound Music – http://www.bassethoundmusic.com
