Mark VI Overhaul by Top UK Tech Bryce Ferguson

Bryce Ferguson cradling my freshly
overhauled Mark VI tenor

Just returned to Lagos after two and a half weeks in the UK, primarily up in Scotland where I was attending a professional training course at the University of Glasgow. Believe or not, the weather was spectacular; I heard it was the best weather recorded in Scotland for 200 years!

My Mark VI tenor has had its Eb spring broken off in the post for about nine months now and I've been playing that primo horn with a rubber band wrapped around the key ever since. Nobody in Nigeria could fix it as the spring stub had seized up in the post; attempts to repair it there damaged the horn worse. Once I knew I would be travelling to Glasgow I started looking for a tech who could repair it properly. I had an email exchange with Alastair Haydock, who owns Glasgow’s leading music shop, and Alastair was forthcoming enough to refer me to Bryce Ferguson in neighboring Edinburgh, saying he knew what my horn was worth and Bryce was the best sax tech in Scotland, better than his own repairmen. Edinburgh is about an hour by train from Glasgow so I schlepped my horn to Scotland from Lagos on the plane and then took the train over to Edinburgh after class one night to drop it off with Bryce’s apprentice.

Talk about the importance of trust in business: I had never met Bryce before and here I was leaving an instrument worth as much as a small car with him, based on a couple of Skype conversations where it was obvious that he loved horns and knew exactly what to do. Bryce phoned me in the morning with the bad news – the horn needed a complete overhaul in his opinion, not just a new spring and a few adjustments. Cost would be about as much as the last horn I bought. Oh well – it would be like arguing with a brain surgeon. I asked him to go ahead and do the overhaul. It would mean not having my horn with me for the remaining days I was in Scotland, and any chance of sitting in at a local venue went out the window.

Bryce with project horns, Selmer and Borgani

Got the horn back on Saturday. Bryce had disassembled it, fixed the bad spring and re-soldered the post, cut off the keys on two stacks and straightened the rods as much as possible (he said nothing on a Selmer is straight to begin with), laser levelled the tone holes, and did an ultrasonic clean of the entire horn. This horn sounds righteous so it has been played intensely throughout its life, but previous owners were perhaps not so careful with repairs and maintenance. Springs were mostly OK but corks and felts had to be replaced and the finishing touch was installation of a set of Prestini pads, which Bryce said are the best and should last ten years. Play testing, adjustment, settling in overnight, testing again, and final tweaks. The horn is now set up like a “modern” horn. It always played easily but now its quirks are gone, lazy keys and such. Funny, because it always played great to me and I never would have suspected that so much work needed to be done. My friend Dotun Bankole from Femi Kuti’s band always preferred playing my Mark VI to his, and that was before the overhaul. It now blows effortlessly from top to bottom.

Now I have to make up for about three weeks without practice. It will be back to running laps and doing push-ups for a while.

Here’s the link to Bryce’s shop in Edinburgh, Scotland, brassandwoodwind.co.uk.

(Almost) Saw Legendary Pianist Stan Tracey in Concert

Brian Kellock (piano), Bobby Wellins (tenor sax), Clark Tracey (drums) in Edinburgh

I am currently in Glasgow, Scotland for a couple of weeks. Last Wednesday I brought my ailing Mark VI to nearby Edinburgh for overhaul by Bryce Ferguson, Scotland’s top woodwind tech. It has had a spring broken off in the Eb post since last September and was in general need of maintenance attention. Hope to have it back later this week. Bryce promises it will play amazing. If I thought it played well before...

Edinburgh positions itself as the world’s festival city and luckily this week is the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival. As such festivals go these days, it is large, well-produced, and well-marketed – but hardly any of the acts suit my taste in music. Wacka wacka.

Of all the acts on the bill over ten days, my choice was to see pianist Stan Tracey, legendary leader of the house rhythm section at Ronnie Scott’s club in London during the halcyon days of the 1960's. Stan has backed a virtual pantheon of saxophonists: Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster, Roland Kirk, Dexter Gordon, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Stan Getz, Don Byas, Lucky Thompson, and Ronnie Scott himself (quite a mean tenor player). Stan is 86 now and I figured I’d better see him now while I can. His regular quartet features tenor saxophonist Bobby Wellins, one of Britain’s finest and up in years himself.

I took the 50-minute train ride from Glasgow to Edinburgh after my business was done for the day and went straight to the venue at 3 Bristo Place, a church converted to performance space. When I arrived, the doorman informed me that Stan had cancelled due to illness and pianist Brian Kellock would substitute, leading Stan’s quartet for the evening’s show. Hmph. Not my day. I heard that the organizers actually knew Stan has been ill for the last month and were hoping he would get well in time for the festival gig. Not to put Brian down, since he is a fine musician, but I stayed anyway, having travelled to Edinburgh specifically for the gig. Unfortunately the box office sold me a ticket for the same £17.50 that I would have paid to see Stan himself.

Age Mates:
Bobby Wellins and his BA

The show started and ended with Monk – Monk’s Mood was the opener and Blue Monk the encore. The highlight of the first set was Lover Man done as a fast samba. Bobby Wellins sounded his best and got the best audience response when he played a couple of straight-ahead blues shuffles. Bobby and his Selmer Balanced Action look to be about the same age.

The music was nice but frankly a bit too conservatory-perfect for me – well done, professional, enjoyable, musically correct, but it didn't get me up out of my seat despite the fact that I have been starved for good live jazz for ages. Maybe a bit too perfect. 8 out of 10. Bobby didn't even break a sweat, perhaps a function of playing for such a sedate and well-mannered audience. I was one of the youngest people in the crowd. Kudos to the sound engineers – the sound was finely balanced and crystal clear. Bassist Andrew Cleyndert was a standout. Well done.

Fela's Musicians - Interview with Rilwan "Showboy" Fagbemi, Part 7

Showboy at the New Africa Shrine with Femi Kuti's band (and some of Femi's kids)

Showboy: I repair saxophones. I repaired Fela's saxophones. If anything happens to your horn, I can fix it. (interrupted by phone call) 

Ron: This young guy plays the bari now. 

Showboy: He took over from me when I had the accident [Showboy was nearly killed in Lagos by a hit and run driver in 2009, and the injuries have suspended his saxophone playing career for now]. He was a tenor saxophone player.

My baritone is Series II Selmer. I have a friend in Atlanta, he just sent me an Armstrong tenor saxophone from Atlanta. I've got it at home, Seun brought it from America. When I go to New York, I have this guy, Rod Baltimore you know him? New York instrument repairer, 47th by 9th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, Rod Baltimore, it's one of the biggest instrument repair shops. 

My Series II, Henri Selmer did only 15, out of the 15 Fela got 2, I was asked to sell my Series II for the (name unclear) Theater in New York , they wanted it bad because there was no more. When you go down, the lower you go, the bigger the sound. 

Ron: (showing photos of my daughter Jackie playing sax at a gig) 

Showboy: She's playing alto here. Wow. It's like this girl, what's her name, she is a tenor saxophone player, she used to play for Burning Spear...Jennifer Hill, Jenny, we played together, we played Reggae Sunsplash together. She was a tenor saxophone player. Freakin' people out man. She got the strength from you. She saw you do it. That's why she can do it better. 

Ron: So when is your next gig? 

Showboy: The last Saturday of the month. Once a month. The Shrine. Once a month. 

Ron: When are you touring next? 

Showboy: Well, the band, they are touring, they are going on the 28th. I cannot move yet, I am still under care, under medical care. I have to stay home, take care of my body until my hand, until I can play my instrument, I am an instrumentalist, without my instrument I am nothing. 

Ron: What other music venues around Lagos still play Afrobeat? I really don't care too much for the newer styles of music. 

Showboy: There is this brass band, they play Afrobeat, and sometimes I sing with them. They are performing tonight in Lagos, in the city of Lagos. They just sent me a message, I got it. Eko Brass Band. There are places you can play your saxophone. In Lagos you can play the saxophone, the beach side, you can have a good time. 

Ron: When I don't touch my horn I feel like a baby. 

Showboy: That's it, this feeling, this relationship between yourself and your saxophone, I always say, my saxophone is my first wife. Without my saxophone I'm nowhere. Sometimes, my saxophone change my orientation, my thinking, my mood. 

Ron: I thought it was just me. I tell people I have a relationship with my saxophone and they think I'm crazy.  

Showboy: No, no, they don't know, they cannot understand, they cannot. Let e tell you something the saxophone if you touch it every time you discover new things every time. If you don't touch it, if you stay away from it, if you don't touch it you get disappointed. Because the moment you come back to it, it won't be as you left it. You have to work hard to achieve that standard. 

Ron: Crazy bent brass tube. It's a genius invention. 

Showboy: You're damn right. 

There was a day when we were talking with Fela, he now asked me "Did you listen to Art Pepper?" That was the question he asked me. He said "Showboy, go and listen to Art Pepper." I did. He said I sound and I play like Art Pepper, on baritone. A BAAD motherfucker. [end of interview]

My Musical Biography, Part 4

A few months before college graduation I acquired a Mark 6 alto for $500 from a Berklee student who quit alto to concentrate on tenor – I didn’t get his name and wonder what famous player he is now? I still have it. My $150 Bundy went to Don Baker. I also acquired two horns from old guys in Terre Haute, the original owners who were big band players in their prime years – an all-original Buescher tenor which I still have right here next to me, and a perfect Selmer padless alto which had a reed in its case marked June 1, 1944. The Selmer owner was on his way out and said he held on to it as long as he could but wanted someone to play it who could appreciate it, so he was happy to sell it to me. That horn was stolen during one of our many wretched moves, which really hit me hard. I played the Buescher for the first time at the American Legion on Wabash Avenue in Terre Haute with Donn Armstrong’s band, Born Too Loose and Land of a Thousand Dances, where a big boxbelly spun her skinny duck’s-arsed tough-guy-shirt-wearin' husband around the dance floor while I honked na-na-na-na-na backed by Rod and Doug on 'bone.

Fast forward about 20 years…younger days jamming with friends (Aneurism Blues and Boxbelly Woman) but then a saxophone hiatus of about 15 years where my horns were in storage and we worked and travelled all around the world. Typical hooey of being too busy with career or whatever, because being a good horn player takes serious work. But I always loved the music and accumulated a massive CD collection…only to have it stolen in yet another wretched move. In that one our entire household disappeared, unbelievable. Come 2004 and working in Kazakhstan where it was deathly boring, I thought and thought about playing again rather than just passively listening. After about a year I eventually got off my duff and bought a clunky communist-era Czech-made Amati tenor from one of the office drivers who had played sax in the Soviet circus. At $350, it was the only horn in town. I took it down into the basement and from the moment I blew it, I wondered why I ever quit playing in the first place, and why I had dithered so long about playing rather than just picking up a horn and doing it. Something clicked and I’ve played pretty much every day since. Just lost 15 years in the process. I've since concentrated on playing tenor as the pitch range fits my hearing best, and it is complicated enough to play one horn relatively well, although lately I have been blowing a bit of alto just so I don’t totally lose it. When I started playing again I just wanted to play a few notes, a few phrases, in the mindspace of Sonny or Pres or any of the giants. After I played for a while that wasn’t enough and I found I could actually play the music, even if at a minor league level.