Before my pal Alex Leong, a.k.a. “Axel Noel” (his fabled anagram) decided to discover the world and move to Chicago, he spent countless (actually, he counted them…I think 57?) Monday nights playing trombone with the Clyde Stubblefield Band. During his tenure with the band, he purchased a Zoom H4 digital audio recorder and amassed quite a collection of bootleg recordings of our weekly shows. The device was pretty darn cool. It was small and light-weight, recorded to an SD card, made nice recordings, as well as had XLR inputs for use with a high-quality stereo field mic, like my Audio Technica 825. Together, we made and recorded some great music!

Sadly, when Alex moved last fall, we not only lost a trombone, but the ability to record our shows!

So this week, while I had a cold and home sick, I found myself surfing the Net and discovered the Zoom H4n, a newly released and significantly upgraded version of the Alex’s recorder.

This video quickly highlights some of the cool new features.

P.S. Anyone interested in purchasing a lightly used, very good condition Tascam DA-P1 stereo DAT field recorder? It’s rapidly becoming obsolete in my array of recording equipment.

Be sure to wish Clyde Stubblefield a happy birthday on Saturday. He’ll be 26…or 66…or something like that! I wonder if he still has all that bling??

I know it’s best to write these out yourself, since the process is what really internalizes the learning. That said, here’s a nice site for a number of sax solo transcriptions…

By Jeff Rzepiela
http://scooby-sax.com/transcriptions.aspx

James Carter plays “I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone” (Jazz Festival in Japan, 1997)
If you’re curious about his horn, from his agent, “his horn is a custom-made Conn from 1926, and to date only five of them exist!

From Monday, April 13, 2009 at the Majestic Theater in Madison, Wisconsin. I’ll save my gushing praise and excitement about the evening and let the video speak for itself.

Top shelf “Special Reserve” musicians across the stage…John Scofield (guitar), Clyde Stubblefield (drums) George Porter (bass [original bassist with The Meters), Jon Cleary (vocals, keyboards, guitar [Bonnie Raitt's band]), Ricky Fataar (drummer with John Scofield)

The Clyde Stubblefield Show will continue its regularly scheduled Funky Mondays show at Madison’s Downtown tonight. Next door at the Majestic Theater is none other than John Scofield, who has so many reasons to be called a legend that it’s hard to know where to begin.

Given John Scofield’s career has been so expansive and collaborative, it’s not surprising that Clyde and Scofield are friends. Scofield contacted Clyde a few years back to fill in for Billy Martin of Medeski, Martin and Wood. Apparently, Sco needed a drummer to sub for a few weeks while Billy Martin was unavailable and Clyde filled in (not a bad pick, considering the jazz/funk music and musicians involved!).

I am still trying to get a hold of a copy of some of the recordings from their shows, but I have heard some samples. I was walking up to the King Club one Monday night and found Clyde sitting in his van with the radio turned way up. He’s in his own little world jamming out to some killer $h*t. He unrolled the window and it got even louder. It turned out the music was one of his last gigs with Scofield, Medeski and Wood. Wow, it was awesome! Clyde being Clyde, he hardly knows how big a deal it was, just that it sounded great and he had a lot of fun. What a testament to Clyde’s talent, to be able to slide right in behind some of the most able jazz musicians in the world and not even be phased by the experience.

People of Madison, never forget how lucky we are to have such an amazing local talent! Come on down to King Street tonight and take your pick, or better yet, see the John Scofield show and then bounce over to Madison’s to enjoy a funky aperitif with Clyde Stubblefield.