There are, as the old TV show used to say, ”eight million stories in the Naked City”–and New York-based jazz musician Randy Sandke embodies more than a few of them.
Appropriately titled ”New York Stories” and released on the Stash label, Sandke`s first album reveals him to be, at age 37, one of the best young trumpet players around–although that won`t come as news to those who encountered Sandke in his native Chicago some 20 years ago, when his skills already were impressive.
Then there is the story of Sandke`s romance with the jazz past–for even though his album is aggressively up-to-date and features his longtime friend, tenor saxophonist Mike Brecker, Sandke also loves traditional jazz, often works in Swing and Dixieland settings and credits cornetist Bix Beiderbecke as a key influence.
As for Story No. 3, that has to do with the fact that Sandke can play the trumpet at all–because in 1970, suffering from a painful hernia of the throat, he had to abandon the trumpet for ten years until he suddenly found himself able to play the instrument again.
Also, as luck would have it, Sandke is quite a storyteller in his own right. Eager to dispel the notion that jazz musicians are inarticulate, he wrote the liner notes for his album, displaying a delightfully droll wit. Here is part of Sandke`s portrait of the scruffy high-rise he lived in when he first went to New York:
”An Israeli woman took out the garbage in exchange for rent. She had formerly been a paratrooper in the Israeli army, so she apparently didn`t mind going up and down all night in the confines of the service elevator. A Peruvian ran the passenger elevator. Once he delivered a tirade in Spanish to Jacqueline Onassis (there attending a party thrown by a Broadway starlet), who had committed the grevious offense of buzzing him twice. After he learned who she was he showed up for two weeks in a suit and tie.”
Finally there is the tale of Sandke`s relationship to the late Benny Goodman. A key member of the big band that Goodman assembled in the last two years of his life, Sandke grew close to the notoriously prickly clarinetist and has some revealing and touching tales to tell about the close of his career.
Born and reared in Chicago`s Hyde Park neighborhood, Sandke was introduced to jazz and the trumpet by his older brother Jordan, currently a member of the Widespread Jazz Orchestra.
”I got into jazz kind of chronologically,” Sandke says, ”beginning with Bix and Louis, then Dizzy, Clifford Brown, Miles and Freddie Hubbard. I also studied at Roosevelt University with Reinhold Schilke, a legendary teacher and maker of trumpets who was with the Chicago Symphony for years.”
Already known as a teenage demon at local jam sessions, Sandke entered the music school at the University of Indiana, where he met Mike Brecker.
”Mike and I formed a rock band with horns that was going to be a more jazz-oriented version of Blood, Sweat and Tears,” Sandke recalls, ”and when we performed at the 1968 Notre Dame Jazz Festival, doing our jazz stuff first, we were clearly the best band there.
”But we were very idealistic hippies at the time, and for the finals we played a sort of avant-garde rock piece. Jazz and rock were hostile camps back then, so the judges decided that even though they didn`t want to give the prize to anyone else, they didn`t want to give it to us either.”
Soon after that contretemps, Sandke got an offer to join rock singer Janis Joplin`s band. But he had to turn it down because of the painful throat problem that would force him to stop playing the trumpet.
”I finally needed to have an operation,” Sandke says, ”but the problem also had to do with things I wasn`t doing right. Schilke and my teachers at Indiana were very good, but they weren`t familiar with the demands of the kind of playing I was doing. Competing with electronic instruments in a rock band, it`s easy to blow yourself out.
”I quit playing because I thought the operation really hadn`t taken care of the problem, that I was physically damaged to the point where I would never be able to play professionally again. The trumpet is a very demanding instrument, and you can`t play it if you`re afraid.”
Moving to New York, Sandke worked for a decade as a guitarist, ”making a living at it, even though none of the music I played was very satisfying. Then I moved in with a trumpet player I`d known at Indiana who also had had some problems playing but who had worked them out.
”`If you don`t want to play trumpet again,` he said, `that`s your business. But if you think you can`t, you`re wrong, and I know I can help you.` So just as a hobby I decided to take up the trumpet again, even though there was a lot of trauma involved–because if I could play again, what the heck had I been doing for the past ten years?”
Still tentative after six months back on the horn, and unsure whether he wanted to risk a professional job, Sandke was called to substitute for a friend in Vince Giordano`s Nighthawks, a New York-based traditional band.
”I asked my brother to show up for the last two sets in case my chops gave out, but I lasted the night and stayed with Vince for the next five years.”
Concentrating on the traditional repertoire, Sandke also worked with saxophonist Bob Wilber, who hired him to play on the soundtrack of ”The Cotton Club.” And it was the Wilber association that brought Sandke to Benny Goodman`s attention.
”I played with Bob on a 75th birthday concert for Benny that he was supposed to attend but didn`t. Benny had been ill for two years, recovering from a series of operations–everybody thought he`d retired for good–and Bob`s plan was to persuade Benny to let him lead a band called the Benny Goodman Orchestra, with Bob doing all the work, while Benny collected the money.
”Later on, having come to know Benny, I realized there was no way he would have gone for that. But Bob gave him a tape of the concert, and one day out of the blue, in March, 1984, I heard from Benny. He was feeling well enough to put together a small group and try to play in public again, at the wedding of some friends of his daughter in Atlantic City, and he asked me to come over and play for him.”
Given Goodman`s reputation as the most demanding leader of them all, Sandke went ”expecting the worst”–only to be told, after a chorus or two of ”Get Happy,” that he had the job.
”During the gig,” Sandke recalls, ”Benny played about an hour–once he started he didn`t want to stop, even though, as weak as he was, it was a strain for him–but the whole night I don`t think he said two words to me. Then the next day there was a message from Benny on my answering machine, saying that he`d enjoyed himself and hoped to see me again. I took that tape off the machine and still have it.”
A fixture in Goodman`s small group, Sandke became part of the big band that Goodman assembled in 1985 for a Public Broadcasting System television show–after which, to everyone`s surprise, Goodman said that he wanted to keep the band together as a working unit.
”Benny never mentioned this,” Sandke says, ”but it was generally assumed that one of the reasons he formed a band again was that Artie Shaw was back on the scene as a leader. In Benny`s mind, the rivalry still existed.
”We`d rehearse about once a week and ended up playing about six concerts in all, with Benny sounding better every time. And when he was on, he was still the greatest.
”But the rehearsals were kind of excruciating because he`d have us play the same bar maybe 20 times over, just picking the music apart. You learned immediately why Benny`s bands sounded so different–no one was more fastidious than he was.”
Goodman`s musical renaissance culminated in March 1986 at a benefit concert for the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
”It`s an event that Frank Sinatra puts together every year at the Radio City Music Hall,” Sandke says, ”and this time the bill was Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Placido Domingo and our band–some pretty fair company.
”We only had half-an-hour to play, though, and thought it was going to be just a quick hit–do it and get out. But because of the company he was in, it seemed like Benny was determined to prove that he was still The King, that he could get more applause than anybody else. So when we went into `King Porter Stomp,` where Benny would usually play a chorus and take it out, he played about ten choruses in a row–sounding better and better as he went along until he finally reached a level that was just astounding, one of the best things I`ve ever heard.
”Then we played a few more tunes and closed with `Stealin` Apples,`
where I was supposed to play a chorus before Benny took it out. Well, this time he played for I don`t know how long and even surpassed what he`d done before. It was amazing. And, of course, Benny got the biggest ovation of the night.
”Now during the rehearsal before the concert, I`d said to him, `Benny, in these two years you`ve gotten ten years younger`–because when I met him 1984, he seemed to have very little confidence or stamina.
”So after the concert I went up to him and said, `Benny, that was unbelievable–you sound 50 years younger now.` And he said, `To hell with you!,` which sort of shocked me. Then I looked again and saw that his face was ashen and that he was completely out of breath and realized that he had pushed himself far beyond the limit.
”The next week we were supposed to play in Ann Arbor, but Benny caught the flu and was so sick he couldn`t finish the concert. We did a couple more engagements, and then in June he died.
”I wouldn`t want to say that the Radio City performance killed him, but Benny had been fine up until then, and he exerted himself during the concert so much that . . . well, as long as he was physically able, Benny wanted to play and had to play. I think the way he went out was the way he wanted to go.”
Obviously in tune with the men and music of the jazz past, Sandke explains that ”if you grow up playing nothing but modern jazz and shift to a more traditional style, you have to dispense with a lot of your favorite harmonic and rhythmic tricks.
”Instead the interest has to come from somewhere else–from melody, phrasing, the sheer sound of your instrument. But I believe that those are virtues that can be applied to any style–traditional or modern–and that when you do it, you end up with better music.”
