My friend and fellow musician Dave DeVos once told me, “You are the loudest sax player I’ve ever known.”
His words weren’t a compliment, just a statement of fact tinged with a slight mix of incredulity and annoyance. I’m a very loud sax player, much louder than I realize. As the old cliche says, I don’t know my own strength.
Of course I can play softly, but soft is not my default mode. Part of that is attributable to my horn, which is an old Conn 6M “Ladyface” that is very good at translating the air I move through it into immense volume levels. Another part is due to my mouthpiece, a Jody Jazz classic #8. But I think the main reason I’m a loud player is directly linked to the guy behind the horn. I just seem to have a knack for massive sound output.
I wasn’t always a loud player. I entered my freshman year in college a quiet young saxophonist. My sound at the time was styled after Tom Strang, a local alto man who owned a jazz bar in Ada called the Foxhead Inn. Tom had a smooth, mellow sound, very pleasing to the ears. He was not a loud sax player.
As an early influence, Tom’s tone pointed me toward a somewhat Desmondesque approach, not exactly the kind of robust Cannonball sound that could melt the wax in a listener’s ears at 100 feet. It was more a kind of foofy-foof-foof tone–subdued and, I thought, pleasantly sophisticated.
It was this mellow, sedate sound that I brought with me to the student big band at Aquinas College, where I sat under the august directorship of jazz professor Bruce Early. I was assigned to the first alto chair, and my lack of experience was such that I felt eminently qualified to fill the position. Clearly word of my abilities on the sax had preceded me, and Bruce had simply placed me where he knew I belonged. First chair. It was inevitable.
I’ll never forget my first awakening to the possibility that maybe I wasn’t all that and a supersized order of fries. The band was playing through some tune I’ve long since forgotten, and in the middle of the chart there was space for an alto solo. Cool. A chance for me to show my stuff, give Bruce a taste of my chops. I launched into the solo. Foofy-foof-foof, I played, subtly, while the rhythm section whanged away.
Bruce stared at me. “Play louder,” he said.
Ah. Louder. Okay then. Foof-foof-foofy-foof! I declared, in a volume that could almost be heard from ten feet away.
Bruce’s stare became a glare. “Louder!” he barked.
My gosh, what did this guy want? Here I was, foofing as loudly as ever I had foofed, and Bruce was calling for more.
I returned his glare with a desperate glance.
Foof? I played. Foofy-foof!
I was trying, but I quickly trended toward the softer, cocktail lounge volume that I was used to.
That did it for Bruce. “BLOW!!!!” he yelled. “For crying out loud, BLOOOWWWWW!!!!!!”
Some of the more seasoned musicians snickered, and my face went red as a beet. Hell’s bells. Fine, if it was volume Bruce wanted, I’d give him volume. And I did. I had a lot to learn about embouchure and tone production, but at that point I instinctively dipped into the raw essentials, filled my lungs with air, and blew my ever-loving cheeks off.
From that time on, while Bruce yelled at me for any number of things, my volume level wasn’t among them. He never again complained that I was playing too softly. Nor has anyone else, for that matter. Not ever. I’ve played with highly amplified blues bands and church worship teams and outblown them without using a microphone. I’ve been asked plenty of times to turn it down a bit, please. But no one has ever come to me and said, “Could you play louder? I can barely hear you.”
Just ask Dave. He’ll be glad to tell you, as soon as his ears stop ringing.
