Here in small-town Middle America, the safe return of a local soldier is a big deal. We hang flags on street corners and nail "Welcome Home" signs on phone poles. Alert residents track our hometown hero's approach by cell phone, and by the time his or her motorcycle escort crosses the county line, we're lining the streets.
There were no parades when I came home from my first tour back in the '70s. No loudspeakers blasting "Anchors Aweigh," no motorcycle escorts, no speeches from the mayor.
Things were different back then. People just didn't understand the sacrifices we MUs were making in San Francisco.
Big Band rehearsals, sometimes as often as two a day. Showband trips with pit stops at California wineries. Bumpy cable car rides to clubs where Mose Allison was playing. Arduous evenings at the EM club where one of the trumpet players worked as a bartender.
Nope, they didn't shoot off fireworks when Frank Mullen came home. They must have thought a two-year tour at Navy Band San Francisco was some sort of extended party.
Frank Mullen's very unofficial source of poop, skinny and bitching for present and former U.S. Navy Musicians.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Remembering My Mentors
"E=MC2" may not be Count Basie's best album. But it's the one I grew up with, the one I found in my father's record collection and listened to so frequently during my high school and college years that I memorized each pop and scratch along with each shout chorus, solo and punch figure.
The album's arranger, Neal Hefti, who helped shape the sound of the postwar Count Basie Orchestra, died last week. He has always been my favorite arranger. In a sense, he was my first arranging teacher.
Just as composers of the Baroque era learned their craft by hand-copying the scores of the masters, I learned about Big Band music by sitting at the piano in the living room for hours, gradually learning to plunk out and harmonize every note of "The Kid From Red Bank," "Li'l Darlin'" and "Teddy the Toad."
Unlike the Baroque composers, I didn't write out the scores; I couldn't figure out how to notate jazz rhythms. The ensemble chord on the downbeat of the third measure of "Li'l Darlin'" came, somehow, before the downbeat but after the last 8th-note of the second measure. Jazz education hadn't arrived in high schools and colleges in the Sixties, so I had no way to learn about jazz notation. Swing sounded to me as though it should be written in 12/8, but every book about jazz said swing was "in four." I tried writing out the opening trumpet line to "Flight of the Foo Birds" using dotted 8ths and 16ths, but the result looked like the tracks of a wounded pigeon.
After college, I gigged for a few years as solo pianist and with small groups, learning tunes by ear and from fake books, but when I joined the Navy in 1974, I'd never played in a Big Band, still never seen how swing is notated.
On my first day in the Basic Course at the Navy School of Music, I sat down at the piano in "C Band," the beginning-level ensemble into which all new arrivals were funneled. The director, MUC Ed Rodgers, started the rehearsal by asking the sax section to play their opening section. After the conglomeration of Army and Marines had thoroughly butchered the first four bars of "Brownsville Station," the chief stopped them and said the words that live in me to this day:
My ears became as focused as the latest active listening devices.
"You lengthen the downbeat 8ths," the chief said, "and shorten the offbeat 8ths."
My mind began to envision the rolling trumpet line of "Flight of the Foo Birds" as a pure string of 8th-notes.
"So, it's like 12/8?" asked a young soldier.
"Sort of," Chief Rodgers said. "But written only with 8ths." God of All Things That Swing, You have saved me. "You add a little lift to the offbeat 8ths," the chief added. "That's what really make swing swing."
The earth shifted beneath my corfram shoes, and room 2-B-5 swayed around me. In a second, everything fell back into place. I now knew everything I'd joined the Navy to learn. There was no reason to stick around this silly school any longer. I decided to put in my papers for early retirement so I could head for L.A., New York, or any other musical hub where my skills were in urgent need.
Chief Rodgers and the Training Officer, however, wanted Seaman Mullen to stick around the Navy a little longer.
I'm glad I did.
In my first band, Navy Band San Francisco, I worked for MU1 Doyle Church, a recent graduate of the Advanced Course. I wanted to arrange, and Doyle was willing to help. Even after working hours, he'd sit down with me and pass on his knowledge of swing lines and chord voicings.
Eventually I became the band's staff arranger, a job I also held in Navy Band Newport, where Ed Rodgers was now running the Show Band. He was not only glad to use my arrangements, but willing to pass on tricks of the trade that arrangers can only learn from experienced band directors. By the time I returned to the School for the Intermediate Course, I couldn't imagine what anyone could teach me.
MUC Jim Miller walked into arranging class on the first day and told us he would test our knowledge of chord spelling. Ooh-rah, I thought to myself--another chance for MU2 Mullen to demonstrate his expertise.
"Take out a piece of paper," the chief said, "and write down the pitches in each chord symbol I show you." He held up a flash card: F#min7b5.
Piece of cake, I thought, and began writing the pitches: F#, A, C--
"Next," came Chief Miller's voice. I looked up and saw he was already holding up another card: Abdim7.
"Slow down, Chief," someone called from the back of the room.
"This is slow," Chief Miller responded. "Now we'll pick up the pace." EbAug7. C#maj6. Amin/maj7. The cards came faster than I could think. It was small comfort the next day to learn that I'd failed the test with a 2.2 and still got the highest grade in the class.
But I eventually learned what Chief Miller wanted us to understand: the arranger must know the basics without thinking, so he can concentrate on the art instead of laboring over elementary things.
MUCS Roy Mahoney became a mentor during my tour as piano instructor at the school. I could walk into my Branch Head's office at any hour with a question, and Roy would drop what he was working on, which was usually a Big Band arrangement for the Faculty Lab Band.
"Is it okay to use parallel minor seconds in the inner voices of a section?" I once asked him.
"What the hell kind of question is that?" he asked through the cloud of cigarette smoke that always filled his office.
"An honest question?" I replied. You had to observe the formalities with Roy.
"Weren't you paying attention in Lab Band rehearsal yesterday?" he bellowed. We'd run down an arrangement of "Satin Doll" Roy had recently completed, a chart that added some welcome tension to that old favorite. Roy now fired up an unfiltered Camel, pulled the score off the top of his piano, spread it on his desk and jabbed his forefinger at a spot on the first page.
"Here, parallel minor seconds between trumpets two and three," he said. He flipped a few pages. "This whole phrase is filled with parallel minor seconds between tenor saxes."
Roy was not the gentlest of mentors, but the most direct. He encouraged me to write for his Faculty Lab Band and treated me as his peer during rehearsals.
I did four tours at the Navy School of Music as a student and instructor. I learned a lot as a student and teacher, but never more than when I engaged in the Navy's oldest and truest method of training, one sailor showing another the ropes.
Tex Waldron told me I didn't need augmented-flat-diminished 15th chords in every measure, and passed on the proof: copies of arrangements John Fluck had written for the U.S. Navy Show Band. Jack Miller taught me there is a difference between G# and Ab, no matter what the trombone players think. Dave Johnson showed me that the best way to identify a problem with your concert band arrangement is to have someone else conduct it.
In 1986, the Seventh Fleet Band was heading to Australia on a destroyer, and I had commandeered an empty rack in an unoccupied storage room. I was lying down one afternoon when one of my guys walked in, a young trumpet player and budding arranger.
"Got a minute, Chief?" he asked. I'd been up half the night before and was about to take an afternoon snooze. Before I could chase him away, he said, "You know your arrangement of "Waltzing Matilda" we rehearsed this morning?"
Yeah, yeah, I thought, the kid's gonna bitch about the music. That's what they all do.
"I was wondering," he said, "how you made that quick modulation from F to Ab at letter "C."
I slid out of my rack and located the score. "Simple," I said, my forefinger pointing to the phrase in question. "It's a simple two-five progression."
"But you wrote it in the chiefs' mess last night without a piano. How did you know the modulation would sound right?"
"Let me show you something," I said. "Pull up a couple of those chairs while I find some manuscript paper."
I was a little slow--the kid was already dragging the chairs into place.
The album's arranger, Neal Hefti, who helped shape the sound of the postwar Count Basie Orchestra, died last week. He has always been my favorite arranger. In a sense, he was my first arranging teacher.Just as composers of the Baroque era learned their craft by hand-copying the scores of the masters, I learned about Big Band music by sitting at the piano in the living room for hours, gradually learning to plunk out and harmonize every note of "The Kid From Red Bank," "Li'l Darlin'" and "Teddy the Toad."
Unlike the Baroque composers, I didn't write out the scores; I couldn't figure out how to notate jazz rhythms. The ensemble chord on the downbeat of the third measure of "Li'l Darlin'" came, somehow, before the downbeat but after the last 8th-note of the second measure. Jazz education hadn't arrived in high schools and colleges in the Sixties, so I had no way to learn about jazz notation. Swing sounded to me as though it should be written in 12/8, but every book about jazz said swing was "in four." I tried writing out the opening trumpet line to "Flight of the Foo Birds" using dotted 8ths and 16ths, but the result looked like the tracks of a wounded pigeon.
After college, I gigged for a few years as solo pianist and with small groups, learning tunes by ear and from fake books, but when I joined the Navy in 1974, I'd never played in a Big Band, still never seen how swing is notated.
On my first day in the Basic Course at the Navy School of Music, I sat down at the piano in "C Band," the beginning-level ensemble into which all new arrivals were funneled. The director, MUC Ed Rodgers, started the rehearsal by asking the sax section to play their opening section. After the conglomeration of Army and Marines had thoroughly butchered the first four bars of "Brownsville Station," the chief stopped them and said the words that live in me to this day:
"Remember what we talked about yesterday? Swing is written with regular 8th-notes, but you interpret them with a swing feel."
My ears became as focused as the latest active listening devices.
"You lengthen the downbeat 8ths," the chief said, "and shorten the offbeat 8ths."
My mind began to envision the rolling trumpet line of "Flight of the Foo Birds" as a pure string of 8th-notes.
"So, it's like 12/8?" asked a young soldier.
"Sort of," Chief Rodgers said. "But written only with 8ths." God of All Things That Swing, You have saved me. "You add a little lift to the offbeat 8ths," the chief added. "That's what really make swing swing."
The earth shifted beneath my corfram shoes, and room 2-B-5 swayed around me. In a second, everything fell back into place. I now knew everything I'd joined the Navy to learn. There was no reason to stick around this silly school any longer. I decided to put in my papers for early retirement so I could head for L.A., New York, or any other musical hub where my skills were in urgent need.
Chief Rodgers and the Training Officer, however, wanted Seaman Mullen to stick around the Navy a little longer.
I'm glad I did.
In my first band, Navy Band San Francisco, I worked for MU1 Doyle Church, a recent graduate of the Advanced Course. I wanted to arrange, and Doyle was willing to help. Even after working hours, he'd sit down with me and pass on his knowledge of swing lines and chord voicings.
Eventually I became the band's staff arranger, a job I also held in Navy Band Newport, where Ed Rodgers was now running the Show Band. He was not only glad to use my arrangements, but willing to pass on tricks of the trade that arrangers can only learn from experienced band directors. By the time I returned to the School for the Intermediate Course, I couldn't imagine what anyone could teach me.
MUC Jim Miller walked into arranging class on the first day and told us he would test our knowledge of chord spelling. Ooh-rah, I thought to myself--another chance for MU2 Mullen to demonstrate his expertise.
"Take out a piece of paper," the chief said, "and write down the pitches in each chord symbol I show you." He held up a flash card: F#min7b5.
Piece of cake, I thought, and began writing the pitches: F#, A, C--
"Next," came Chief Miller's voice. I looked up and saw he was already holding up another card: Abdim7.
"Slow down, Chief," someone called from the back of the room.
"This is slow," Chief Miller responded. "Now we'll pick up the pace." EbAug7. C#maj6. Amin/maj7. The cards came faster than I could think. It was small comfort the next day to learn that I'd failed the test with a 2.2 and still got the highest grade in the class.
But I eventually learned what Chief Miller wanted us to understand: the arranger must know the basics without thinking, so he can concentrate on the art instead of laboring over elementary things.
MUCS Roy Mahoney became a mentor during my tour as piano instructor at the school. I could walk into my Branch Head's office at any hour with a question, and Roy would drop what he was working on, which was usually a Big Band arrangement for the Faculty Lab Band.
"Is it okay to use parallel minor seconds in the inner voices of a section?" I once asked him.
"What the hell kind of question is that?" he asked through the cloud of cigarette smoke that always filled his office.
"An honest question?" I replied. You had to observe the formalities with Roy.
"Weren't you paying attention in Lab Band rehearsal yesterday?" he bellowed. We'd run down an arrangement of "Satin Doll" Roy had recently completed, a chart that added some welcome tension to that old favorite. Roy now fired up an unfiltered Camel, pulled the score off the top of his piano, spread it on his desk and jabbed his forefinger at a spot on the first page.
"Here, parallel minor seconds between trumpets two and three," he said. He flipped a few pages. "This whole phrase is filled with parallel minor seconds between tenor saxes."
Roy was not the gentlest of mentors, but the most direct. He encouraged me to write for his Faculty Lab Band and treated me as his peer during rehearsals.
I did four tours at the Navy School of Music as a student and instructor. I learned a lot as a student and teacher, but never more than when I engaged in the Navy's oldest and truest method of training, one sailor showing another the ropes.
Tex Waldron told me I didn't need augmented-flat-diminished 15th chords in every measure, and passed on the proof: copies of arrangements John Fluck had written for the U.S. Navy Show Band. Jack Miller taught me there is a difference between G# and Ab, no matter what the trombone players think. Dave Johnson showed me that the best way to identify a problem with your concert band arrangement is to have someone else conduct it.
In 1986, the Seventh Fleet Band was heading to Australia on a destroyer, and I had commandeered an empty rack in an unoccupied storage room. I was lying down one afternoon when one of my guys walked in, a young trumpet player and budding arranger.
"Got a minute, Chief?" he asked. I'd been up half the night before and was about to take an afternoon snooze. Before I could chase him away, he said, "You know your arrangement of "Waltzing Matilda" we rehearsed this morning?"
Yeah, yeah, I thought, the kid's gonna bitch about the music. That's what they all do.
"I was wondering," he said, "how you made that quick modulation from F to Ab at letter "C."
I slid out of my rack and located the score. "Simple," I said, my forefinger pointing to the phrase in question. "It's a simple two-five progression."
"But you wrote it in the chiefs' mess last night without a piano. How did you know the modulation would sound right?"
"Let me show you something," I said. "Pull up a couple of those chairs while I find some manuscript paper."
I was a little slow--the kid was already dragging the chairs into place.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
I may have to change political parties.
During the presidential debate tonight, John McCain took a question from a member of the audience who identified himself as a retired Navy chief.
The senator began his response with the line every politician gives to every vet: "Thank you for your service to the country."
But he didn't stop there. "I want to say," McCain added, "everything I ever learned about leadership I learned from a chief petty officer."
Now, that's the straight talk I've heard so much about.
The senator began his response with the line every politician gives to every vet: "Thank you for your service to the country."
But he didn't stop there. "I want to say," McCain added, "everything I ever learned about leadership I learned from a chief petty officer."
Now, that's the straight talk I've heard so much about.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sinatra, that Old Realistic and memories
In my other life, I write a weekly column for a newspaper group in the Illinois/Iowa Quad Cities.
This week's column deals, in part, with my Navy years. You can read it online at the Rock Island Argus, or right here.
It's cleanup week in my town, time to haul out the unused, the derelict, those gewgaws whose last-century luster has faded. In a few days a truck will collect from the roadside whatever has survived the parade of bargain hunters.
A half-hour ago I put my old stereo system out by the driveway, and it's gone already.
I hope a kid took it.
I was a young sailor when I bought the Realistic stereo components at a Norfolk, Virginia Radio Shack in 1979. The turntable plugs into a metal amplifier with three--three!--tone controls. The bookshelf speakers are the size of microwave ovens and the weight of Toyotas.
Old Realistic still works fine, but its retirement date has come.
Enjoy it, kid, but be forewarned:
My stereo was factory-wired for melancholy.
I've always been a fan of Frank Sinatra. I bought the setup because my portable record player was too small to reproduce The Voice. Listening to "Sinatra at the Sands with Count Basie" on this new rig for the first time was like sitting on stage with the band. I swore I could hear the third trombone player snickering at Frank's lame jokes.
But it wasn't this ring-a-ding, hipster Sinatra that sounded best on the Realistic; it was the late-night barroom balladeer. The stereo came into my life just as my first wife left it, and many a night I slid a record on the turntable, and suddenly it was fifteen minutes until closing time and Sinatra was asking the bartender for "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)."
I wasn't the only Frank who knew heartache.
Old Realistic also played my high school favorites: the Beatles, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the Beach Boys, whose harmonies splashed around my apartment like an endless wave.
But the stereo's finest sounds came when moonlight washed over the speakers, when "In the Wee Small Hours" was playing and Sinatra's heart was breaking mine.
Through the '80s the stereo accompanied me to naval bases up and down the East Coast. It has outlived many of the performers it brought into my living room. Two Beach Boys and two Beatles are gone. In the '90s, I hooked up a radio tuner to the stereo just in time to hear that Frank Sinatra had died.
My rock 'n' roll idols were big stars, but Sinatra was a giant. While the young Beatles were still learning to tune their guitars, Sinatra was showing that an album can do more than promote a few sappy songs; it can take the listener on a journey.
Perhaps you've never heard one of his recordings. But every time you hear a singer sell a love song so hard that you can't help buying it, you're hearing the echo of the man who taught generations of singers how to phrase a lyric. Think J. Lo has been around forever? Sinatra had a hit record in every decade from the '30s to the '90s, his voice growing deep with time, ripe with age.
CD players didn't exist when my stereo was designed, but you can plug one into the amplifier, kid. Crank it up.
But some evening while your favorite rock group is rattling the bedroom walls, you may unconsciously shake your head as though you heard something.
You did. It was Frank Sinatra under a streetlight on a distant corner, singing "I'll Never Smile Again."
Take care of Old Realistic, kid. There's a lot of good music hidden in that metal box, if you'll just listen.
This week's column deals, in part, with my Navy years. You can read it online at the Rock Island Argus, or right here.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Sinatra, that Old Realistic and memories
Rock Island Argus 09/25/08
Frank Mullen III
Frank Mullen III
It's cleanup week in my town, time to haul out the unused, the derelict, those gewgaws whose last-century luster has faded. In a few days a truck will collect from the roadside whatever has survived the parade of bargain hunters.
A half-hour ago I put my old stereo system out by the driveway, and it's gone already.
I hope a kid took it.
I was a young sailor when I bought the Realistic stereo components at a Norfolk, Virginia Radio Shack in 1979. The turntable plugs into a metal amplifier with three--three!--tone controls. The bookshelf speakers are the size of microwave ovens and the weight of Toyotas.
Old Realistic still works fine, but its retirement date has come.
Enjoy it, kid, but be forewarned:
My stereo was factory-wired for melancholy.
I've always been a fan of Frank Sinatra. I bought the setup because my portable record player was too small to reproduce The Voice. Listening to "Sinatra at the Sands with Count Basie" on this new rig for the first time was like sitting on stage with the band. I swore I could hear the third trombone player snickering at Frank's lame jokes.
But it wasn't this ring-a-ding, hipster Sinatra that sounded best on the Realistic; it was the late-night barroom balladeer. The stereo came into my life just as my first wife left it, and many a night I slid a record on the turntable, and suddenly it was fifteen minutes until closing time and Sinatra was asking the bartender for "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)."
I wasn't the only Frank who knew heartache.
Old Realistic also played my high school favorites: the Beatles, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the Beach Boys, whose harmonies splashed around my apartment like an endless wave.
But the stereo's finest sounds came when moonlight washed over the speakers, when "In the Wee Small Hours" was playing and Sinatra's heart was breaking mine.
Through the '80s the stereo accompanied me to naval bases up and down the East Coast. It has outlived many of the performers it brought into my living room. Two Beach Boys and two Beatles are gone. In the '90s, I hooked up a radio tuner to the stereo just in time to hear that Frank Sinatra had died.
My rock 'n' roll idols were big stars, but Sinatra was a giant. While the young Beatles were still learning to tune their guitars, Sinatra was showing that an album can do more than promote a few sappy songs; it can take the listener on a journey.
Perhaps you've never heard one of his recordings. But every time you hear a singer sell a love song so hard that you can't help buying it, you're hearing the echo of the man who taught generations of singers how to phrase a lyric. Think J. Lo has been around forever? Sinatra had a hit record in every decade from the '30s to the '90s, his voice growing deep with time, ripe with age.
CD players didn't exist when my stereo was designed, but you can plug one into the amplifier, kid. Crank it up.
But some evening while your favorite rock group is rattling the bedroom walls, you may unconsciously shake your head as though you heard something.
You did. It was Frank Sinatra under a streetlight on a distant corner, singing "I'll Never Smile Again."
Take care of Old Realistic, kid. There's a lot of good music hidden in that metal box, if you'll just listen.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Ah! Men!
Now and then I search the web for videos of the USS Blue Ridge, on which I served with the 7th Fleet Band.
And I find them: sailors climbing down ladders, joking in the passageways, streaming down the gangplank for liberty call.
The old tub looks just like she did two decades ago, with one exception: a lot of those sailors are women.
I don't object; whatever makes the Navy better and stronger is good. Women have come a long way since my day, when most bands had only a few junior women. Those of us who enjoyed the Navy Band's performance in Memphis this year noted that many of the senior sailors, the MU1s, were women. If the Navy has decided that including women on ships at sea makes for a better fighting force, I'm all for it.
Still, I've always got a kick out of Martin Mull's viewpoint on ships and gender. Here's his psuedo sea chanty "Men," dubbed over some movie footage.
And I find them: sailors climbing down ladders, joking in the passageways, streaming down the gangplank for liberty call.
The old tub looks just like she did two decades ago, with one exception: a lot of those sailors are women.
I don't object; whatever makes the Navy better and stronger is good. Women have come a long way since my day, when most bands had only a few junior women. Those of us who enjoyed the Navy Band's performance in Memphis this year noted that many of the senior sailors, the MU1s, were women. If the Navy has decided that including women on ships at sea makes for a better fighting force, I'm all for it.
Still, I've always got a kick out of Martin Mull's viewpoint on ships and gender. Here's his psuedo sea chanty "Men," dubbed over some movie footage.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Picking the Commander-in-Chief
In these dangerous times, you hear the question everywhere: when choosing a president, how important is military experience?
I think it's crucial. In fact, it's the only thing that matters.
Frank Mullen for President
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)