Those who are familiar with me will have noticed that I drift in and out of the jazz world. Classical guys know me for drifting in out of the classical guitar world. And lute players...You get the picture. I can't help it, and have stopped trying. So...
Quite a number of years ago, over a decade, I was in touch with the late and great Ralph Patt. I enthused about Charlie Christian, especially his Solo Flight. Ralph asked for my address, saying he wanted to send me something. I couldn't believe what arrived: all the orchestral and solo guitar parts for Solo Flight "as played by the Benny Goodman Orchestra"!
I thanked him profusely, but soon discovered it was too hard for me at the time, and shelved it. Not long afterwards I drifted into the lute world, where I stayed for quite some time.
Today I was looking for a lost book, and came across the folder with the Solo Flight parts. There is no publisher's stamp anywhere. I have lost the correspondence from Ralph, so I don't know if these are his own transcribed parts. There are a lot of pages here. It looks like it was typeset using Sibelius.
The question is: What to do with the score?
If it was published, then I will do no more.
If it wasn't published, then I'd be happy to share it with other interested players. However, I'm not going to photocopy and mail out to anyone across the globe - that could be costly and time consuming. I could scan the parts into a pdf for each instrument, and house them on my website for free.
But before doing anything, I should perhaps contact his family. If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know privately.
Good. I've been busy with family and student commitments since posting, and, considering the time of year, might wait until the first week of January before pursuing it further.
I play in a Swing big band that has had a steady gig for the whole summer that has lasted 35 years. They're always looking for guitar features for me, but it usually amounts to charts where they give me a piano feature.
Something like Solo Flight by BG and CC would be perfect for that gig.
Contacting the family sounds like a fine idea but I tried the email link at the <ralphpatt.com> website, to thank them for keeping the Vanilla Changes material up and available, and my email was bounced back. Hope you have better luck and if you do, let me/us know! Thanks!
His website says he was born in 1929 and "currently" lives in Oregon. Sadly, there is an obit online for a Ralph Patt from Oregon 1929-2009. And this Wiki says 2010.
I previewed it with the big band. They loved it even though I was completely faking the solo part. I've got some work to do before I'm happy with it. I'll start with the Charlie Christian transcription, but will eventually adapt it to my own style. Thanks again for posting it.
That's great, Kirk. Good to know it works. CC did two takes, and the second has many differences. He seems to be improvising more on it. But of the two takes, I prefer the first, which is what we have transcribed here. But the point is that it's not set in stone, and you can indeed play around with it. Let us know if it gets gigged.
I've been working on this for the last couple of days, and can play CC's part all the way through, although under tempo.
CC's tempo was approx. 176 bpm.
Anyone else playing it all the way through on archtop? Sorry, solid or semi-hollows definitely don't make it on this type of music, no matter how much Deludin you've taken, and I'm not interested in positions and fingerings on anything but archies.
What positions and fingerings are you using to play it AT TEMPO? I could sight read this at a slow tempo, so I'm not interested in the way you play it at 100bpm; only 160-176bpm. You have to have solid positions and fingerings worked out to play it note for note at that tempo range.
Any idjit could improvise on a basic progression like this, so I'm not interested in that either.
Well, I was reading in bed until around quarter to 11, before which I could tell the score by the one cheer that echoed around the housing estate.
I then switched the light off and fell asleep.
...
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Hard pan the...
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