| Sol Castron / Uan Rasey
Hi RG111,
From what I hear, Mr. Castron , because he was good friends with Uan Rasey , would call ahead , when the Philadelphia Phil had this long winter lay-off during the decade of the 40's and Uan would get him on those MGM musicals with him. When the Phil went more and more to a year round commitment, doing both soon became too much. (You also probably realize that Gil Johnson (who recently pass away) the great trumpet player and teacher out of the Univ. of Florida, was also, a principal trumpet for the Philadelphia Phil. with Seymour Rosenfeld as 2nd trumpet.)
Under the contract orchestra system, usually the lead trumpet was an almost mandatory “ show-up position “ , but the rest of the section could sub or would have rotating assignments, so naming a specific section or trumpet players that were playing for the movie houses of the day , could have a multitude of names attached to it in any given year.
Back to Uan Rasey and the contact orchestra system.
Uan negotiated and had it written into his contact that he didn’t have to work Saturdays which, at the time, was quite a concession by MGM. (Uan was a big track and field fan and wanted to go to the track meets on the weekends). He also had in his contract that he could take time off for the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics, the full duration, which MGM gave him and which he attended with his wife, Margaret.
Because work was so plentiful in that era of movies, radio, shows, dinner theater , clubs and the new experiment TV, most of the
“name “players in that era, preferred to pick and choose and actually liked “Live TV " the best because it paid the most and took the least amount of time Having that much musical activity in the town, players had the luxury of picking and choosing engagements, ( Uan almost turned down MGM because he thought it might get too boring after a while ) so they could book more engagements in a single day.
Per Ian Rasey, Mannie Klein would get to a session early and " dive for the 4th chair ".He never wanted to play lead because he would book his day from sunrise to late at night and he figured he would stay the " freshest " by staying as far away from the lead book as possible saving himself for his daily workload.
MGM, Warners, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, was only part of what a trumpet player (that could cut it) could look forward
to, on a daily basis, that they could be playing for.
It was a totally different “scene “musically and economically then anything resembling today's music business.
Larry |