tommy t

I. I'm no engineer, metallurgist, acoustician, artisan or anything else. I do like adjustable gap receivers, Saturn water keys and a stop to keep the first valve slide from falling off.

II. My theme is "The Plain Truth." It's a horn with minimum ornamentation, no engraving, no contrasting colors, no inlaid buttons, bracing only where bracing is functional and no decorative fancy stuff related to it. Smooth, simple lines, probably brushed gold, just a plain trumpet, but the truth is heard when it speaks. not when it is just seen.

III. The Life and Journeys of a Trumpet Player

I'm a trumpet player. You don't know me, 'less you happen a been at the Pit up to Dawson City where I play Thursday nights with the rock and roll band or over at Peggy's for the jams on Sunday afternoon. I mostly just play for a share a the tips, which ain't much in the summertime since nobody shows up 'cept the squatters from 'cross the River who don't show much cash and ain't nothing a tall the rest the year cause just plain nobody shows up anyhow. That's when it's just dark all day and the cold inside is plain worse than the cold on the top a Crotchhead Mountain outside a Lead Mine on the worst day a the year.

See, I's born in Lead Mine, West Virginia and never did nothing right 'cept make music. I weren't going to make it through school no matter how long I kept at it and all the folks said I's the best trumpet player they done heard. Least that's what all the folks said in Tucker County. I figured to take the bit in my own teeth and head to cut my initials right on the biggest tree in the biggest city I could find. Hitched in a big rig with trucker clear up to Cincinnati but didn't have no more luck than a ferret on a gum stump. What happened is I went to a record store and asked 'em where the music wuz. Told me 'bout some open mike at a joint near that college there. I found that place and I play't most of what I knew and that be just 'bout every fiddle song they ever play't, 'cept I play't 'em on trumpet so they sound all bright and clear 'stead a out a toon and all scratchy like.

Well, I's not telling much more 'bout that but I kept goin' north and west and not very fast and not fed very good neither.

Indianapolis wuz 'bout the same, and Chicago, 'cept I went to a blues club and they didn't let me play after 'bout one time through the verse but they fed me good every nite with left over ham or sometimes chicken from the kitchen and some of the blues players they showed me some notes I didn't used to use and how to put 'em together to sound all sad and lonely like, which wuz pretty good cause that was pretty much how I's feeling anyhow. One day one a them blues players took me to Detroit cause he was going there to see his family and where he put me with some boys that wuz playing those blues like they wuz rock and roll and I liked that 'cause I knew rock and roll anyhow but I just didn't know 'bout playing rock and roll on a trumpet instead a on a guitar or like that. Those boys in Detroit said I wuz funky and I told them I didn't have no place to get a bath but they said funky was good when I play't on my trumpet and I could get a bath at his uncle's place.

I spend'd the whole winter being funky in Detroit and getting food for playing and getting a bath a that uncle's place and then some people in Detroit said maybe I should go on up east there to Toronto 'cause everybody they wuz in Toronto wanted to be like we wuz in Detroit and wanted to hear me play funky on my trumpet and I might be even getting paid money to do it like that and all.

Well, that ain't quite how it worked, but I sure met some nice people in Toronto and they showed me how to play some better notes and I lernt all 'bout American jazz in Toronto, Canada, but that ain't so funny as I thought it were at first 'cause Toronto, Canada, is part of America just like America is too and all that. Then some trouble with the law comed up 'bout me being the wrong kind a American even though Toronto is part of America and I weren't allow to play anymore but some people who been hearing me play knew how to fix it so I could play if I wuz a artist, but I din't have to paint any pictures and all that but just have somebody promise to pay me money when I play't. They said I's to be paid money when I play't when I'm going to play jazz in that city Winnepeg.

I went on out to Winnepeg but I think the part 'bout getting paid money in Winnepeg wusn't never true but just to me to go on out a Toronto and away from the law with the right kind of paper work and all that.

I jist kept going and the people in Toronto wuz right that now I wuz playing jazz all across the Canada and 'cause of that I wuz getting fed and paid tips when ever I stopped at least I wuz if I could find the kind a place that would get me fed and pay me tips for playing jazz. I lernt I could play jazz with most any group I came to in just any place there wuz only sometimes if they wuz a rock and roll band I could play funky and I liked that too. I spended the winter in Calgary where there is not much to do anytime of year and there is nothing to do in the winter except for people to go to bars and clubs and listen to rock and roll and jazz and country music. Well, I lernt my jazz in Toronto and my funky rock and roll in Detroit and country music weren't nothing but the blues from Chicago played just like a old Tucker County fiddle toon and I got through that winter just 'bout as fine as a yard a ice on the fish pond.

Come that Spring, what I could call friends in Calgary sent me out to the mountains to play for the tourists in some pretty big old road houses. I felt pretty much at home back in the mountains but they were a hole heap bigger than the mountains in West Virginia which is where I grew up and all that. I played all summer and that old piano player at the hotel in Banff taught me how to relax and just ease through some of the music and not get all the people all stirred up when they shouldn't be stirred up like that and then I got to spend the Winter right there at that big old ski resort. Now we had got ski resorts in West Virginia so I already knew all 'bout that.

Things wuz good but you know I had jist got in that old habit of moving on every summer so I started hitching north until pretty soon I figured I had been going north for too long. I went north all Summer, playing a little but mostly jist using up my stake and living long the edges of a mighty lot a nothing at all but trees and all that.

As Fall wuz moving in I wuz in Whitehorse. They wuz two music clubs and only one trumpet player in Whitehorse that could play funky rock and roll and that easy jazz stuff both. Well, that seemed to be a opportunity jist a presenting itself to me and wanting for the taking. So I tied the old bridle to the post in Whitehorse and settled down for a Winter of easy living and all that.

Well, that wuz a mistake of a major proportion. What wuz two music clubs in Whitehorse in the summer was none at all in the winter. Just stinky old bars and all the people just staying at home cuz it wuz cold and not even going out on Saturday night. I 'bout died. I shared a room in a boarding house outside a town near the Yukon River with another American of the same kind I wuz 'cept he had come to Whitehorse to take tourists on skis in the woods in the Winter. Even I knew by then that they weren't no tourists in Whitehorse in the Winter and what kind a tourist would want go out in woods on skis if they were? By January, I wore every thing I had all day every day at the same time from three pare a socks to four shirts and two caps and I wuz still cold. I didn't eat hardly anything all winter and when once and a while I got a big meal at a church supper and would play some church toons for those folks, I's feeling like the old coon dog when grandpa opens the door!

I jist made it through that Winter and knew I weren't never going to spend the Winter in Whitehorse ever again. So I left that town heading up to Dawson City.

Summer in Dawson City wuz short but it is good with the tourists just throwing money out widows a there vehicles and the hole town looking like a trailer park on the poor side a Charleston. Six clubs playing music every night and half the afternoons and most of it funky rock and roll 'cept I got paid a real salary for doing that easy kind a jazz on three days a week in the middle of the afternoon when youn't have nothing else to do anyhow. I'd bought a flugelhorn from a tourist who set in with us one day and the people who wanted that easy jazz stuff liked the flugelhorn real good and tipped real good and all that.

But now I'd got smart. Some people I got to know showed how you'd make some cash panning a little up the rivers and some people showed how you'd save them tips to fed you self for the winter by catching fish with a net in the river 'stead of a pole and some other people showed how to get ready to keep warm fore it even got cold. I like on to these people. It feels a lot like home in Tucker County where folks watch out for each other 'cept for the tourists and we all watch out for their cash. I done made it through two winters now and this is the third. I hain't stayed put for this long since I wuz 18 and dropped out a junior high school to go on up that road and make my fortune.

I never did make that fortune but I'm still a trumpet player. You'll never know me now, 'less you happen a be at the Pit up to Dawson City where I play Thursday nights with the rock and roll band or over at Peggy's for the jams on Sunday afternoon.


IV. Tell the truth, my story isn't that different from the one above. I left southern Indiana and came to Boston, MA, to become rich and famous. I really did play in Dawson City last year, but I was playing a $51 cornet. I still can't afford a $5,000 trumpet. Fact is, I'm not even sure I'd be comfortable with one, but boy, my old flugelhorn sure could use that second or third prize.

Tommy T.