carltonsstudent

I have thought about the question of the Lead Trumpet sound for most of my life. I took private lessons from Carlton MacBeth in the 1956 to 1959 time frame and then one lesson from him about 1975. I saw him once in a while until his death in 2005. While I was taking from him regularly he was playing in Los Angeles with big bands such as Charlie Barnet, Lee Castle, etc. In the 1960's he played in the studios on The Dean Martin Show, etc. Before I knew him he had played lead with Woody Herman, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and many others. Since then I have listened to and greatly enjoyed most of the great lead trumpet players such as Bill Chase, Dalton Smith, Bud Brisbois, Larry MacGuire, Dave Stahl, etc.

Carlton's sound was different than all of these and one would have to hear it to understand. It was big, centered, and projected. It was not a pretty sound but was a thrilling, muscular sound with truly the most thrilling shake I have ever heard. He taught me to play up to double-C with the understanding that you should consider the top of your range as being about a third below the note you can hit pretty reliably. An interesting thing about his sound was that no matter how high he played, it didn't really sound high and one always felt that there was more in reserve. Another thing was that he didn't sound loud just very substantial.

I am the only one who can tell the following story about Carlton because it happened in one of my lessons. In 1958 Carlton was playing lead with the Lee Castle band at the Hollywood Palladium. At the end of the job Carlton was coming down off the bandstand and caught his toe under the carpet which wasn't fully tacked down. He tripped and being so relaxed he simply fell over and hit his face on the edge of a glass table. This caused a cut in his face which came down from above his right eyebrow, down along beside his nose and curled out to the right beside his lips. It took 122 stitches to sew up the cut. About two weeks after the accident Carlton gave me a lesson. The stitches were still in his face and he had not played since the accident. The doctor told him that all the muscles in his face were cut and that he would probably never play again. In those two weeks, Carlton's hair had turned from jet black to grey. My lessons were always conducted in the same way with Carlton sitting facing me about 4 - 5 feet away and usually Carlton would play and then I would play. This time Carlton was trying to conduct the lesson verbally but I could not get the point so Carlton said "Let me see if I can show you." So he got up and got out his trumpet and sat down. He started very softly for just a few seconds and then just shot up to a double-C that was so loud that it really seemed that the walls were shaking. He then put the horn down and said "I guess we don't have to worry about that anymore."

The words he often used in describing the desirable sound were: Centered, masculine, controlled, relaxed, cone like, in tune. Carlton didn't believe in large equipment. His trumpet was a medium bore Martin Committee model. His ideas on mouthpieces were never discussed except he told me to throw my Rudy Muck mouthpiece away and he put me on a Bach 7C. We never talked about mouthpieces again. I never knew what mouthpiece he used until about the year 2003 he told me "This is what I use and I think you should use it too." It was a Maggio 2 mouthpiece which his Maggio literature says is like a Bach 7C. It is an excellent mouthpiece except after I have been playing high for a while I can't produce low notes (G below middle-C down) reliably. So I have been playing with larger mouthpieces such as the Schile 14a4a, which has the shallow sound which I don't really like.

In 1956 Carlton recorded a 33 rpm record with Charlie Barnet entitled "Lonely Street". Maynard Ferguson is in the trumpet section with Carlton on lead. The trumpet section was called the "Lumber Jacks" because of the great masculine sound they had. Carlton and Maynard play a trumpet duel called "Hear Me Talking To You". If you can find this record you can hear Carlton's great sound and thrilling shake. Carlton finishes on a B-flat and Maynard on a double-D I think. Carlton told me: "Maynard always does you one better."

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