Posted by Joe S. on July 02, 1999 at 22:30:00:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Do you still enjoy playing for $$? posted by Don Goldie fan on July 02, 1999 at 08:49:38:
Don's trumpets are Selmer "K Modified"s, and all of them are gold-plated, of course. He is an extremely nice man, and (I haven't seen him in years) if still alive, must be getting pretty old. His playing is the smoothest dixie trumpet playing that I have ever heard -- a gorgeous tone, with all of the notes he chooses being interesting and all of them fitting perfectly. His trumpet playing can be compared to the singing style of Mel Tormé, and Don even actually looks and sings like him. (Like a championship chess player, he has the ability to think WAY ahead of where he is in the changes, and plan out VERY interesting, and often surprisingly sequential, lines.) He was the lead trumpet player in the Jackie Gleason orchestra (in Miami) back when that was on T.V. and very big in the 1960's and early '70's. If anyone remembers the Gleason theme that opened the show, starting with a solo trumpet playing that very smooth haunting chromatic melody, THAT was Don.
When I ran into Don a couple of times (the first time at the huge Sacramento Dixieland Jubilee in the early '80's), he was using the incredible "Red" (Norman) Hawley on drums, the drummer (exciting be-boppy dixie style drumming, with a lot of really "sideways" fills and four-bar riffs) who was on most of the Assuntos' Dukes of Dixieland recordings, and who also later played with the Gleason show orchestra. By the time I met the (formerly "carrot-" and "flat-topped") "Red" Hawley, he was in his 50's and had about two feet of WHITE hair hanging down his back like an old hippie.