The musical art of quoting

Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves; Gypsys Tramps & Thieves; Cher

Have you ever noticed that when we say the first and last names of any given person, even when there’s a title up front like Mr., Ms., or Dr., the last name gets the emphasis? We tend to say Charlie BROWN, President KENNEDY, Dr. Carl SAGAN, Queen LATIFAH and Marjorie Bernadotte Berboom JABLIMSKY.

When I worked on the Crown Odyssey in 1993, our saxophone player introduced himself as CARL Poole. As a musician that deals with rhythms on a daily basis, I noticed the emphasis shift immediately. Really? You call yourself CARL Poole? “Well, that’s the way my friends have always said it and I guess it kind’a stuck. I suppose it sounds so much like car pool. I don’t even think about how I or anyone says it anymore.” So CARL Poole it was.

When left unsupervised, jazz musicians like to indulge in a little witty exercise called quoting. The number of songs, melodies, ditties, tunes, themes, airs and strains by FAR surpass the combination of possible chord sequences that lie beneath them. Inevitably, one sequence will match another; maybe not all the way through sixteen measures of “Dixie”, but probably through the first four. The tune “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” can be played over the same chord sequence as “Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue”, kind of like “Sweet and Low” and “Lida Rose” from “The Music Man”.

One day, during a training run for the Marine Corps Marathon in 2002, in order to divert my attention from the fact that I was running and I didn’t want to anymore, I tried to come up with as many tunes as I could to string together and cover the entire expanse of the chord change sequence to “One Note Samba” by Antonio Carlos Jobim. In the mix, I included such obscure tunes as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” theme, the “Star Trek” theme, “High On A Hill Stood A Lonely Goatherd”, “I Am Sixteen Going On Seventeen”, “Climb Every Mountain”, and “The Hills Are Alive” from “The Sound Of Music”, “The Love Boat Theme”, the “I Dream Of Jeannie” theme, the final strain to “The Washington Post” and “Stranger In Paradise” from “Kismet”.

Some musicians like to make one specific tune their trademark quote tune and constantly seek opportunities to apply it. One friend of mine will honk out “Handful of Keys” by Fats Waller whenever he can. Yet another friend prefers to play the theme to “The Jack Benny Show” whenever the chord change sequence will allow.

CARL Poole liked to play the fight music sequence from the original “Star Trek” show. And CARL Poole LOVED to quote “Gypsies, Tramps And Thieves” by Bob Stone, made famous by Cher. A few years ago I got an e-mail from CARL, just catching up, and I recalled his penchant for this obscure tune. I decided to download it from iTunes as an item of nostalgia. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Credits: To Cher, for longevity, for surviving both hits and misses, and for bravery in taking chances. Thank you for “Moonstruck”.