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A monthly guide to early rock, blues, country, folk, and traditional jazz in the Seattle area and beyond. Editor and Publisher: Doug Bright 75366.2463@compuserve.com

When one thinks of award-winning instrumentalists in the rhythm-and-blues realm, the trombone is definitely not the first instrument that comes to mind. Most of the trophies in this game, at least on the national level, seem to go to electric guitarists, with the occasional harmonica player, keyboardist, or saxophonist picking up an award or two along the way. That makes Randy Oxford the proverbial "big frog" in the very small pond of blues-based trombonists, having chalked up seventeen awards from the Washington Blues Society in various categories over the course of his career. The Randy Oxford Band won the Best New Band citation for 2003, and its subsequent debut CD, ALL THE BUZZ, is sure to generate even more accolades.

Born in 1960 in Seattle's Ballard district, Oxford heard a wide range of music from his parents' record collection during his formative years, and when he moved with his family to Chicago at age eleven, the listening opportunities only increased. "My parents played classical, jazz, pop, and even some Sousa," he recalls. "George Shearing was a big favorite on the record player as was Peggy Lee, Boots Randolph, Henry Mancini, Sinatra, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Crosby, and of course, Tommy Dorsey. My parents would go out to the London House in Chicago and see many of these groups perform live, and then they would come home with their albums and play them all day long. They would take me to see the Chicago Symphony one week and then Stan Kenton the next week. I learned early on that there was a whole wide world full of all kinds of music out there, and I felt very lucky to be around it at such an early age."

As a result of one cultural outing in particular, the young Randy Oxford discovered his lifelong instrument and took it up during his sixth-grade school year. "My dad always had a fascination with brass," Oxford explains, "and he took me to see "The Music Man", which had great music in it, including "76 Trombones". That looked like a lot of fun, so I gave it a go. The school really needed someone to step up and take on the trombone, as most kids wanted to play trumpet, sax, and drums."

Unfortunately, Oxford's student experience wasn't all smooth sailing. After enduring a junior-high band director with a negative personality for three years, he nearly quit playing altogether. Nevertheless, his mother convinced him to try the high-school band for a year. When his father asked director Steve Hoernamann what it took to get in, the bandleader simply replied, "You must have lips."

With the good humor and positive attitude that Hoernamann's answer conveyed, he literally saved young Randy Oxford's musical life. "I already liked the guy after that answer and was willing to give it a shot," Oxford recalls. "I soon found out that Steve Hoernamann was much more than just a band director on the podium. He was a life inspiration and took the time to talk to you outside of the band room and about subjects not always related to music. He would sit at the piano and sing to the band some very moving songs, and he would have the whole room full of kids in tears of inspiration by the end of the song. He had so many ways of setting positive examples about life, and that also kept every band member wanting to practice and become better musicians for him as well as better people."

Hoernamann's inspiration paid off with obvious results. In 1977 his 200-piece marching band won first place in a national competition, giving Oxford the experience of playing the next Orange Bowl parade. In addition to the concert band and marching band, Hoernamann also ran a tight, jazz-oriented stage band, where Oxford gained his most relevant experience. "We played a lot of big band arrangements by Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson, Count Basie, and Buddy Rich," he remembers. "We would take field trips to music conferences in downtown Chicago where many of these big bands were performing, so we got to see the real deal. That really inspired us to go back to the woodshed. This was part of the advantage of going to school in the Chicago area because so many of these big names were coming through town anyway. We even were able to hire Buddy Rich's big band to come play at our high school gymnasium, and we opened for him. That was very inspiring to a bunch of teenagers. It was the band that kept me coming back to school day after day."

After graduation, Oxford was encouraged by his father to try out for the Army band. "The audition consisted of traveling to the Great Lakes naval Base in Chicago and going into a room full of military musicians who sat there and judged your ability to sightread sheet music that you have never seen before that day," he recalls. "The sheet music covered many different styles, tempos, and dynamics. Luckily for me, I had four solid years in my high school band, where we did lots of sightreading of all kinds of music, so I was well prepared. After the audition, they said that they had an open spot for a trombone player in Europe. Once I was guaranteed a spot in Europe, I was ready to sign the papers."

After a chilly winter's boot camp in Missouri, Oxford was sent to the Armed Forces School of Music in Norfolk, Virginia. The course, which lasted nearly a year, combined musicians from all four branches of the Service for a curriculum that encompassed everything from symphonic music to swing and involved plenty of music theory and sightreading. "One amazing thing to me at the time, coming right out of high school, was that I was getting paid to attend this School of Music instead of paying to go to a dreaded college!" Oxford marvels. "I was getting paid to learn music--all kinds of music in every imaginable setting! We even threw together a band to greet Jacques Cousteau and the Calypso crew as they came to port in Norfolk for a rest."

Assigned to Berlin, Oxford gained invaluable experience in many countries and settings, playing to military and civilian audiences alike. "We did multinational concerts with the French, British, German, Scottish, and even Russian bands," he recalls. "We had an Army group called The Ambassadors of Jazz that played American big-band swing all over Europe, and the Europeans just went crazy for it! I found out that many of the old-school Big Band musicians were living in Europe: many lived in Berlin. After I fulfilled my Army Band obligations during the day, I was free to hit the scene in Berlin and go jam with whoever was hanging around. I met Al Porcino, the legendary trumpet player from the Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, and Buddy Rich bands, and he asked me to join his big band. The band had some other major old-school guys: Leo Wright on saxophone, Rolfe Erickson on trumpet, and Bobby Burgess on trombone. This was the ultimate school of music for me."

 In 1981 Randy Oxford returned home to the States, transferring to Fort Ord, California. "I was thinking about getting out of the Army after my first three years and staying in Berlin as a civilian musician," he explains, "but there was this one-and-only opening for a trombone player in the Army band at Fort Ord in Monterey. Growing up near Chicago and never having been to California, I decided to sign up for three more years in the Army Band, knowing that I was guaranteed a paid gig."

 Arriving in California, Oxford lost no time in connecting with the local music scene. He worked with many groups, including the swing-oriented Monterey Peninsula Big Band, but his most influential experience came from a three-year stint with the Broadway Blues Band, a Santa Cruz ensemble whose instrumentation included a Hammond B-3 organ and a three-piece horn section. "This is the band that really got me started on the blues," he explains. "All the old blues classics were played with this band, and we played at the 25th annual Monterey Jazz Festival. It was a blast!"

 After finishing his military service in 1984, Oxford managed Domino's Pizza franchises in the Bay area for a couple of years. Meanwhile, his parents had moved back to western Washington and opened a printing supply business in Redmond. After being robbed at gunpoint in the line of duty once too often, Oxford left the pizza business to join the family enterprise. "I spent twelve years doing this while enjoying the complete flexibility of being able to play music in the evenings," he says. "When I first moved up here, I listened to "All Blues" on KPLU with Marlee Walker as the host. I called her and asked where I could go hang out and meet other blues musicians. She suggested the Blue Monday jam at the Owl Caf`e in Ballard."

 At the Owl's Monday-night blues jam, Oxford met Seattle keyboard-and-harmonica legend Dick Powell, who told him that guitarist Mark Whitman and his band Duo Glide might be looking for a trombonist. "I sat in with them, and they asked me to join the band," he recalls. "That led to shows and recordings with Jr. Cadillac, Little Bill and The Bluenotes, Fat Cat, Junkyard Jane, Nicole Fournier, and now finally The Randy Oxford Band."

 Although he had recorded with Al Porcino, The Ambassadors of Jazz, and even his high school bands, Oxford made his first Northwest album as a result of joining the immensely popular roots-rock band Jr. Cadillac, participating in a 20th anniversary cassette album recorded live at the Seattle Sheraton. Early the following year, probably with Cadillac, Oxford played a 50th birthday celebration honoring Northwest rock-and-roll legend Little Bill Engelhart, and Engelhart was so impressed with Oxford's playing that he invited him to join his band. Sixteen years later, Oxford still views the eight years spent with Little Bill and The Bluenotes as his most important learning experience. "Little Bill is my main mentor in the blues," he says. "He really taught me how to play the blues and live the blues. He taught me how to survive the tough times in the music biz and how to keep a band working year after year. He is why I am still going strong in this tough music business today."

 In the summer of 1989 the newly expanded Bluenotes line-up, with Oxford on trombone, made a cassette simply entitled LITTLE BILL AND THE BLUENOTES. Although it was intended more as an audition tape than a commercial product, it garnered favorable reviews and quickly sold 800 copies, motivating the band to produce a full-length album. The resulting effort, DOWN FOR DOUBLE, consisted entirely of Engelhart's most recent compositions, including a slow-grooving anthem called "Seattle Blues" that celebrated the city's vibrant blues scene.

 While drummer Tom Morgan's steady, unadorned beat perfectly complemented Engelhart's deep, resonant bass guitar, Randy Oxford played in an instrumental front line consisting of lead guitarist Hans Ipsen, tenor saxophonist Robbie Jordan, and Hammond B-3 organist Buck England. Their rich blend gave Engelhart a depth and authenticity of accompaniment that hadn't been available to him since his original hit-making band of 1959. Although Oxford took relatively few solos, he played with the expression of one schooled in the essentials of the blues.

 Several more Bluenotes albums followed in addition to a steady schedule of gigs and a growing number of guest spots on other people's albums. All the while, Oxford continued to work with his parents by day in the print-supply trade. When the inevitable burnout finally caught up with him in 1997, he left the Bluenotes to get some much-needed rest and prepare for his next musical move.

 Oxford's next affiliation was with Fat Cat, a horn-driven blues crew with plenty of original material, and with his help, the group took the Washington Blues Society's 1998 award for New Band of The Year. Later that year Oxford, now living in Puyallup, started jamming with a newly organized Tacoma band called Junkyard Jane. It was an eclectically styled outfit that categorized itself as "swampabilly blues" and derived its repertoire from the songwriting talents of singer/guitarist Billy Stoops and singer/washboardist Leanne Trevalyan. During Oxford's three-year tenure they made three CD's, achieved great local popularity, and placed as one of the top eight entries in a National Battle of The Bands competition in Memphis.

 After leaving Junkyard Jane in 2001, Oxford decided to take what he had learned about the music business and turn it into an enterprise that would help to build and strengthen the local blues community. Beginning at Jake's Ales in Federal Way, he started hosting weekly jam sessions at appropriate venues in the Puget Sound area. "I wanted to help musicians hook up and find bands and gigs," he explains, "so I started hosting blues jam sessions and started my own booking agency, Oxford Entertainment. Now I can help bands form and find new players from the blues jams that I host. Then I can help them find gigs through my booking agency."

One of the happiest results of Oxford's jam sessions has been the discovery of the personnel for his Randy Oxford Band. Guitarist Steve Blood, a Tacoma native, plays the kind of classic blues slide that's scarcely been heard since Jeremy Spencer graced the original Fleetwood Mac. Bassist Jack Kinney, originally from southern California, had toured with such legendary rockers as the Ventures, the Coasters, and the Isley Brothers before settling in the Northwest and joining Oxford. Singer/guitarist Jerry Lee Davidson left his native Seattle as a musically restless teenager in the early 1970's to try his luck in Chicago's thriving folk and blues circles, and since then he's worked with a pantheon of artists ranging from Willie Dixon to Willie Nelson to Chuck Berry. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Virginia Klemens also made her mark on the Chicago music scene at a young age and has fronted her own bands as well as working with a wide variety of artists, including Doc Watson, Maria Muldaur, and bluesman Homesick James. With the discovery of drummer/vocalist Riky Hudson, a Little Rock, Arkansas native with a diverse musical background, the band was complete.

The Randy Oxford Band's debut CD, recorded at a Whidbey Island studio called Blue Ewe and released last year, is a masterful integration of tradition and creativity. Entitled ALL THE BUZZ, it spans an uncommonly wide range of eras and sources. Virginia Klemens updates Memphis Minnie's 1929 hit "Bumble Bee" to an infectious shuffle, with Oxford's spicy trombone and the two lead guitarists, Blood and Davidson, working up to a well maneuvered three-way jam. Bessie Smith's "Sugar In My Bowl" and the Depression-era classic "Why Don't You Do Right", also delivered by Klemens, are backed with the kind of insistent four-beat chord rhythm that characterized the neo-Vaudevillian efforts of the Beatles and Spoonful in the late Sixties.

From the heyday of Chicago blues come two Sonny Boy Williamson numbers. The band turns "Crazy 'Bout You" into a swaggering mid-Sixties rocker with a simple but effective overdubbed trombone horn-section riff that calls the Stones' "Satisfaction" to mind. On "Help Me", the band's superb command of dynamics is especially obvious. The volume dips to a whisper to emphasize Klemens' voice on key verses, but it expands to a controlled roar when Oxford dexterously shares choruses with the lead guitarists.

On James Brown's "Think", Oxford and one of the guitarists replicate the original saxophone riff, and Virginia Klemens' tastefully gritty rendition is supported with satisfying vocal harmony from the band. Billy Edd Wheeler's "High Flying Bird" is sure to catch the attention of folk revivalists who remember Judy Henske's haunting rendition. Although Klemens' delivery has a somewhat lower grit factor, it's just as soulful. "Peach", written by that consummate bluesman Prince, becomes another swaggering mid-Sixties blues-rocker in the hands of the Randy Oxford Band as led by vocalist Riky Hudson.

As this disc eloquently demonstrates, Oxford's band can come up with original songs as compelling as the material it gleans from historical sources. "Texas Hurricane", for example, is a slow-grinding blues co-written by Jerry Lee Davidson and sung in an effective duet with Virginia Klemens. "Moscow Blues" celebrates American life and liberty from the perspective of a Russian immigrant. "I was born in Moscow in 1953," the character proclaims, "but now I live in New York City, the home of the brave and the land of the free." "Jerry Lee Davidson wrote this song straight out of his imagination," the album's liner notes explain, "despite the rumors that Randy brought him to this country and is forcing him to play in a blues band."

The single most impressive thing about the Randy Oxford Band is its highly developed sense of teamwork, especially given its unusual instrumentation. While the bass and drums lay a solid foundation, Oxford and the three guitarists blend seamlessly to provide perfect support for vocal and instrumental soloists alike. For his part, Randy Oxford utilizes the trombone's full range of tonal possibilities on this disc, riffing convincingly with the guitarists and taking solos that reflect the heat and spice of New Orleans or the cool of the Tommy Dorsey era as the situation requires.

Given the level of musicianship and blues community activism that characterizes Randy Oxford and his band, it's no surprise that their groundbreaking debut CD is getting the notice it deserves. Consequently, the nominations for the Washington Blues Society's Best of Blues (BB) awards are pouring in. The disc is nominated for Best Blues Recording, and Virginia Klemens is up for Best Female Singer. Oxford, for his own part, is in the running for four awards this year: Best Horn Player, Performer of the Year, Lifetime Achievement, and Keeping The Blues Alive. By the time you read this, of course, the winners will have been decided. The Randy Oxford Band CD, ALL THE BUZZ, can be ordered from Oxford's website, www.randyoxford.com, or by mail for $17, which includes shipping and handling, from Randy Oxford, Oxford Entertainment, P.O. Box 232, Eatonville, WA 98328.