And my life
was really probably determined by the age
of 12 when I took that first
course on a blues in B flat and
the hair stood up all over my back and I
thought somebody stuck an electric line
into my body. Some place was
electric feeling all over, you know,
and probably I think I was asleep
prior to that in life.
I was certainly bored prior to that.
But once I knew there was improvization,
I was straight, I had a reason to get out
of bed every day.
And and that's what I'm doing and
I've just explained this morning
and try to be smart enough as a
businessman to to get out and
figure a way to go out and do that
and just play jazz and and make
a living doing it.
What I'd like to actually introduce to
you a little bit here is some stuff
on improvising because we've touched on
the subject and so forth.
There's a.
As many concepts and
so-called methods of teaching
people to improvise now as there are,
you know, people.
Teaching it, I suppose every one of us
has tried over the years and as
I said, Paul Desmond said art can't it
can be learned, but it can't be taught.
So what I did.
I didn't really go through any kind of
formal lessons, I've never had any formal
trumpet lessons in my life, which is good
because it enabled me to sit home and
figure it out for myself.
So I became my own teacher.
I didn't have somebody else's harebrained
ideas confusing me and so forth.
I had one trumpet teacher one time
take me off of a mouthpiece.
I was playing real well on and
put me on to something that you can wash
clothes on.
And then I couldn't
play for about six months
and I finally went
meeting this guy and got another
mouthpiece and went back to work, you
know, but
the whole point about it is that.
I just really did it by sitting in a room
listening to records and.
Students come to me and they ask me to
teach everybody jazz, you know, and
I oftentimes think that they really
expect that I'm going to have a five step
formula, you know, and it's like a little
tablet that you can take or something and
you suddenly explode into this
or, you know.
In Japan, one time
I was doing a series
of clinics over there and doing a
trumpet clinic in Tokyo
and one Japanese kid raised
his hand and said, Mr. Shue,
please, would you tell us what kind of
method you use for our tongue
articulation when you play bebop
solos on?
I never thought about anything like that,
but it was a typical
question you'd expect from
a society that mostly has formulated
answers for things, you know, but I
knew the kid genuinely wanted to know.
So I said, well, wait a second, let me
just stop and think about this.
So I because I know, you
know, if we double down, we have a
formulated way to the time you
get out of and so forth.
But jazz playing there wasn't one.
So I got to horn out and I
picked it up.
Close my eyes and I just kind of
precociously just played a little bit,
just some give stuff, you know, and
while I was doing that, I had my
attention entirely on my tongue.
But I wanted to really observe what it
was doing. This as I was trying to answer
the question for the guy.
So as I sat there, like playing,
I was de de de de
de de de de de de
de de de de de de de de de la liga.
And I was watching my tongue.
I kind of imagine myself sitting on the
side of my teeth, hanging my feet over
the side, looking down, watching this,
watching his tongue and I just
visualization all
but looking down at his
tie. I man I think is having a great time
in there.
You know, it's dancing around.
It's not going to attack, attack, attack,
attack or
any of that stuff.
It was going be you do
what you do. I tell you
who who
you know, as a man.
This is it. It's it's loose.
And
and it was dancing around in there.
But what I realized
what I thought, I think it's basically
become a little bit of a vital key in
trying to teach improvization really,
really honest to God, jazz playing
is that it's like scat singing.
You know what?
Basically what my tongue was doing is
emulating a kind of a miniaturized
version of scat singing with the
trumpet up there and blowing air through
it and manipulating the Airstream kind of
and shaping it a little bit and
changing the types of articulations by
a kind of scat singing reference.
And it wasn't anything that I never
really thought about or done.
It was just I had naturally led myself
into it by trying to copy what I heard on
Art Blakey and horse over records and
stuff like that, you know, and I'd
hear somebody play but really
loud ape.
And then I'd go for we to do that.
And it seemed to work without realizing
it. That was the missing link, you know,
and.
So I suddenly I'm I'm standing
in this class and having a bit of a
revelation myself, I assure you,
I'm going, oh my God, it's getting you
know, this is amazing.
I'm standing in front of five hundred
Japanese developers having a religious
experience, you know,
but so I came home
and I realized that's the key that's
been missing is that scat singing.
So I got all my students essentially
scat singing for quite a long time.
You know, I should put the horn down, you
know, like, let's just sing for a while.
And the
beauty of the scat singing, you see, is
that in spite of the fact that
all of us seem to have like an
intimidation about singing in public and
so forth, because we we've been told
since the Christmas play in elementary
school with horrible voices, we oil and
so forth, you know, and.