Several years ago, my friend and fellow trumpet player Kate Umble put together something rare – a big band. Why is a big band rare these days? Mostly because the large number of players involved (about 16) makes paying the band and/or buying show tickets pretty expensive. Plus, the big band sound is out of fashion with many jazz listeners.

Not only was this big band rare, it was also special. Kate had planned up a tribute to Duke Ellington. The charts were fantastic and the band was just as good. With great players from Lancaster, Harrisburg and Philadelphia filling every spot, this band was truly exciting to be in!

Kate had arranged for our Ellington tribute to take place at one of Lancaster, PA’s nicest concert venues – the Ware center, which was sold out. I was fortunate to have a featured solo on one of the tunes as well.

On the day of the show, I got my gear together and packed my garment bag with the clothes I needed for the concert. The schedule was to do dress rehearsal, then break for dinner, and then play the show. Everything was going fine until it came time to change into our concert attire of black suit.

I went into the bathroom, unzipped my garment bag, reached in and pulled out my black suit jacket. The hanger felt light, and that’s when I started to panic. I moved the coat aside hoping to see that my black suit pants were on the hanger underneath- but they weren’t! 

Instead of grabbing my black suit, I had apparently grabbed my black sport coat, which does not automatically come with black pants.

The bass player heard me mumbling profanity over and over and asked what was wrong. When I told him, he suggested a pretty good idea.

I had been wearing black sweatpants for the rehearsal, which maybe could have passed for black dress pants except for the very prominent white stripe that went from the waistband to the end of the leg. 

“Hey, you might be all right though.” he said. “What if you turned your pants inside out so the white stripe was on the inside.”

That was a damn good idea! 

So I turned the pants inside out, and tried them on. The material actually looked less “dress pants-like”, but much to my disappointment, the white stripe was actually much thicker on the inside, especially down by the leg opening where it spread out into a rather large, white triangle.

Damn it! I had no options. 

I left the sweatpants on inside out, thinking that’s the best I could do, and went into the green room where the rest of the band was waiting. By this time word had already spread throughout the band that “some dumbass” forgot his pants. 

After taking joke after joke from just about everybody, someone came up with the idea of covering the white parts of the pants with black gaffers tape. Certainly one of the stage hands would have access to some of that!

A brilliant idea!

I found a crew member, explained the situation, and came back to the green room with a roll of black tape and 10 minutes to go before showtime.

Saxophonist Christie Banks and trumpeter P.C. King worked like the birds who made Cinderella’s dress, covering every white thing on my pants with gaffers tape.

Their work looked surprisingly good! My only problem now was whether or not I could pass for formal when I walked out in front of the band to do my feature. I was really wishing I could just play it from my spot in the back of the band. The trumpets are always standing to play anyway so it’s not like I wouldn’t be seen.

Fortunately, as we walked on stage, the stage manager informed me that it would work out best for them if I didn’t come out front and instead just played my feature from the section.  “Do you mind?”, he asked.  

I couldn’t have been happier about it!

From there on, everything went great.  The band played really well and the audience enjoyed listening to an night of jazz from one of America’s best composers.

I’m grateful to Christie and P.C. for taping me up because the people I knew in the audience had no idea (until I told them) that I was wearing a black jacket, white button shirt, black tie, black shoes, and a run-of-the-mill pair of black sweatpants.

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