What A Wake Up Call

I'm driving to The Asylum yesterday morning and I pop in a CD by a group called Chase.

Bill Chase - the originator of the group - began putting this band together in 1969. Their first album - the one I was listening to yesterday - was released in 1971. The thing was huge.

One song - "Get It On' - made it to number one. The group was nominated for a Grammy, and Bill Chase was voted number two - behind Frank Zappa - in a poll of the top pop musicians of the year. Down Beat rated the Chase album as the number one pop album of 1971.

Here's the catch - the group had four trumpet players. Four. Also keyboards, bass, guitar and percussion. Five guys sang vocals.

There were nine guys in the band in total.

It is such a sweet and tasty memory to know that this band was accepted in the rock world. And to know that Frank Zappa and Bill Chase were considered the top two "pop" performers in 1971. If this band was formed today they would be shunned by the music industry because they could not be pigeon-holed into a genre.

It amazes me that an industry inspired by creativity, indeed founded on creativity, is so restrictive in the music it promotes, so cavalier about the music it destroys.

Chase rocked. They absolutely rocked. They were a cross between jazz and rock, referred to as jazz-rock fusion, somewhat in the tradition of Blood, Sweat & Tears, but they were exponentially more talented.

As live performers, before they made it big, they had trouble booking gigs after a while because they were so powerful nobody wanted to follow them.

Bill Chase didn't even start playing the trumpet until he was in the eleventh grade. He was inspired by Maynard Ferguson and eventually ended up playing in Ferguson's band as well as Woody Herman's band.

It is 7:15 on a Saturday morning, I am cruising in The Big Ride, and song number one opens with a sky high trumpet note and goes on to create a waterfall of sound that alerted me to the fact that I was alive and driving a vehicle.

Trust me, I am not close to being awake at that time of day, especially on my way to The Asylum.

Suddenly my eyes are bulging out of my head and I began to see the reality behind the illusion.

That sentence means nothing, but it popped into my head and I liked the sound of it.

These guys are rocking fiercely, trumpets wailing and suddenly Chase's trumpet comes in over the top, an octave higher.

Your mind and your senses can't handle it.

Chase hits the kind of notes on a trumpet that transform his face into redness and leave a red welt on his lips.

But that ain't the whole story. His fingers fly, all the trumpet players' fingers fly, they play together at impossible speed and then............next thing you know you are listening to something slow and emotional and powerful.

These guys had the chops for it all.

The band got shuffled around, they released two more albums that did nothing because musical taste in this country was already starting to tank, and they faded away. At one point Bill Chase had to file for bankruptcy.

On August 9, 1974 Chase were on their way to Minnesota for a performance when the plane crashed, killing Bill Chase, Wally Yohn, John Emma, Walter Clark and both pilots.

If I had swerved into a tree yesterday and gone on to rock with Jesus, it would not have been a bad ending. I would have gone out in inspiration, awe, aural joy, and sweet release.

It didn't happen and it won't. First of all, The Big Ride is a lot of car and I know it will protect me.

Second of all I still have a lot to prove.

I ain't done yet.