Climax Rag for Little Big Band

Description

Climax Rag for Little Big Band

By James Scott
Arr. Eddie Lewis

If you want to add a little traditional flavor to your little big band lineup, consider this arrangement of Climax Rag. This is the arrangement from a short lived ten-piece band in Houston, Texas called Jazz Forever. I wrote all the arrangements for the band and then the leader gave me the entire band before he passed away. This was on the condition that I never call the band Jazz Forever.

Climax Rage for little big band is the first arrangement I’ve decided to make publicly available. This is four years after the leader gave me the band.

Jazz Forever was a great band and it was a shame that the project didn’t get more public support. We used a lot of the top jazz musicians in Houston at the time. Ben Pokluda, the leader of the band, funded five albums and Climax Rag was on the album titled Mardi Gras Legends.

I do believe this was an original arrangement of mine. A lot of the charts I wrote for Jazz Forever were record lifts, but most of the charts I wrote for our fourth album, Mardi Gras Legends, were original.

When I first started writing for Jazz Forever, Ben didn’t know me yet. He was very insistent that I stick to exact transcriptions.

As Ben became more comfortable with my writing, he gave me more and more artistic freedom. This was probably a good thing, because I wrote almost a hundred charts for him before he gave me that freedom. Which meant that I was deeply submerged into the style before I began doing my own thing.

Like I said, this is the first chart I’m publishing from the Jazz Forever library. Why now? Well, simply because someone has asked for it.

If you are familiar with the Jazz Forever albums, and there are charts you would like to purchase, then please let me know and I will put them on the list.

If you are unfamiliar with Jazz Forever’s recordings, then I encourage you to check them out. I have all of them on my YouTube channel as playlists. Here they are in published order:

1. Jazz Forever: Volume One
2. Jazz Forever: Volume Two
3. Jazz Forever: A Cool Christmas
4. Jazz Forever: Mardi Gras Legends
5. Jazz Forever: Spiked Eggnog

Little Big Band Ten Piece

Jazz Forever was a ten-piece band in the “Little Big Band” format. So the instrumentation for this arrangement of Climax Rag is:

• Clarinet
• Tenor Sax
• Bari Sax
• Two Trumpets
• Trombone
• Banjo
• Piano
• Bass
• Drums

Climax Rag Play-Along

We have a free play-along video for the first trumpet part. It’s part of our You Play First Chair video series. Since this is the first chart we are adding from the Jazz Forever library, it’s also the first jazz ensemble play-along in the series, but if we heard positive comments from enough of you, we will do our best to add more.

Here’s the link to that video:

Climax Rag Jazz Trumpet Play-Along Video

We have over 150 play-along videos for all skill levels, ranging from absolute beginner to insane virtuoso. If you are interested in more of these videos, then we encourage you to access them from the You Play First Chair page on our other website. That page has the links to the videos in progressive order, starting with the easiest and ending with the most difficult.

Trumpet Play-Along Videos

Climax Rage from Mardi Gras Legends

As I said earlier, Jazz Forever recorded Climax Rag on our Mardi Gras Legends album. We are using that recording as the demo for this arrangement.