Barrie Lee Hall & Dennis Dotson

Lots of players have those guys that they look up to, their guide posts to help get them where they want to go on the horn. Right now, in my life, Dennis and Barrie are my guide posts. I wanted to take this opportunity to both thank them for being here in Houston and to let others know what we've got here.

Barrie and Dennis both have a lot in common, even though they are such different players. The one greatest compliment that I would give to anyone is that they have distinguishable characteristics in their playing which set them apart from all the rest. Dennis and Barrie have this in common. When you hear either one of them, there is no mistake. You're not listening to someone who sounds just like someone else. You may hear influences of other players and even borrowed material, but they use it to say their own thing, their own way.

Getting more into technical stuff, I really get into chromaticism. But I want to be able to do it to where it sounds good and not just weird. Barrie and Dennis do just that. You can tell that both of these guys know just where and when to use certain notes.

I've come to the conclusion that knowing the "just where and when" is a matter of putting in time on the horn, time trying it out until you find what sounds good to you. In other words, it becomes a matter of experience. Both of these guys have vast amounts of experience. This prompts me to first write about their big band experience. Dennis played with the Woody Herman band for (I think) eight years. I don't know how long Barrie's been with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, but it's been long enough that he now leads the ensemble, since the unfortunate death of Mercer Ellington.

Both Barrie and Dennis have done recordings outside of the Big Band genre. In fact, both have recorded kind of recently with Houston's Sebastian Whittaker. I won't go into a complete list of all the recordings these guys are on. I'll just leave it with, "These guys are both major leaguers!".

I'd like to encourage everyone on this list to give these two guys all the support they deserve. Buy the recordings they're on; hire them for gigs; hire them for clinics; take lessons from them. I can't convince you of how good they are just in these few paragraphs, but if my opinion is worth anything, you'll do what you can to show your appreciation for these two.

By the way, I didn't mention that both Barrie and Dennis are two of the nicest guys around.

(I play with Barrie in Conrad Johnson's Big Blue Sound and I play with Dennis in the Houston Jazz Orchestra, lead by Ricky Diaz. I've had almost ten years of college, over 200 credit hours, and I learn things schools could never teach when I sit in the section with these guys. Thank You!)