My earliest recollections are that it all started back around high school.I bought an album called Jeff Sturges and Universe. This was the first time to my knowledge that anyone had tried to combine rock or pop with a big band. This was not just another horn band like Cold Blood, Tower of Power??? Blood Sweat and Tears(Chicago wasn’t out yet)and others. This was a full 17 piece jazz style big band playing rock tunes in a rock style with a rock drummer
Not some lame charts done by a conventional jazz arranger with a weak jazz drummer trying to FUNK.
A few years later (after college)I started frequenting the library and taking out lots of different kinds of records but I remember taking out lots of Henry Mancini albums. These albums had whatever big song from which movie the album was connected to (whether he wrote the movie song or not) but there were 4 or 5 other songs that may oy maynot have been in the movie but sometimes there were some interesting songs amoung them. I probably got some Lalo Schfrin? albums too(this is where I also discovered Colin Blunstone & Argent).
Somewhere along the way I discovered Dominic Triano. I knew of him from an old album I bought in my college days(I was so poor that I think I only bought 2 in my 2 years at Barrington)called The Soul Crusade of the Mandala .In this solo album he used a monophonic synth to simulate a screech trumpet complete with shakes and all on a song called The War Zone. I think this planted the seed for using synths to simulate horns in a non solo way.
People had done orchestral things (Switched on Bach ect.) with synths but no one had used synths in a sectional way yet(soon with the advent of the polyphonic synth many horn players would be put out of work) , and I still haven’t heard many people do a better impression even with samples.
Then came MIDI. My first synth was a Casio CZ101 which I got for $250 from Sam Ash in Queens(the only store that had 1 in stock).The first decent sounding polyphonic affordable synth and though it was only 4 voices(you could split the sound and get 8 very thin sounding voices) I had already gotten a Fostex X-15 4 track cassette recorder, so I could overdub multiple horn tracks and add guitar bass and, using Clyde’s TR-*808, drums. This was the true beginning. I later got a Yamaha TX81Z and an Apple computer(Mac SE) and really went to town.
Around 1974 I met Frank Hatchett. I was playing with a local band(in Springfield that’s all there was) called The Soul Keys. One member of the band had been a dancer with Frank and when Frank had the opportunity to record his own album to use for teaching dance students he asked Wyatt about using The Soul Keys. We went to recording studio in Boston and recorded about 10 songs that we had learned for the album. We hadn’t rehearsed them enough and had problems getting a good take in the studio. In the process or trying to get a good enough recording Frank noticed that I seemed to know more about what to do than the rest of the guys in the band so next year when Frank had a chance to do another album he called me and told me to use anyone I wanted to.
I went on to do about 10 albums for Frank and I did a few for other teachers over time using usually 6 or 7 musicians. This was the beginning of my real world arranging experience. Limited by budget and the skills of the local musicians that I knew, the albums while moderately successful where not as good as I had hoped.
Now having moved to NYC in the1980s I continued to work with Frank but doing other projects such as music for his videos and live performances around the city. My home studio creations became more complete?? complex?? but I still stayed away from the final merging of funk and big band.I had opportunities to do big band arranging because being in the dance world I had opportunities to create big band songs for tap dancers and tap teachers but usually recreating some Tommy Dorsey of Benny Goodman song with a little something extra thrown in. This kept me quite busy for about 20 years in NYC.
Then around 2004 I bought an album by Lalo Schfrin which combined an orchestra, big band, and contemporary rhythm section. Hearing this album got me thinking about doing what I had been searching for since high school. So I started with some songs that I had already done interesting arrangements for but just for rhythm section or singers but nothing more. For some reason the first song I did was Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds which had a pretty complex arrangement with several different time signatures and grooves but I found it easy to re arrange the song for big band. I seemed to just know what instrument should go where and who should play what. But also the arrangement took on a new life. The song went into totally new directions and since I wasn’t writing this arrangement for any particular style (at least not yet)I just let the song go where it wanted. To this day I think it is one of my best arrangements and certainly the craziest. After I finished recording an electronic version of the arrangement I sent Cds of the song to a few friends just to get some feedback. To this day I still reread those emails occasionally because the response was so positive. So I did a few more re arrangements and not only was this fun, it turned out to be for the most part pretty easy.
As the number of arrangements grew I needed a plan for what to do with them(how to make money). I decided that having a band was not too much of an option so I thought about finishing 10 songs and seeing if I could raise some interest from a record company. About this time I was talking to my friend Carl Maultsby about my project and he mentioned that he might be able to get me a grant through his non profit group Rejoicensemble for me to put together a band and do some gigs.I called some friends and they called some friends and after it was all done M.O.R.E! was born. The band has included many incredible musicians that I had never had a chance to work with before but the experience has been truly humbling. Included is a list of all the musicians who have played with M.O.R.E! over the past 2 years
TRUMPETS Duane Eubanks, Reggie Pittman, Freddy Hendrix, Cecil Bridgewater,Eddie Allen, Michael Lewis,
TROMBONES Alfred Patterson, James Burton, Stafford Hunter, Aaron Johnson, Vincent Gardner
SAXES Doug Harris, Roger Byam, Rebecca Buxton, Jimmy Cozier
KEYBOARDS Fred McFarlane, Alva Nelson, Edsel Gomez
DRUMS and PERCUSSION Don Eaton, Tony Lewis, Rudy Bird
BASS Dave Pelligrino
GUITAR Don Tipton