A couple of jigs got on the bus with a doghouse. “You know Larry Brown?” said one of them. “Yeah,” said the other, “he plays a gang o’horn.”
One way to catch the spirit of jazz music is to know its slang. The cryptic paragraph above may be translated as follows: two Negroes got on the bus with a bass viol; when asked if he knew Lawrence Brown, one of them said he did, and that Mr. Brown was a fine trombone player. Continuing in the language of jazz, it may be explained that Lawrence Brown is a hot trombonist with Duke Ellington’s famous Negro jazz orchestra. That is to say, he excels in spontaneous, highly syncopated solos.* He is decidedly not a sweet trombonist—he doesn’t play sentimentally with lots of vibrato. He could, but he just doesn’t like that sort of thing. Nor is Mr. Brown cornfed. Cornfed or corny is the jazz musician’s term for what is old-fashioned. For example, it is now extremely corny to use the once popular wah-wah mutes which make brass instruments sound like crying babies. And corny music is what generally happens when a sweet band, or long-underwear gang, tries to play hot. Returning to Trombonist Brown, he can get off, swing it, sock it, smear it, or go to town (all of which mean syncopate to beat the band). His licks (musical phrases) are original to the point of being screwy (fantastically exciting). When the occasion demands it, he can go to church (the hot man’s version of musical solemnity, which is usually thoroughly screwy). In sum, Mr. Brown plays plenty trombone or, as his friend suggested, a gang o’horn.
