I was listening to some songs by Cake today when I realized they’re the only band I know of that has a solo trumpeter. (I’m excluding bands like Chicago that have trumpeters as part of a horn section.) Do you know of any other bands that have a trumpeter as their only horn player? And why is solo trumpet so much rarer in rock than a sax player?
Sly and the Family Stone – Cynthia Robinson would play trumpet. They also had a saxophone, but that’s not a horn.
Eh. In rock, anything you blow can be a horn, even a flute.
At Yale in the early '80s there was a very nice campus band called Guff…as in “don’t take any.” Guitar, bass, drums, and vocalist/trumpeter. Best song was “Vegetable Freedom.”
“Vegetable freedom…
I don’t EAT 'em…
Get down in the streets
And MEET 'em…”
Zappa usually had one or two horn players in his touring band. Spring/Summer 1973, and the early Mothers tours come to mind. (I’m not counting the trumpet in 1988, since it was part of an entire horn section)
Dunno about trumpets, but I love me a horn section in my rock music. See: Oingo Boingo, Black 47, and a bunch more I can’t recall.
Do you remember starting a very similar thread about a year and a half ago?
I have a CD by a short-lived band called Loudflower that featured trumpet. sample song here
I think that Roger Miller of Mission of Burma had a teenage band that recorded avant garde rock music. The were called Sproton Layer. They had Roger on Trumpet. It’s the only example I can think of. You should check it out.
Spoilered for NSFW album cover and lyrics:
Idiots Rule from Jane’s Addiction has trumpets courtesy of Flea.
And also, the living god: Dick Dale.
Why are trumpets rare in rock? I have no good answers, other than they’re really best as a solo instrument, and the guitarist wants to do that.
Because any rock band with a regular trumpet is dangerously on the precipice of becoming a ska-punk band.
I thought I had posted about this recently; thanks. And I stand by what I said there:
[QUOTE=Me]
Horns occupy the same sonic space as lead guitar. Sax was featured in early rock n’ roll, but as amps got loud and distortion/other effects enables lead guitar to really step out front, horns were relegated to backing bits. Add to that the fact that horns are harder to learn and a few teenage kids could grab guitars, bass and drums and make reasonable-sound rock and you’re done…
[/QUOTE]
Tell that to Calexico or the Stones…not that I have anything against ska-punk.
“They don’t give a damn about any trumpet playing band. It ain’t what they call rock and roll”
There’s Rashawn Ross in the Dave Matthews Band.
The Who as The Detours circa 1962-3 played some jazz tunes with John Entwistle on trumpet and Roger Daltrey on trombone. Quite a few Who songs, mainly those written by Entwistle, had flugelhorn.
Sax is more closely associated with a bluesy sound that rock music often seeks to incorporate. Think of Lisa Simpson wailing away on Baker Street.
Listen, if done correctly, rock has few rules and is a great stew of instruments with a driving beat and a bit of danger. Plenty of examples of trumpets being part of that. To me, when Bobby Keys and Jim Price come in on sax and trumpet on Rocks Off (Rolling Stones, Exile on Main St, opening track), there are few things I like to hear more.
But, from a more dogma-idiot Rockist standpoint, let’s be clear about this: the sax is the guitar of woodwinds, so is acceptably featured in many rock genres. The trumpet is the violin of woodwinds (what? you don’t know this?!), and so featuring a trumpet player might get your rock card revoked. It just makes sense.
Now, a horn section is not a trumpet, and when wielded effectively is smiled upon by the gods of rock.
Tom Waits has dark, moody trumpet in some of his songs. He plays trumpet himself but I believe he outsourced for his recordings.
The 70s band Chase featured four trumpet players and rocked pretty hard:
Burma Shave and Cinny’s Waltz both have Jack Sheldon (From the Merv Griffin Band!) and they are great.
Isn’t a trumpet brass and not woodwind?