Reunion 2020 - Pandemic Style
Toni Tennille & the Auburn Knights Orchestra 1960
For about the last 25 years or so, I've been a regular and enthusiastic attendee at the annual Auburn Knights Orchestra Reunions, held at the Marriott Grand National Hotel in Opelika, Alabama in July each year. This is a magical event that reunites the many talented musicians who have played in the AKO down through the years. As you might imagine, these players come to play, and they bring their horns.
Truth be told, they do a lot more than that. The Auburn Knights Alumni Association has seen the event grow beyond the borders of band members, their families and friends. This event draws attendees from all over the country, many who have no connection to Auburn or the band itself beyond fandom. The Association has built and fostered a tradition of former players reuniting to play the charts they played as youthful students and band members.
Let's say your name is Steve and you played trumpet in the Auburn Knights in 1968, and then grew up to become Mayor of Gadsden. Every year, Steve gets a packet of sheet music in the mail - charts he will play at this year's AK Reunion. He'll brush up on his parts until the second Monday in July, when he and the other alumni will gather at the hotel in Opelika to start rehearsing. They work together day and night all week, polishing their performance, until they hit the ballroom stage downstairs either Friday or Saturday night.
This is a ritual engaged in simultaneouisly by the members of the 1950s & 60s Band, the 1970s Band, the 1980s Band, and so on. There's even a group of players who goes back and re-creates the original charts played by the band in the 1930s and 40s.
As an audience member, you can expect to hear each of these "decade" bands play a 45-minute set either Friday or Saturday night, culminating around 10:00 Saturday night, when the current Auburn Knights Orchestra takes the stand. They will proceed to blow the roof off the place (from the basement!) for the next couple of hours. After all, there is no substitute for youth.
The Reunion event is a tangible demonstration that we are all - players and fans alike - part of the great continuum of Jazz. Reaching across the generations, it connects us each to one another, and to all the great and humble students of Jazz who've come before us. And the Auburn Knights is a family, like all families, bound together by History and by its love and respect for the music and the musicians who play it.
That begins to explain why the cancellation of this year's Auburn Knights Reunion was such a bitter disappointment for so many of us. We're getting to that age now when familiar faces start to go missing. It begins to dawn on us that we won't be here forever.
And then, we lift our heads to see the next two or three generations of young players coming up behind us, respecting the master craftsmen of Jazz, blowing their heads off and making great music with all their hearts. And we know that, even though we may pass on through this ballroom, the music will still be here. It will always be here. Because those young lions will always be coming up behind us.
As a pale substitute for this year's Auburn Knights Reunion, In the Mood offers a little over 20 minutes of the best of the AKO's studio recordings from the last 60 years. We'll hear the teenage Toni Tennille singing with the 1960 band. We'll hear the 1968 band with our friend Steve in the trumpet section. And we'll hear from some of the "young" hot-shots from the 2001 band as well. Even if you have no connection to the AKO or Auburn University...or the State of Alabama for that matter...I think you'll agree - it's just Good Jazz. For More about the Auburn Knights Alumni Association, visit their website HERE.
Normally, I'd walk and talk a little here about the other records coming up on this week's show, but I think I'm just going to invite you to listen and leave it here. To see our full broadcast schedule and program updates, or to leave us a comment or request, visit our Facebook Page.
As always, remember to call a young music student and invite them to listen to the show with you this week. They will be especially inspired to hear the college students in the Auburn Knights Orchestra swinging out. Be good to one another this week, and above all,
Keep Swinging!
Scott
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