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Phoenix Talent Agency, Inc.
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BIG
BANDS ~ SWING ~ JAZZ ~VOCAL GROUPS
AND
MORE! |
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Terry
Myers Orchestra
"A Tribute to Benny Goodman" |
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The Terry Myers
Orchestra was formed in 1990. Our Tribute to Benny Goodman debuted on
October 1, 1990 at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida.
The birth of
this band is the result of some rather unpredictable events and
circumstances. It all started in 1990. I was on the road with Buddy
Morrow's Tommy Dorsey Orchestra playing baritone sax. We were doing a
cruise on the SS Norway as part of the Big Band Cruise series. Buddy's
agent, Wayne Hutchison of Swing Band Booking, was aboard the cruise and one
day asked to speak to me. I couldn't imagine what he wanted to talk to
me about.
We met for
lunch and he asked me, "What do you think about putting together a
Tribute to Benny Goodman band?" I believe I laughed in his face
at that point because I've never considered myself to be a clarinet
player--just a sax player who happened to double clarinet. I asked him
where he got the idea that I could do something like this and he said,
"Buddy Morrow says you can do it." I thanked him and Buddy
for their faith in me but said I would need to think about that one for a
while.
Two years went
by and I had NOT been thinking about starting a band and I was once again on
the road with Buddy Morrow playing one of the tenor chairs at this time.
Some time in the middle of August I got a call from Wayne asking me when I
was planning to get off the Dorsey band. I replied that I was going
home around the 1st of September. He said, "Good. I have
you booked into Busch Gardens in Tampa on October 1st with your Tribute to
Benny Goodman Band."
.... after the
shock wore off I started to shake off the panic of going to
work in putting a band together for the gig. I had to find charts,
hire players and try to work in a rehearsal before the first
performance. All this while riding the Dorsey bus doing one
niters. And, No Cell Phone either.
The band
I put together had a combination of some of the worst charts (with the
funkiest manuscript ever) some wrong players, and only one rehearsal for
which only about half of the players who were going to do the job could
make it.
We were NOT up
to par. However, this is where my Irish luck comes in. The day
we played at Busch Gardens was a monsoon of major proportions. I
think only about 50 people showed up for the concert--there would usually
be about 1,000 for the first show alone. In addition, the fellow
hiring the bands had the flu and didn't come in to hear us. He felt
so bad about our bad luck with the weather that he re-scheduled us for a
couple of days the following spring. By now, I found some good
charts, changed some players and had a good rehearsal. So. I
was really lucky that no one heard us on the first gig. It would
have been the last one for the Terry Myers Orchestra.
Since then, we
have played at almost all of the major theater venues in Florida, The
Plaza Hotel in New York, The Green Brier in W. Virginia, The Homestead in
Virginia, casinos in Mississippi, The American Queen Riverboat, The SS
Norway Big Band Cruise (twice), Hilton Head, SC, Cypress Gardens, Busch
Gardens in Virginia, Silver Springs, and various other concert halls
around the country. In the summer of 2005 we will be on the
Mississippi Queen Steamboat for a week (May 9-16). In February, we
will perform at the Naval Aviation
Museum in
Pensacola for the eighth straight year. In January, we will once
again play at one of our favorite venues, the Lyric Theater in Stuart, FL.
I am
extremely proud of this band. The players not only play very well
(I'm blessed with a pool of talent from the Orlando, FL, area) but play
with an enthusiastic relish that knocks me out every time we go out.
In
addition to the instrumentalists, we have a group of singers called
"The Swing Sisters" who do a terrific job of recreating the
great hits of the Andrews Sisters. They, along with a couple of fine
male vocalists, also pay tribute to the great Pied Pipers.
In any
event, I hope you will check our itinerary and, whenever possible, come
out to see
us.
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