We got a hard-hitting rhythm and blues feel.” John Hammond recorded them for Columbia and Cuber was clearly in his element performing Benson’s down-home, blues-based repertoire.
I was getting more solo space than I had playing in big bands and I sort of stood out.
Groups with that particular line-up often included a tenor but as Ronnie said a few years later, “It was different having a baritone. In 1964 he achieved a particularly high profile as a soloist when he joined George Benson’s trio which also featured Lonnie Smith on organ. He later acknowledged Pepper Adams and Harry Carney as his main point of reference but it was not long before he found his own unique voice.Īfter leaving the band in 1960 he went on the road with Slide Hampton, Maynard Ferguson, Lionel Hampton and Woody Herman. He recorded his first solos with them on Brunch in June 1959 and Tiny’s Blues the following month. There was a vacancy for a baritone so Marshall generously bought him one from Ponte’s Music Store near Times Square.Įquipped with his brand new Selmer, Cuber joined the band, which included Michael Abene and Eddie Gomez. This really impressed Brown, but he already had a surplus of tenors. He auditioned at Brown’s Park Avenue apartment on tenor where he played Hank Mobley’s four choruses from his 1955 Prince Albert solo. His switch to the baritone took place when he tried out for Marshall Brown’s Newport Youth Band in 1959. His influences at that time included Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and Gene Ammons. Beginning on clarinet he switched to the tenor at Alexander Hamilton High School and then went on to study at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. He was born into a musical family in Brooklyn on Christmas Day 1941. The prodigiously talented Ronnie Cuber’s association with the baritone saxophone began quite by chance.
Photo by Nils Winther, SteepleChase Productions ApS
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