**Context**

               Important to know about this gig:

              Last Night at Scottie’s on Seventh

             I can’t remember the reason, but my regular Tenor Sax player couldn’t make this gig so I asked a seasoned professional, Harry Peterson, to take that chair. 

             Harry was one of those cats we all looked up to—he’d paid his dues re: practicing/woodshedding, etc. = his playing level was Upper Shelf and we wouldn’t normally have someone of his caliber as a regular player; but, for Special Events, I’d try to get a Special Guest and Harry was available and willing (the word on the street about Ted’s CJO Book [book of arrangements] was it’s the Toughest Book in Town) to take up the challenges. 

             Besides all the Tenor Chair stuff, I also gave Harry some Lead Alto stuff, too (to take the pressure off of myself as Lead Alto guy—I just didn’t have accurate chops for some of the fast stuff).  Therefore, e.g., Harry does Alto Sax on “San” and “Some Of These Days”. 

             All of the Harry stuff (playing) reminds me of a guy named Wally Selmonson from Fargo, ND.  We had a Road Gig on a Saturday and I hired Eddie Berger to play the Clarinet Chair (very challenging stuff, but Eddie was a good Faker/Reader and I figured he could wade through it all well enough if I got copies of some of the charts to him ahead of time to study), but when we came by Eddie’s apartment to pick him up we found a note on the door saying he’d had something of a kidney failure and went to the Emergency Room at the hospital downtown…  What do we do?  There’s no one else here in town who will throw themselves into a Never-Saw-These-Charts-Before road gig like this (I tried several guys to no avail).  So, I call the Musicians’ Union of Fargo/Moorhead (twin towns) and ask if they know of someone who could sight-read Flyspeck, Chicken Scratches Clarinet Charts (some of the handwritten calligraphy was barely readable—you had to be very familiar with them to make sense out of them).  “Try Wally Selmonson.”  They give me his # and he’s home!  And he’ll do it!  “Sure, I’ll give it a crack.”

             We arrive several hours before the gig and Wally’s there, waiting for us.  I show him the Book and he says, “Oh, yeah, Circus Charts!  I played the Circus for awhile, sure, Barely Readable Charts—I’ll just listen for chord changes and try to follow the Basic Contours of what’s written on the page.”  I’m thinking:  “Contours?  Yeah, but… how do you do that?”…

Well, he really Did It!  Ensemble parts; note-for-note solos = they weren’t exactly as written, but Great Faking!  It’s one of the Most Memorable Moments of my musical career—I never realized a musician could be so well versed that he could Fake a Chair and still make it sound Right.

             That’s what Harry also did for us this Last Night At Scotties.  It’s the only gig he ever did with us.  Later, Harry’s then-wife Michelle Peterson became featured vocalist for the band.  Harry went to Europe not long after that and has been principal chair 1^st Tenor Sax with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band for many years.  It was our Treat to have him that one night.