- published: 21 Nov 2010
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Robert Edward Brookmeyer (December 19, 1929 – December 15, 2011) was an American jazz valve trombonist, pianist, arranger, and composer.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Brookmeyer first gained widespread public attention as a member of Gerry Mulligan's quartet from 1954 to 1957. He later worked with Jimmy Giuffre. before rejoining Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band.
Robert Edward Brookmeyer was born on December 19, 1929, in Kansas City, Missouri, the only child of Elmer Edward Brookmeyer and the former Mayme Seifert. He began playing music professionally as a teenager and attended the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, but left before graduating. He played piano with the big bands of Tex Beneke and Ray McKinley, but switched his focus to valve trombone when he was with the Claude Thornhill orchestra in the early 1950s. While active on the New York jazz scene in the 1950s and 1960s, Brookmeyer was also busy in the city’s television and recording studios. He was in the house band for “The Merv Griffin Show” and wrote arrangements for Ray Charles and others. He abandoned the uncertainties of the jazz life for the financial security of full-time studio work after moving to Los Angeles in 1968. In the 1960s he also worked as a studio musician, co-led a quintet with Clark Terry and worked in and wrote for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. In 1980 this band recorded an album of his compositions/arrangements on which two tracks featured Clark Terry. During his decade on the West Coast he struggled with a serious drinking problem and, after overcoming it, briefly considered quitting music to become an alcoholism counselor. Instead, in 1978, he returned to jazz, and to New York.
Have you anything to say to me?
Won't you tell me where my love can be?
Is there a meadow in the mist
Where someone's waiting to be kissed?
Have you seen a valley green with spring?
Where my heart can go a journeying
Over the shadows and the rain
To a blossom covered lane
And in your lonely flight
Haven't you heard the music in the night?
Wonderful music, faint as a will o' the wisp
Crazy as a loon, sad as a gypsy serenading the moon
Oh skylark
I don't know if you can find these things
But my heart is riding on your wings
So if you see them anywhere
Won't you lead me there?
Oh skylark
I don't know if you can find these things
But my heart is riding on your wings
So if you see them anywhere