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Posts: 1025
Joined: Oct. 14 2009
From: New York City
Rafael Mendez
For anyone who likes to listen to other instruments besides the guitar, here is Rafael Mendez of Mexico, the greatest trumpet player of all time – in a class by himself.
Though I hate bullfighting, the music of the bull ring is really terrific, and I have adapted some of it into some Bulerias falsetas. Fits right in.
Good one, Ramón. I suppose it's just my imagination, but I hear this kind of music (música taurina, pasodobles etc.) in Parrilla's falsetas.
IMO, drawing on this kind of source is just one of many solutions for guitarists who are suffering from creative block or are just looking for inspiration. Makes a lot more sense than Harry Potter.
As a kid trumpet player, I was a big Rafael Mendez fan. I used to play his version of La Virgen de la Macarena. My classical training enabled me to play it, though my teacher wasn't a real Mendez fan. My teacher was first trumpet in the National Symphony and the first president of the International Trumpeters Guild. I'll admit I slurred a few places where Mendez shocked people with his fantastic staccato double-tonguing.
Greatest of all time? Depends on the genre, in my opinion. Helmut Wobitsch was a great Baroque trumpeter. Adolph Herseth ruled the roost as an American symphony player during my youth. I don't remember the name of the guy in the Leningrad orchestra that Shostakovich wrote all those great solos for, but if you ever run across a recording from the 1950s, you might like to hear him. There were no flies on Bix Beiderbeck, Miles and Diz. Satchmo revolutionized jazz. Luke Short and Frank Scimonelli of the 1950s U.S. Navy Band could play anything. Luke retired from the Navy and went to work as first chair in Boston. The whole brass section of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw bowled over the U.S. players on their first post-WW II tour. Dutchmen with beer bellies who pointed their horns evry which way and raised the roof with perfectly tuned, suave but brilliant sound. You might like to listen to the amazing Russian kid Sergei Nakariakov. And the guy who Bach wrote the 2nd Brandenburg for must have been a monster.
As a South Texas boy I heard lots of pasodobles by a great Mexican band at the Reynosa bullring on many a Sunday afternoon. The band at the Plaza Mexico were virtuosi in the 1960s-70s, probably still are. The bands at at the Madrid, Seville and Ronda bullrings really put the swagger into those pasodobles.
I hosted a dinner at the Restaurant Principal in Nuevo Laredo in the mid-1980s. I was fortunate enough to hire the great salterio player Daniel Armas, and the twin brothers who played mariachi trumpet in Nuevo Laredo for years, plus the rest of a good band. After a tasty dinner of cabrito and a few rounds of Patron Reposado, we ended up out in the town square with the cold north wind blowing at our backs, singing villancicos for Navidad, accompanied by the band and any local citizens who felt like joining in.
There was a teenager who lived across the alley from my Grandmother in the tiny South Texas town of Raymondville. As a young boy I spent many a moonlit evening on Granny's back porch enjoying the soft breeze and the great mariachi style playing. He's probably the reason when they came around in the fifth grade and asked us whether we wanted to play an instrument, I picked the trumpet.
But Rafael Mendez? Yeah, that guy could really play. I loved him. Thanks for the link.
The story goes that Herbert L. Clarke, the great American cornet player, after hearing Rafael Mendez play, said, “That kid Mendez is going to make them forget all of us.”
His technique was just phenomenal. Here is a clip of him doing things that I think a lot of trumpet players would rather not attempt. It’s Paganini’s “Moto Perpetuo.” It’s one thing to do this on a string instrument, but on wind? Richard – you know the trumpet. When and how on earth does he breathe?
I think it's a technique called circular breathing, that's what a friend of mine who plays the trumpet told me. Very difficult, he said. I had never heard Rafael Mendez before, thanks a lot for making this topic!
I never learned to do it. In fact, by the time I quit the trumpet in 1957, I probably had never head of it. And my teacher in high school was a leading symphony pro. But Mendez was doing it at a virtuoso level by then.
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