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Curt Miller

It was during his time at UNLV in the music department that Curt became serious about the trombone.  Curt was at UNLV studying under trombone master Bill Booth, now one of the most sought after trombonists in the LA recording scene.  The turning point was at the Orange Coast Jazz Festival where the UNLV Jazz Ensemble was competing.  The “pro” band that was playing at night was the Maynard Ferguson band, and during that concert the excitement of the band was all Curt needed to become hopelessly addicted to the instrument and genre.

During the last few years of college, Jimmy Trimble (former lead trombonist with Buddy Rich) started using Curt as a sub at the Dunes “Casino de Paris” show.  Jimmy was also playing in many of the late night bands at the old musician’s union on Duke Ellington way and started using Curt on 2nd trombone on nearly all of them.  This “break” along with an internship program being run by UNLV at the time helped introduce Curt to the pro players in town and the work started increasing.

In 1977 Curt was hired to go on a 13 state tour with Elvis Presley.  Elvis’ plane came from LA with about half the band and stopped in Vegas to pick up the Vegas band members.  The party started before the wheels even left the ground.  Three hours later we were over Colorado and the pilots received an emergency call to land immediately.  We landed in Pueblo Colorado and Marty Harrel (bass trombonist and contractor) went inside to make the call.  Marty came out of the building with watery eyes – Elvis was found dead in his bathroom.  So it was not to be, the plane returned home that same day.  But within days of that happening Jimmy called and told Curt to move to Lake Tahoe to take over the trombone chair in the “Viva le Girls” show at Harrahs – then renamed to “Bedazzle”.  Curt stayed on the Bedazzle show until late 1978 when the call came in to move back to Vegas to take over for Bill Booth on the lead chair on the Lewis Elias Relief Orchestra.  In late 1978 Bill Booth had decided to leave Vegas and pursue recording studio work in Los Angeles.  The two relief orchestras in Las Vegas were the most sought after jobs, they played the night off of the house orchestras, so they played a different hotel/show every night.  A typical weekly schedule for the Elias relief orchestra was the Riviera Hotel on Friday, The Sands Hotel on Saturday, The MGM Grand star room on Monday, the Frontier Hotel on Tuesday, the MGM Grand production show (Jubilee) on Wednesday, the Desert Inn Hotel on Thursday and so on…

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Album Review

The Las Vegas Boneheads: Sixty and Still Cookin'

Read "Sixty and Still Cookin'" reviewed by Jack Bowers


There aren't many albums a listener might care to revisit again immediately after an initial spin. This is one of them. The Las Vegas Boneheads, a trombone-and-rhythm nonet formed by Abe Nole in 1962, marked their sixtieth(!) anniversary by recording Sixty and Still Cookin', an album that more than lives up to its name while presenting a master class in how contemporary jazz trombone should be played, individually and collectively. There's never a dull or wasted moment ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Sixty and Still...

Cellar Records
2023

buy

Attack of the wind...

Self Produced
2017

buy

Attack of the wind Driven Pitch Approximators

From: Attack of the wind Driven Pitch...
By Curt Miller

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