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Cool article about John Williams from 1954


Jay

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He is user "airmanjerm". If you noticed, his avatar has actually been the image from this article for a little while now.

He sent me this article last week, I just was waiting till Ricard posted it on the main page to start a thread about it. It's really awesome!

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What a wonderful article! I bet I'm not the only one here wondering what You Are Welcome sounds like and whether we will see a CD release soon. Someone should rerecord it with A Timeless Call and other random shorts by John Williams. I'd buy!

;)

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What a wonderful article! I bet I'm not the only one here wondering what You Are Welcome sounds like and whether we will see a CD release soon. Someone should rerecord it with A Timeless Call and other random shorts by John Williams. I'd buy!

:dance:

Hey, glad this finally got posted! I've sent this to a few people in the past, but it's fun to see it get out this much. I've been using the photo as my avatar for a while, ha.

I've mentioned this in the past, so sorry if I'm re-posting the same stuff, but that article is from "The Beacon," the base newspaper of March Air Force Base in southern CA. At the time he was listed as the "Staff Arranger" of the 523rd Air Force Band, which at the time involved mostly piano playing and writing out simple lead-sheets/etc. for the jazz combo protocol groups. He was likely one of the first to actually get into writing bigger, more expanded charts for the concert band, or smaller groups, which eventually became the official staff arranger position that we have now. (This is what I do).

The band at March lasted until the 1990s, when the Air Force Bands programs changed touring areas. The band was relocated to Travis AFB near Sacramento/San Francisco, as it is more centrally-located in our five-state touring area. (March AFB has been officially retired as an active duty base as well, and is now March Air Reserve Base). As there was only one staff arranger spot, which is my position now, I like to say that I have "JW's old job." It's only for fun though, not trying to draw any actual parallels. :)

In 2002 one of our older, nearly-retired members (who was also the band historian) went down to March ARB (Air Reserve Base) to do some research on our unit's history, and came back with that article.

We have tons of music in our library, including lots of music written by Air Force Arrangers/Composers. I've looked to see if there's any old JW stuff around, but everything in there is cataolgued and nothing has his name on it (except the typical stuff that everyone would have). In those days of course, computers hadn't become a norm yet (of course, JW still doesn't use one!), and photocopies weren't easy to do, so we decided a while back that he probably took his charts with him when he left...I know I would have! So, it's doubtful that music will ever surface again.

Unfortunately the Air Force has been downsizing in past years, and the bands have taken personnel cuts as well. Unfortunately we now only have about 3 or 4 Staff Composers/Arrangers left.

I can say that we have a nice letter on our wall sent to the band here about 10 years ago from JW, which mentions the time he spent in the AF Band...nothing exciting though, but still nice.

This is probably WAY MORE than any of you wanted to know, but that's the history behind the article itself.

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That's fantastic! John's first taste of public fame.

Best part:

Some day the words "Music by Johnny Williams" will flash on your local theatre screen.
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Wowzers. Now someone needs to find that travelogue score.

Legions of wayward Williams fanatics are now reinvested.

You have no idea.

This article is framed in my office. Every time I get "stuck" writing something I just think hey, look at what that 22 year-old A1C accomplished in his lifetime.

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Anther rare pic of JW with hair

And it seems the army does not permit black turtlenecks :thumbup:

Air Force, not Army. (haha...I know, I know....nobody really cares...lol).

And actually, in the AF, black turtlenecks are authorized to be worn in lieu of the black T-Shirt with the Battle Dress Uniform.

Again, I know, I know.... :thumbup:

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