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Show Sunday, February 18, 1990 THE HERALD, Provo, Utah, - Page D5 Trombonist slides from jazz festival into pulpit He once Editor's Note played trombone for Duke Ellington, traveling with the band from Chicago to London, Birdland to Broadway. But he exchanged the bandstand for the pulpit of an innerity parish in Connecticut. HUGH A. MULLIGAN AP Special Correspondent You NORWALK, Conn. (AP) can't really blame the organist at St. Mary's for chasing after Monsi-gno- r John Sanders to get up there in the choir loft with his valve trombone. If the monsignor could lift the congregation the way those cats were lifted out of their chairs and - into the aisles, stomping and screaming, at 2 a.m. in that unforgettable climax to the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, there would be no need for a sermon and hardly anybody would be ducking out before the second collection. . A couple of decades ago, when the Big Band era was in its final full cry, John Sanders held down the middle chair in Duke Ellington's trombone section. Birdland. The Blue Note in Chicago. Boston's Storyville and Ritz Carlton Roof. Carnegie Hall. The Savoy Ballroom and the Apollo Theater up in Harlem. The Paramount and Loew's State on Broadway. London's Royal Festival Hall. John Sanders was up there on the bandstand in white tie and tails sending out sensuous solos and melding joy and sighs into melodic arrangements of "Mood Indigo," "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good," "Take the A Train," "I'm Beginning to See The Light," "Don't Mean a Thing If You Ain't Got That Swing," "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart" and other Ellington classics. But coming out of Salt Lake City one night, the reading light came on over the right front row seat in the band bus. That meant Duke had an inspiration and was composing again. Then the reading light came on over the seat just behind. John Sanders, who served as Ellington's copyist on the road, was beginning to see the light, a different light. He was absorbed in pamphlets about delayed vocations to the Roman Catholic priesthood. "I was past 30 and really thought it was too late, but the idea was always on my mind," says this son of a New York Harlem postal clerk. "So I dropped in for a chat with a priest in Salt Lake City. He urged me to look into what I was going to do with the rest of my life." Sanders also received encouragement from the Rev. Norman O'Connor, a Paulist priest who had a radio jazz show in Boston and was master of ceremonies at that Newport Jazz Festival when the Ellington band made the police nervous by igniting the crowd to a dancing frenzy with a scorching rendition of "Diminuendo in Blue." It seems like only yesterday the world was John Sanders' bandstand: Hollywood, London, Paris, Rome, Vienna. But now, he does his solo turns from the pulpit and confessional of an inner-cit- y parish in Norwalk, a decaying factory town trying to make a comeback as a historic seaport. Soul has a deeper meaning for this dedicated man with a horn who at the Christmas midnight Mass retreated into the past from his usual pastoral duties to lift his trombone toward the altar for' a triumphant rendition of "Once in Royal David's City." "Do I miss the old days?" He ponders the question he sometimes asks himself on his knees in his nightly examination of conscience. "Yes, I really do. But not in the sense of longing to go back. I treasure those memories. Duke made dreams come true of everything I wanted to do or be as a musician." Those memories began with a sixth-gradat St. Mark's parochial school in Harlem investing 25 cents of the dollar he got for his 11th birthday in a balcony seat at the Apollo Theater on New York's 125th Street. "I was always an Ellington fan, before, during and after," confesses the monsignor who still rummages through record stores and garage sales for additions to his collection of Duke albums. to the Sanders took the High School of Commerce, where Lincoln Center now stands. He played trombone in the school band, which won him assignment to "those fine Navy bands at Great Lakes and San Diego" at the close of World War II. He studied composition and arranging under the GI Bill at New York's Juilliard School and began "doing gigs" with Lucky Thompson's orchestra at the Savoy ballroom and some club dates with Mercer Ellington, Duke's son, who had his own group. "One night Duke needed a substitute trombonist and Mercer recommended me. It was like a dream come true," Sanders recalls in his tiny rectory office, his eyes flickering like high altar candles. "I always thought he was beyond my reach and never met him until I went backstage at the Apollo. He loaned me a jacket, handed me some music and told me I'd be OK. "They were closing that night with Pearl Bailey. I played the second show. Duke suggested I come out on the road with them for a few nights. He didn't say where we were going or for how long. We went to the South and out through Texas. Four months went by. We wound up in San Diego and I didn't get home until April." Memories warmed that rectory cubicle more than the afternoon sun faintly filtering through the lace curtains: Going to Hollywood to record Duke's sound track for "Anatomy of a Murder," playing Lyndon Johnson's White House and er Carnegie Hall with Ella Fitzgerald, crossing the Atlantic on the He de France to do a command performance for the queen and that other duke, the Duke of Edinburgh. Jazz then was America's most popular export, and Ellington's recordings led all Continental charts. "The Europeans took our music very seriously. They knew everyone in the band," he says. "I'll never forget the Royal Festival Hall. As each of us came on stage they applauded us, like players coming on the field at the Super Bowl." Duke and his valve trombonist came home on the Queen Mary. A few weeks later Sanders had a confession to make. He told Ellington he was leaving the band to find himself. An incident during rehearsals at the Blue Note in Chicago eased some of the pain. "Duke called me over to the piano and played something serene and meditative. I told him it was beautiful. It was an accompaniment to the 'Our Father' he was writing for a sacred concert with Mahalia Jackson. Duke and wasn't conscious he belonged to any particular denomination. But his whole way of doing things and how he dealt with us musicians showed a respect and warmth for the individual that I think is very spiritual. "God was treated reverently on the bandstand, too. Duke was very generous with requests but there was one he would always bypass. If someone requested, as they usually did, 'When the Saints Go Marchin' In,' he wouldn't touch it. He felt that with all the other music available, why risk making fun of what his mother taught him as a hymn." Ellington hated to lose a fine trombonist and, even rarer, an expert copyist. "He was very fatherly about my decision," says Sanders, his voice still throbbing with the ache of their parting. "He kept saying: 'Do what you got to do and make it work for you.' " He was ordained on Feb. 10, 1973, by Bishop Walter Curtis of Bridgeport. Duke couldn't get to the ordination; he was off doing But the next day, when the new "I never talked religion with priest celebrated his first Mass at St. Pius V church in the Jamaica section of New York City, where his family had moved, "lo and behold, there was Duke sitting in the front pew and, my, it was wonderful to see him." A year later, Duke was dead and Sanders was among the mourners at New York's St. John the Divine Cathedral listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing his haunting "Solitude." Sanders doesn't think the motivation for his priestly duties of celebrating Mass, performing baptisms and marriages, hearing confessions, burying the dead, visiting hospitals and homes, counseling youth and senior citizens is all that far removed from the music world. "Band experience helped a lot the discipline needed in a priestly life. As a musician I had to practice and be on my toes every night. No matter how well you did the night before, this is a new theater, a new ballroom. Every audience has its own chemistry. "In the priesthood, no matter how many times you preached and said Mass before, you hope you're not just repeating words. There's a challenge to bring a message of hope through Scriptures, not just something routine. Like at a concert, you begin at the beginning and imagine you're doing it and the congregation is hearing it for the first time." When his priestly day is done, the monsignor likes to "put something on the record player" and relax in the past. Most often, an Ellington classic. "I don't use earphones, but I keep it down real quiet, so as not to wake up the whole house. Other priests live here. And in this business, you get up real early: about the time we used to be going to bed." with - mm F?frHTTl in RED DOOR ELIZABETH ARDEN'S & COUNTRY Hearst Magazine For AP Newsfeatures Folk art has gone from the hobby of a few old guard collectors to something that top business executives and celebrities such as Barbra Streisand and Bill Cosby collect. Prices have risen to match its popularity, according to an article in the current issue of Town & Country, and pieces that might have cost $5,000 only two years ago A now go for $50,000. Among those who covet folk art are young Havemeyers and Rockefellers, descendants of two of the original collectors, as well as Ron- ald Lauder and his mother, Estee, Woody Allen, Andy Williams, artist Brice Marden and the late Andy Warhol. The National Gallery of Art in Washington recently mounted "An American Sampler: Folk Art from the Shelburne Museum" (in Vermont) and what stole the show was an I860 locomotive weather vane, made of sheet zinc, a brass rod and iron pipes and bars, which once perched on a Providence, R.I. train station. More than 4 million people attended the Museum of American Folk Art's traveling exhibition, "The Great American Quilt," a record for any U.S. museum show. Prices have risen along with popularity. More than $1 million reportedly was paid in a private sale for one of the works of Ammi and another, ) Phillips "Little Girl in Red." fetched $682,-00(1788-1865- 0. A 1799 double portrait by Conndeaf-mut- e John ecticut-born Brewster Jr. fetched $852,500 at Sotheby's in January 1988, a record for folk art in a public sale. sale alone topped Sotheby's had $6 art sales in 1989. Elsewhere, an 1882 copper locomoThat January The other seminal collector of folk art was Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of John D. Jr. and a founder of the Museum of Modern Art. In only a decade she was able to collect about 400 pieces, a collection in which nearly every form of folk art was represented. When Mrs. Rockefeller ran out of display room in her New York City townhouse, her husband arranged for a number of pieces to be exhibited at Colonial Williamsburg, whose restoration the couple was then guiding and funding. The entire collection was later donated to Williamsburg. The prices of folk art are driving out many of the old guard collectors. "Even some who have the money can't bear to pay $50,000 for what they would have paid $5,000 for two years ago," one dealer said. "The people paying today's top prices are not the ones doing the cutesy country look," said Nancy dazzling new fragrance that unlocks a world beauty, elegance and style...just for you. It's everything you want a fragrance to be... warm, full, exquisite. Unfolding from rare oriental orchids and enticing drifts of orange it now flowers, wild forest lilies and freesia. Red Door-o- pen in Cosmetics! (Not at Cache Valley or Pine Ridge.) Red Door Parfum, 14 fl. oz $55 Red Door Parfum, 1 fl.oz $150 27.50 Red Door Eau de Toilette Spray Naturel, 1.7 fl. oz Red Door Eau de Toilette Spray- Nature!, 33 fl. oz $40 Red Door Eau de Parfum Spray Ncturel, 1.7 fl. oz .... 37.50 Red Door Perfumed Body Lotion. 8 4 oz 27.50 RED DOOR- -a of Druckman, Sotheby's specialist. "They're likely to have strong collections of contemporary or American academic art." Yet, bargains can still be found. Weather vanes, quilts and decoys can be found for between $1,000 and Druckman said collectors $3,000. willing to buy unattributed paintings can find some between $2,500 and $3,500. While Ammi Phillips' "Little Girl in Red" went for six figures, because the artist was so prolific it is possible to find a "good" Phillips for $20,000. Great "finds" today are rare along New England's back roads but they still exist. "I'm always amazed by what comes out of the woodwork as prices rise," Druckman said. 19th-centu- Elizabeth Arden's POWER PLAYERS nfi i Your gift with Good loot's that play for eeps Eiizabe'h Aden star's you oft right with a piece collection of i fe A.l. mux Sw V7i portage beauty perfectors k Difference Comp'ex , and a 1780s sampler Marble-heastitched by a Mass., girl went for $198,000. The perception of the quality of folk art in this century began with of just a few individuals and two the very first were women. One was Kkctra Havemeyer Webb, who embarked on her folk art collection with the $15 purchase of a cigar store Indian in 1907. In 1947, she built a shrine to folk art, the Shelburne Museum. By then the indoor tennis court of her Westbu-ry- , N.Y., house was lined with Indians. i mar-stor- e d. ViS'bie Sefmg Moisture Creme and Mao 2000 Stressed Concentrate p'us o Brush Mascara in Exactly Black. Luxury Lipstick ir. New Ne w ose and Luxury ur Nail Color in Pink 2. 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