Bob Havens was the featured trombone soloist with the Lawrence Welk Show for almost its entire run. He joined the show in 1960 (the show began in 1951 as a local Los Angeles program before going national in 1955) and he remained until the show ended in 1982. While I tend to find the music performed on this program hokey at best, it was always extremely well performed and you would be hard pressed to find better musicians. Bob Havens is no exception to that, he always played great on those shows and frequently demonstrated he could blow jazz very well too.
Check out this video of Havens being featured on Basin Street Blues to see what I mean. He’s certainly playing for the audience of the program, but his improvising is very tasteful and you can hear what a great trombone player he is here. We also get a few good looks at his chops, so while you’re at it see if you can guess his embouchure type. My guess after the break.
Guessing Havens’ embouchure type from this video is kind of tough, but there are enough clues that I’m fairly confident that he’s a medium high placement embouchure type. His mouthpiece placement is such that I’m confident he belongs to one of the two downstream embouchure types, but his placement is such that it could look like both the medium high and the very high placement types by the position of his mouthpiece when considered alone. The horn angle can provide a clue, since the medium high placement type tends to have a lower horn angle than the very high placement type (but there are exceptions). Again, Havens’ horn angle is sort of in that spot where it could go either way.
If you’re familiar with the basic embouchure types you’ll already know that the main distinguishing factor between the two basic downstream types isn’t so much the mouthpiece placement (the descriptions are generalities, however), but the direction of the embouchure motion. There are a couple of spots in the video where you get a decent look at Havens making large register changes, but you’ll need to look very closely for his embouchure motion (don’t confuse his jaw drop for the low register). Check out 1:03 seconds into the clip and you can spot him pulling the mouthpiece and lips together down and to his right to ascend. The best look I noticed of his embouchure motion is about 2:40 into the video where he slurs from low F up 3 octaves. His embouchure motion is very minimal, making it hard to spot, but that itself is also a clue as the other two basic embouchure types tend to use more embouchure motion than the medium high placement type.
That’s my best guess. Did you think something different? If so, what was your guess and why do you think so? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
There is no doubt that Mr. Havens is an excellent trombonist and musician; however, I have to wonder whether his embouchure is very efficient. Obviously he makes it work, but if he were my student I’d definitely make a comment about the air pockets as well as what appears to be a borderline “smile” type embouchure. Am I way off base here?
Hi, Hoyt.
Your comments are certainly valid. One thing I find interesting is to notice great players who do things that I would consider “wrong.” Lots of players make things work by playing in a way I consider inefficient or even detrimental.
As far as the air pockets go, it’s mostly important to keep them from forming at or around the mouth corners. I’ve written a bit about them before here.
Thanks for stopping by and offering your thoughts!
Dave
He Played a Bach 12C
I concur, what we old timers would call a “IIIB”. Great player, but did Welk have to slap in the face his lead trombonist, Kenny Trimble or Reinhardt student Barney Liddle by referring to Bob as the worlds greatest?