Aubra Graves on Alto Circa 1993 (With My Local Sax Teacher: Mace Hibbard)

[Keith Taylor]

I’m a huge Aubra Graves fan so I subscribe to the channel featuring his playing on Youtube. Earlier I saw a notification that a new video had been posted to it, so, I immediately clicked on it to watch / listen to it. Well, I was fixing dinner in the kitchen, so I really was pretty much just listening. Once finished I sent a link to it to my sax instructor, Mace Hibbard, who grew up in Waco and was actually inspired to play sax due to Mr. Graves himself.

I texted the link to it to Mace, told him I thought he’d be interested in seeing it, and wondered if he or his dad, who is a jazz trumpet professor, was there that night listening.

Mace replied back within minutes with, “Umm Keith. That’s me with the tenor.”

Boy did I feel sheepish over that. But sure enough, there was my friend and sax mentor / instructor at 16 years of age playing with one of my favorite sax players (see the 36 second mark in the video).

In regards to Aubra playing, it’s interesting hearing him play more straight ahead jazz – faster stuff – on alto – when so much of what’s on his channel is ballads played on tenor, which I prefer.

Check out “jazzsaxtenor” on YouTube if you wanna really hear somebody play the hell out of a ballad.

And if you’re curious to hear what Mace sounds like now. Here’s a song he wrote (Hear Me Now) and played on Yonrico Scott’s album – and performed with Derek Truck’s – that is one of my favorite saxophone songs ever due to it being Mace and Derek Trucks playing together. I’m a big slide guitar fan too, so it’s like musical heaven to me. Love the gospel type sound it has:

[Pete]

Keith
I listen to Aubra on youtube regular, he must be one of the best sax players around when I listen to the clip
you sent of him playing alto, I could hear is ” sound” coming from is alto as though it was is tenor, if you
get my meaning? you cant mistake is style, tone and ease of playing. This man must be the most under rated and
least mentioned when people talk about brilliant sax players, he belongs with the Getz, Webster and the rest of
the greats who must be 90 plus years now and still plays out of this world.

[Mel]

Keith – Hear Me Now – Great song!

[Ridge]

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/2GnKu8t161Q&#8221; frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
I like the, Mace Hibbard, version of this song and i also like this version that a friend gave me some years ago.

[Ridge]

https://youtu.be/2GnKu8t161Q I have included a link to the video I made that has the other version of can you hear me, hope I did this properly.

[Keith Taylor]

I agree, Pete. I can’t get enough of his playing.

Mel: I think so too. Mace sent me the sheet music for it the other day, and I plan on trying to learn it at the first of the year. His written music for it and how he plays it are two different things. His sheet music for it is really pretty simple. Whereas how he plays it is not. I’m going to have to transcribe a good bit of what he plays in the above recording myself. Glad to have the music to give me a good basis to work from though.

Ridge: Not sure how you found that link, and who is playing sax on it, but I love it. Mace wrote Hear Me Now, but I get where you hear the similarity in the two. What you posted is driving me nuts trying to figure out what song it was being played. Because it’s well known. I first thought, Amazing Grace. Nope. Then I thought it was Georgia On My Mind. I swaer it’s so close, but that’s not it either. Is it a theme song to a tv show? And now it is eating me up trying to figure it out.

It’s definintely a mashup of gospel sounding awesomeness though, both the piano and the sax. Do you know who it is playin sax in it, cause they can sure enough play?

It’s not Hear Me Now though. I just had Mace listen to it and his response was “Not sure of the song, but it’s nice.” That’s high praise coming from him. Can’t believe he doesn’t know it though.

Thank you for sharing the link regardless. I’ve ripped it to my iTunes to listen to on CD’s, but don’t know how to label/title it due to not knowing its name.

[Keith Taylor]

Ridge: You had me going nuts trying to figure out what song it was and who it was on the sax. Posted about it on Facebook an got an answer pretty quickly:

That’s Kirk Wahlum playing, “Precious Lord Take My Hand”

And here is another version of the same song – sans sax – that’s great:

Enjoy. And thank you for bringing Kirk Wahlums recording of it to my attention.

I also thought it might be Lenny Picket playing the Saturday Night Live closing theme, which is also very similar in style to it, and Hear Me Now. Matter of fact, first time I heeard Hear Me Now I thought it sounded a lot like Lenny Pickett:

[Ridge]

Keith: Thank you for your response to my post. You answered my question also about the song in my video. I was given a home made cd that had that song along with others on it from one of the men in my video. He had the song listed on the sleeve as, Precious Lord by Hank Crawford, I had looked that up on youtube and discovered that that wasn’t correct. I made the video to show case the song, in doing so I reduced the quality of the pictures in order to save file space I regret doing so now. That was the last plastering project the three of us have done together. We called ourselves the old man crew, we where in our mid 60’s. Yeah, I wanted you to here it and I am pleased that you liked it. Thanks again for your in-put. (I enjoyed the gospel song. I play at church from time to time).

[Pete]

The Blues on tenor sax

[Pete]

Sorry having problems with pasting?

[Author]

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