Los Altos Hills horn player returns to jazz after 44-year absence
By Lauren McSherry, Town Crier Staff Writer
 Horn player Robert Smith plays a sample of big-band jazz at his Los Altos Hills home. Smith’s band Take Two will release a Christmas album in December. |
Playing the trumpet is more than a hobby for Robert Smith. It helped save his life.
In 1948, the professional big-band musician put down his trumpet for good, or at least that’s what he promised himself. He was tired of constant touring and needed a stable career to support his family.
He didn’t pick up a horn for the next 40 years - until 1992, when a serious heart operation left him gasping for breath and grasping for a way to resuscitate his lung capacity.
On this day in Robert Smith’s home on Purissima Road in Los Altos Hills, he removes his trumpet and flügelhorn from their cases and prepares to practice. He places a mouthpiece in first one instrument, then the other. As he drapes a brightly colored handkerchief over each horn, he says, “Just like Louis Armstrong.”
Smith dons sunglasses and a beret, and he picks up his trumpet with one of the handkerchiefs, intended to protect the brass from perspiration. Then he leads into his rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “The Lady Is a Tramp.”
“The music dictates which horn I use,” he says. “I use the flügel for Latin stuff and blues-ier stuff. I get more jazz improv from the trumpet.”
The 80-year-old musician still plays regularly. A few years ago he formed his own band, “Take Two.” Most of the members are younger than Smith by more than several decades. They perform old standards from the 1930s and 1940s.
“What amazes me,” said Smith’s wife, Linda, “is that he can still play gigs to 3 a.m. at his age.”
Young and gifted
Smith got an early start in music, playing the coronet in second grade in Beverly Hills during the Depression. By eighth grade he claimed first seat trumpet in the Los Angeles Junior Philharmonic Orchestra and was invited to perform with the Beverly Hills Philharmonic Orchestra.
He was awarded a full scholarship to a prestigious private high school that specialized in musical training. At 16 he joined the professional musician’s union in Los Angeles.
During the school year, he played gigs on the weekends, pulling in $5 a night - more than enough to take a gal on a date and pay for gas, Smith says.
He toured with movie personality Pinky Tomlin, known for his hit song “The Object of My Affection.” He also played in the swing band led by radio show host and movie star Kay Kyser and once performed on Mary Martin’s radio show.
By the time Smith graduated from high school in 1943, the United States had entered World War II. For a year, he toured with the big bands of Chuck Cabot and Johnny Richards.
When he turned 18, he trained to become a fighter pilot. But a clogged fuel line caused a fiery crash and landed Smith in the hospital with burns and a metal plate in his knee.
Once recovered, he joined the Third Air Force Band, playing USO shows until the war’s end.
Discharged in 1946, Smith immediately returned to the big-band scene. Touring took him around the country to big venues such as the Palladium and the Paramount.
Smith took a break from the road and spent several months playing for drinks in the Loop, Chicago’s entertainment district known for its blues and jazz nightclubs that attracted movie stars and gangsters.
“I was young,” Smith says. “I had a ball.”
CBS then contracted him to play for “The Red Skeleton Show” and Mary Martin’s radio show. But after three or four months, Smith was back on the road.
“I quit,” he says. “I was bloody bored. That was all I could take.”
He was used to the pace of touring and liked playing every night, not three times a week, the performance schedule for radio. Soon after, “I put my horn in the case and never took it out again,” he says.
The big-band era was dying, several popular bands had gone into bankruptcy and Smith felt he was “going in the wrong direction.”
Fast forward to 1992, when Smith went into the hospital for surgery to repair a congenital heart defect.
“My recovery was slow, particularly my lungs,” he says. “I thought maybe I’d get a trumpet and see if it helped me. It increased my recovery and, low and behold, by the end of the year I was pretty good.”
‘Up Beats’
Now in addition to being the bandleader of “Take Two,” Smith also plays in 95-year-old jazz icon Velzoe Brown’s quintet, the “Up Beats.” Brown’s friends and colleagues call her “the best pianist north of New Orleans.”
“He has a beautiful tone and he’s the perfect foil for my saxophone player, who plays progressive jazz,” Brown says. “He improvises, but he doesn’t play (in a) wild raucous style. He plays tasteful trumpet - and that’s exactly what I needed.”
Smith’s daughter, Rebecca Hickman, calls his comeback, “amazing.” “He’s an inspiration,” she says. “I hope when I’m 80 that I have that passion.”
The fourth CD by “Take Two,” titled “Take Two Does Christmas in Concert 2005,” is slated for release Dec. 1.
The “Up Beats” play the Market Street Theatre in Santa Cruz the last Sunday of every month.
For more information on “Take Two,” call 559-0129 or visit www.take2jazz.com.
