Joe McQueen and friends Ten at 86* *Ten tracks at 86 years old Biography Joe McQueen has been a professional jazz musician for over seventy years, turning ‘Pro’ at the tender age of sixteen. He was introduced to the saxophone a few years earlier by his cousin, Herschel Evans, who played in Count Basie’s band in the mid -1930s. Born in 1919 in Dallas, Texas, Joe was raised in Ardmore, Oklahoma, where he played tuba and then saxophone in the Ardmore High School band. Fast forward to 1945, when Joe and his wife, Thelma, were on the road as he was touring in a jazz band. While en-route from Las Vegas, the bandleader gambled away the troupe’s earnings, stranding them in Ogden, Utah. Joe and Thelma decided to stay in Ogden and McQueen reformed the band there. This turned out to be a serendipitous move because just after WWII, Ogden, a major stop on the railroad between San Francisco and Kansas City, had become a hotspot for jazz music. Since settling in Ogden, McQueen has performed there with such jazz luminaries as Charlie Parker, Chet Baker (a fellow Oklahoman), Paul Gonzalez, Lester Young, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie. Joe continued to tour in the region, playing in Idaho Falls with Hoagy Carmichael. Outside of his musical life, McQueen has worked as a truck mechanic and auto- motive technology instructor at Ogden’s Weber State University. Through 2005 and beyond, Joe continues as a full-time volunteer elder-care worker for human services in Weber County, Utah, where he assists infirmed senior citizens. At the age of eighty-six, Joe McQueen continues to perform and record in the Ogden area. Recently the subject of a documentary film called “King of O-Town,” Joe was also featured in a July 2005 article by The Associated Press. IsoMike™ (“Isolated Microphones”) is an experimental acoustic baffle system, to address the interference of intrachannel sounds that results in compromised fidelity. For these 4-channel recordings, the microphones were suspended on four arms, separated by IsoMike™ baffles. Most baffles absorb sound from mid- to high-range frequencies; lower frequencies are more difficult to absorb. Here, the unique shapes of the IsoMike™ baffles are advantageous. As lower frequencies flow around the heart- or egg-shaped baffles, they are scattered, effectively dissipating their energy. Eliminating line-of-sight between the microphones seems to lower some fidelity robbing cancellations, this reveals a layer of extreme detail and a sense of increased sensitivity. We took great care, therefore, to reduce the noise level within the auditorium during the recordings. All recordings were made at a low enough level to assure that no clipping occurred, therefore you may need to raise your volume control more than when playing some commercially available CDs where the volume has been “normalized” and/or compressed. Since there is NO limiting or compression the dynamic range might surprise you. The microphones were never in a “close––miked” configuration. Except we did try some “spot” microphones on the bass and for Joe’s voice. (Hint: Just keep listening at the end of track 10) All recordings were made at Weber State University (pronounced weeber), Ogden, Utah, in the Val. A. Browning Center for the Performing Arts, the Austad Auditorium. www.weber.edu Recorded Summer 2005 at Weber State University, Ogden Utah Equipment Credits DPA 3529A www.dpamicrophones.com Sennheiser MKH-800 & HD-650 www.sennheiserusa.com B.L.U.E “The Bottle” www.bluemic.com Millennia Media HV-3D custom www.mil-media.com EMM Labs ADC8 MkIV & DAC8 MkIV www.emmlabs.com Tascam DV-RA1000 www.tascam.com Genex GX9000 www.genexaudio.com Pyramix DSD Workstation www.merging.com Pass Labs X350.5 www.passlabs.com Lipinski Sound L707 www.lipinskisound.com Magnepan 20.1 www.magnepan.com Grace Design M906 & M902 www.gracedesign.com KIMBER KABLE Select Series www.kimber.com Joe McQueen - Sax Don Keipp - Drums Evan Coombs - Bass Skip Musgrave - Trumpet Clayton Furch - Piano Brad Wheeler - Harmonica Engineers — Ray Kimber & Graemme Brown Assistants — Brett Terry & Aaron Hubbard Editing and Mastering Graemme Brown, Zen Mastering www.zenmastering.net Special Thanks: Greg Thilmont Brad Wheeler Mike Palumbo Luke Larsen www.joemcqueen.com.