Bass Player: Rob Palmer (Bilbo)

A bit of fun and self indulgence. This is the first 32-bars of Bilbo’s (Rob Palmer’s) solo on the Charlie Parker tune ‘Yardbird Suite’. It was recorded at a gig undertaken during the COVID-19 lockdown so there was only a small, invited audience but the gig was streamed by the Two Sisters Arts Centre in Trimley St Mary near Felixstowe in Suffolk (UK). As a result of the streaming exercise, the band got a video of the whole gig thrown in (shot front on using a single camera). A couple of tunes have been uploaded onto YouTube and the opportunity arose for Bilbo to transcribe one of his own solos, a useful exercise for anyone trying to measure their own progress. The solo starts at 4:52 on the video and the transcription is the first chorus only. The solo goes awry thereafter as there is only one A section in the second chorus instead of two so there didn’t seem much point in going any further with the dots.

A bit of local history: the Two Sisters churches in Trimley St Mary were built by two wealthy sisters who both wanted to go to church on Sundays but hated each other. So they built two churches side-by-side and each attended their own. Marvellous lunacy.