When I first decided to play jazz on the French horn I had to find tunes from the famous “illegal” fake books. Many times the melodies (and often chords) were not reliable. Fortunately, the piano player or guitarist I was jamming or performing with would correct any discrepancies. Jazz was, for them, an everyday activity.

Then I discovered the play-a-longs. These were in the keys of C, Bb and Eb. Not necessarily a bummer for a Horn player because of all the transposing we have to do. Still, I would copy the tune and white-out the C changes replacing them with F changes. I would put these into a note book containing all my Jazz tunes. I would take this book to all my gigs. However, the melody was still in C, an obstacle I overcame by putting the tune to memory. Often, with a difficult tune, I would transpose it and re-write it on a separate piece of staff paper.

With the aforementioned behind me I finally decided to do my own play-a-long for Jazz Horn in the key of F. Then, with a suggestion from Bruce Cassidy, we decided to have the transpositions for Bb, Eb, Concert and Bass Clef. The tunes I have chosen are favorites of mine that will serve high school and college students as well as the professional. Basically, they’re just great tunes and the rhythm section is truly smokin’. I left the count-offs just the way they went down at the recording session. Also, on the last chorus of “Sonnymoon” and “Oleo” we added the classic “trading 4’s with the drummer.”