Bass master Lynn Seaton's talent earned him a seat beside legends of jazz By JOHN WOOLEY Tulsa World  7/2/2006 Alaska.  Despite the fact that it has a reputation for giving musicians lots of opportunities and good wages, it's the only state in the union where jazz bassist Lynn Seaton hasn't yet performed.

"I haven't been able to find a gig there," he said in a recent telephone interview from his Texas home. "So if you hear of one, let me know."

Don't feel too badly for him. He may not have had the chance to do his stuff for Alaskan music lovers, but chances are many of them have heard the Tulsa native and recent Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame inductee on one of the more than 100 recordings he's done -- including the 1987 Grammy-winning album "Diane Schuur and the Count Basie Orchestra" and the 1986 Grammy-nominated "50th Anniversary Tour" from Woody Herman and His Big Band.

He's also appeared at festivals and other engagements all over the world, and teaches in the internationally famous jazz program at the University of North Texas.

By the time he graduated from Tulsa's Nathan Hale High School, Seaton had been playing the bass for almost a decade. But, he said, he didn't get into a real band until he'd left Tulsa for the University of Oklahoma.

"I was in innumerable garage bands in Tulsa. My parents were very tolerant of my youthful musical endeavors," he said with a chuckle. "But after I got to OU, I played in a couple of bands out of Norman that were around for a while.   "One was Oleo, like the margarine -- or the Sonny Rollins tune, which is what the name was based on. And there was Xebec, which was my first full-time music gig."

Xebec, the rock band that was also the one-time home of well-known Tulsa keyboardist Jim Downing, afforded Seaton the first chance he had to practice music as a vocation.  "I'd always dreamed of making a living at my music," he said with another chuckle. "Be careful what you wish for."

Seaton spent several years as a road musician, and then, in early 1980, he went to visit his sister Rebecca and her husband in Cincinnati.   "I sat in at the Blue Wisp, a jazz club, and gave them my card," he remembered. "I said, 'If you ever need a bass player, let me know.' Two weeks later, they called and asked if I was serious."

The Blue Wisp, which featured big-name soloists every week, became Seaton's musical home for the next three and a half years. He played steadily, five nights a week, until 1984, when he got a chance to go out on the road with one of the biggest of the big-band names.   "The Woody Herman band offered me a position, and I was torn," he said. "I thought, 'Here I am, playing with top jazz acts every week. Why would I want to go out on the road?'

"The drummer at the Blue Wisp was a wise sage named John Von Ohlen, who'd played with Herman and with Stan Kenton. He said, 'You should go. You get a certain other kind of experience when you travel. You get a kind of consistency. Plus, you get to see the country.'

"He was right. What he meant when he said 'consistency' was that you travel every day, and each time you play for people who paid their money to hear your music played at the highest level possible. It doesn't matter how tired or sick you are, how bad the hotel or the food has been. You learn to turn on the switch."

The legendary Herman, Seaton remembered, "was very understanding, very loose, and very cool. He'd seen it all and done it all. It was a band with a lot of young people in it, and we called him the road father."   That first experience with Herman lasted for a year, leading to other jobs with the likes of the Count Basie Orchestra, Tony Bennett and George Shearing. He moved to New York, where he found plenty of work touring and freelancing with a dizzying variety of jazz musicians. 

In the midst of it, he married his wife, Marianne.  "I got married in 1986," he recalled. "I asked her after I'd been on the road for six months."

The two stayed in New York until 1998, when he accepted the offer to teach at North Texas University. Now, Texas is his base, although he's hardly slowed down.  "I still take several trips a year," he said. "It's a performing school, so they encourage us to perform.  "Many good things throughout my life have fallen into my lap," he added. "This is one of them."