"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."
