Word: bricked
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Little College. Sleepy, sloppy, 38-year-old Brick Fleagle organized his 16-man club after commercial bands rejected many of his arrangements as too hot to handle. Today the band has a "book" of 50 compositions, 48 of them by Brick (Fried Piper, Frost on the Moon, Swamp Mist, etc.). It also has a waiting list of about fifty musicians...
...Eddie Anderson (from Sonny Dunham's band), slicked Norman Conley (Eddie Stone's) and curly-haired Chuck Maxon (Paul Whiteman's)-growled "Pedal G," their lowest possible note. The reeds began to wail. When the melody of the old hymn, Bringing in the Sheaves, roared through, Brick nodded happily: "It's in there." He lit a cigaret, drank a glass of water and visited the control room, all the time directing the band with his pinkie, and rocking his head like a strutting turkey gobbler...
Soon the musicians, unable to resist their feverish rhythms, stood up and swayed while they played. "Now we're rocking," said Brick. Even the engineers in the control room began to get rhythm. The trombones growled another G, then faded out. The Sheaves were cut, and the club circulated a bottle...
Later they recorded three more sides: the mood, Pastiche, a violent Rimsky-Korsakov; the two "jumpers," Double Doghouse (using two bass fiddles instead of one) and A Slight Case of the Shakes, Brick's version of a hangover. "Not a clinker" (sour note), said the maestro happily...
When a backer once proposed to commercialize him, Brick quoted the club's potential payroll, compiled from what the boys make on their regular jobs. The backer dropped the idea, and Brick was relieved. "We don't want any commercialism," he said. "We're a self-endowed institution . . . a little college. . . . It's mutual learning [as to] what will make us jump or rock or ride better...