Download Instrumental    The biggest kick I get out of creating these backing tracks is coming up with a “big band” arrangement. I think every song should be altered to sound like Glenn Miller in the 40’s.  I once took “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” and put an entire brass section behind it.  Sadly, it really sucked. Even tried to perform it (on a dare) and the crowd went “huh?”.  I now have it in my archives,  filed under “Never Do This Again”.

Ah, but this song SCREAMS for a trombone, saxophones, and trumpets.  “Stormy Weather” was first performed by Ehel Waters in 1933 at The Cotton Club in Harlem.  When Ms. Waters stepped to the middle of the floor at this iconic club way back when, she said she was singing “from the depths of my private hell in which I was being crushed and suffocated”.  At the time, she was speaking more of friends and business associates who had betrayed her, rather than the absence of a man in her life – “Stormy weather, since my man and I ain’t together – keeps rainin’ all the time”.  No matter who she was singing to, the misery and sadness in this song made it an instant classic, eventually recorded by every artist who had a soul…. or claimed to.

I have a setting on my arranger keyboard called “raunchy brass”.  I elected to use this voicing because I think “raunchy’ can be translated to “sexy” (that explains a lot).  It’s the sound of the trombone that captivated me, and it fits well with the overall aura of this masterpiece.  Okay, I may have taken some liberty with the melody on the last verse, but you singers can do with it what you want… just make it sexy is all I ask.