the story
The Blue Wisp Big Band was first formed late in 1979, as an unnamed rehearsal group organized by drummer John Von Ohlen (of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton fame) and trumpeter Don Johnson, a top-flight Midwest musician. Von Ohlen, who was playing four nights a week in a trio at the Blue Wisp Jazz Club in a suburb of Cincinnati, asked Paul Wisby, the club owner, about adding horns to the trio so that more people could hear the city's finest musicians in a big band setting. Wisby enthusiastically agreed to feature the big band every Wednesday night for a month, so on January 9, 1980, the Blue Wisp Big Band was born. We took our name from the jazz club in which we performed and those four Wednesdays eventually turned into over four decades of Wednesdays.
At first we had only a dozen arrangements to play—good ones but only twelve. Gradually our music library increased, thanks to the contributions of two friends of Von Ohlen: Carroll DeCamp and Al Cobine, who generously gave us some of their special big band charts. Larry Dickson, the baritone saxophonist of the band, also began arranging music of jazz classics as well as his own original compositions. Eventually our library grew from those meager 12 pieces to the impressive 225 arrangements we regularly perform.
The story of the Blue Wisp Big Band's development from a good regional orchestra to an award-winning jazz ensemble which has drawn national attention is largely due to the dedicated efforts of two of our strongest supporters, Helen and Fred Morr. Helen, the president of MoPro Records, produced four of the band's early albums. She and her husband also funded a West Coast tour for us in 1984, culminating in a live recording at Carmelo's, a prominent Los Angeles jazz club of the day. During that tour, our audiences included celebrities like Jonathan Winters and Steve Allen, as well the great arranger Bill Holman and the international jazz critic Leonard Feather. All in all, no one could have supported us more energetically than Helen Morr, who worked diligently to distribute Blue Wisp Big Band records to jazz radio stations, national music reviewers and even locales like England and additional European markets.
The list of national jazz artists who have been featured with our band is long and impressive: Bud Shank, Al Cohn, Nick Brignola, Joe Lovano, Louie Bellson, Bobby Shew, Johnny Coles, John Fedchock, Jeff Hamilton, Herb Ellis and also singers like Diane Schuur and particularly Rosemary Clooney, with whom we performed on several occasions. The list goes way beyond these dozen, since we have been playing for 45 years. It should also be noted that several alumni of the Blue Wisp band have gone on to enjoy well-deserved national recognition: trumpeter Tim Hagans with Blue Note Records; bassist Lynn Seaton with Tony Bennett; Scott Wendholt with New York's Vanguard Jazz Orchestra.
Over the years the Blue Wisp Big Band has won many Cincinnati awards, including several Cincinnati Enquirer Cammys for Best Jazz Band, the Post-Corbett Award for Artistic Excellence (usually given to individual classical musicians or outstanding writers), induction into the Cincinnati Jazz Hall of Fame and two different mayoral proclamations. We have also organized community workshops, judged high school jazz groups and held music clinics at various Midwestern universities.
For nearly half a century the Blue Wisp Big Band has been a true champion of American Jazz, presenting this beautiful, swinging, powerful, vibrant, joyous music to wonderful audiences everywhere. We hope to keep on keepin' on.