Julius Hemphill : Composer

Julius Hemphill Big Band

Cosmic Country Boy

by

A movement of the Drunk On God suite on Julius Hemphill Big Band (1988). Hemphill used two alternate titles for the piece, “The Thing (Temporarily),” and “Strickly Speaking,” which is the title of the score for this work in Music Manuscript Notebook 6 (MMN6)

From Marty Ehrlich: Hemphill performed this work as “The Thing (Temporarily)” with his JAH band, with voicings for two electric guitars and electric bass. He included horn backgrounds with the big band version.

See “Drunk on God” and “The Big Drum Speaks.”

Found on: Julius Hemphill Big Band.

Return to Annotated Composition List.

Pigskin

by

Composition for alto saxophone, guitar, bass, and drums. The archive includes a score and a guitar part, as well as professionally copied parts in manuscript for alto saxophone, guitar, and bass. There is an archival recording from 1984 of the JAH Band playing “Pigskin” with this instrumentation. “Pigskin” is also the basis for one of the movements in the big-band suite “Drunk on God.” For the recording of “Drunk on God” for Julius Hemphill Big Band (1988), this movement is renamed “Motion as the Terrible Language of the Future.” Hemphill rewrote the last four measures of “Pigskin” for the big-band version, as indicated on one of the alto saxophone parts in the Julius Hemphill Papers.

Found on: Julius Hemphill Big Band.

From Marty Ehrlich: Julius played football in high school and was a big fan. He once said to me, “everyone is into football in Texas.” Thus the title, Pigskin.

Return to Annotated Composition List.