Navy Jazz Leader Says Talented Group Makes His Job Easy
By Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample, USA
American Forces Press Service
 WASHINGTON — Senior Chief Petty Officer Randy D. Mattson, director and bass instrumentalist for the Navy Jazz ensemble, the Commodores, says he feels a lot like NBA coach Pat Riley must have felt in the 1980s.
Surrounded by all-stars Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and James Worthy, Riley coached the Los Angeles Lakers to four championships. "All he had to do was roll the basketball out on the floor," he said of Riley's success.
In many ways, Mattson said, his own job is just as easy. The success of his band comes from a group of accomplished musicians that he said often leaves him shaking his head in amazement. The band, he said, is just that good.
"I just want to pinch myself that I'm playing with the people I just heard play for the last hour and 15 minutes," he noted. "Some of the young guys that we've hired in are so good, they're such great jazz players. They really do keep it fresh."
He said he feels the responsibility to do his job at the same high level at which the group's musicians perform. "I really believe a manager has to use his resources, and when you have very talented people the onus is on the manager to kind of get it right," he said. "It's humbling in a way when I drive home from the concerts we play and I have to ask myself, 'Was I just a part of that? That was some spectacular playing.'"
The Commodores are the Navy's premier jazz band, an 18-member "big band" that features some of the Navy's top jazz musicians, many of whom compose and arrange their own music, ranging from authentic sounds of the swing era to contemporary music.
The group's latest compact disc titled "Commodores Live!" was released in the summer of 2002. Other recordings include "Sessions on M Street, S.E.," released in 1998, 1996's "Here and Now," "Some Bop" from 1988, and the 1982 release "Full Swing Ahead."
The group has performed around the world, including concerts in Dublin, Ireland, and at the Detroit Montreux Jazz Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival. They've toured Central and South America and Europe, and have accompanied such jazz legends as Bob Mintzer, James Moody, Eugene "Snooky" Young, Clark Terry, Louie Bellson and Ray Charles.
In April, the band will play two free concerts at the Smithsonian's Carmichael Hall in the Museum of American History here as part of the Defense Department's Jazz Appreciation Month celebration. Several of the band's members will showcase their own arrangements and compositions.
Chief Petty Officers Phil Burlin and Stephen Williams will be the featured artists during the group's April 6 concert. An April 20 concert will highlight the music of Petty Officer 1 st Class Rob Holmes, whose talents, Mattson said, are "remarkable." Admission to both concerts, which start at noon, is free.
Holmes, from McLean Va., studied music at the University of Miami. He holds a master's degree in arranging and composition from Virginia Commonwealth University.
"He's a very prodigious writer who really turns it out," Mattson said. "He's one of our younger guys, but this guy is really something else."
Although he has not composed any music, Mattson has had something of a music career. The 13-year Navy veteran toured with the Wayne Newton Orchestra, accompanying the entertainer on bass for seven years.
Though he said touring with the entertainer was good experience, Mattson said he left Newton's band to join the Navy because he wanted to spend less time traveling. "I'm one of the few people who joined the Navy to decrease their travel," he said.
Like many musicians, Mattson came from a musical family. He grew up in Marshall, Minn., and his father was a vocal music instructor. Mattson said he and his brother sang in various choirs. He started out playing electric bass in the fifth grade, but adapted his skills to the string bass while attending Southwest State University in Marshall. He earned his bachelor of arts degree at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Mattson said he chose to play jazz music because it has the "right amount of complication."
"It's the right amount of rhythmic and harmonic activity," he said. "I'm not sure I can say what exactly it is about jazz that makes it special above all other kinds of music to me. I know that when I first started listening to it when I was in high school, it really got under my skin in a hurry and it's never left."
And there are several jazz bass players inside his soul. He lists Eddie Gomez, Marcus Miller and Jaco Pastorious, to name a few, but none more than Ray Brown, whom he seems to admire the most.
"You choose your influence and study how they do things, and that forms the foundation for what you become as a musician — provided you work up somewhere near their level," he explains. "I don't pretend I'm Ray Brown, but I've learned more from listening to him play the bass than I could have ever learned in a classroom or out of a book."
He added that most jazz musicians spend a great deal of time transcribing others' work. "That's a big part of the learning process, to write down and play with the recording what that artist is playing, and that's how you learn to play this music," he said. "You can only learn so much out of a book, but you really learn by getting inside the head of someone who's already doing it."
Mattson put his talent to work for the Navy after learning of an opening with the Commodores during a show he was performing with Newton in 1991 honoring Desert Storm veterans.
Mattson, only the third bass player in the Commodores' 35-year history, said despite his impressive music resume, he still had to audition for the bass player position. He said the Commodores already had auditioned several bass players without hiring one -- proof, he said, of just how hard it is to play for the group.
"You can't just come and join the Navy band in Washington," he said. "There has to be an opening, and then you have to win the audition. "So I was very fortunate to find out about the opening (and) come and audition for the band, and I was very fortunate to be accepted."
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