Msgr. John Sanders

Msgr. John Sanders, a trombonist and an 802 member since 1946, retired on June 4 after serving the Roman Catholic parish of St. Mary’s in Norwalk, Conn., for the last 15 years.

Msgr. Sanders began playing the trombone in high school band and during World War II played in the band at the Great Lakes Training Station. Then he studied at Juilliard and began playing with Lucky Thompson’s Orchestra and doing some club dates with Mercer Ellington. He became a regular in Duke Ellington’s band during the 1950s.

Although he was happy with his musical career, he felt for many years that he had a vocation for the priesthood. In 1959 he left the Ellington orchestra, and in 1965 began studies at Holy Apostles Seminary. He was ordained in 1973 and has served several parishes in Connecticut. In 1988 he was named a Monsignor by Pope John Paul II. Long articles on his career in music and the ministry appeared in the Norwalk Hour and the Fairfield County Catholic.

Milt Hinton

A 90^th birthday tribute to bassist Milt Hinton brought more than 40 musicians to the stage of the Kaye Playhouse on June 13. The celebration, part of the JVC Jazz Festival, ended with 19 bassists on stage – many of them beneficiaries of the scholarship fund Milt and Mona Hinton set up 30 years ago.

The review by Ben Ratliff in the June 15 New York Times pointed out that Milt Hinton, who joined Local 802 in 1937, “belongs to all of jazz, if not all popular popular music. . . . He played in Cab Calloway’s band for 15 years, from the 1930s to the ’50s. At various points he drove the rhythm sections of bands led by Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey and George Russell . . . The years he spent as a studio musician have caused some historians to proclaim him the most recorded bassist in history.”

Joe Losh and Larry Siegel

802 members Joe Losh and Larry Siegel were quoted in a New York Times article on the demise of marching bands, which appeared on June 29.

Losh, 81, a trumpeter who leads the John Philip Sousa American Legion Post Band, “recalled running from one parade to the next on the day Franlin D. Rossevelt announced the National Recovery Act. ‘The old guys don’t want to march any more. The young guys are into rock ‘n’ roll; they don’t want to march. All you got left is the high school bands, and once they graduate they give it up.”

Siegel, who was identified as a band leader active in Local 802 who is sometimes asked to put together marching bands for parades, said he “could not name a single year-round peofessional marching band in the city. There was, he and Mr. Losh said, simply not enough work any more to keep a marching band busy.”