It’s day number four of horn rock week, and now we’re up to Chase, the band formed by former big band trumpeter Bill Chase. The song (their only hit single) is “Get It On,” and it peaked at #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971.
Bill Chase had been a trumpet player with the Maynard Ferguson, Stan Kenton, and Woody Herman big bands in the late ’50s and early ’60s. He freelanced with a bunch of older singers and such throughout the later ’60s, and formed his self-named group Chase in 1970.
Chase released their self-titled first album in 1971. “Get It On” was the big hit from that album and highlighted what was unique about the band. Instead of the normal horn configuration of trombone, sax, and trumpet (or, in the case of BS&T, two trumpets), Chase had an all-trumpet horn section. It was a much jazzier sound than the other jazz rock bands of the time. In fact, it was more of a big band sound with a hard rock rhythm section, which makes sense given Mr. Chase’s background. Vocals were provided by a variety of singers; that’s Terry Richards singing lead on “Get It On.” (Chase changed front men the way big bands changed trumpet players. So there.)
In any case, Chase’s second album (Ennea) didn’t do as well as the first, and the third (Pure Music) did worse. Aside from “Get It On,” the band never really caught on with a mainstream audience (although their version of “Handbags and Gladrags,” from their first album, was killer); they really were more of a jazz band than a rock band. They just didn’t chase (so to speak) that popular success.
We’ll never know if Chase the band would have survived the ’70s, because Bill Chase died in a plane crash in August of 1974. I saw Chase in concert (along with my good friend Mike Richards) at Butler University in Indianapolis sometime around 1972, if I recall, and they were really good, at least to us two jazzer kids. There’s something exciting about a bunch of high trumpets, and that’s what Chase the band was best at.
