True story here.
In the late 1970s, I had just returned to Minneapolis from overseas, where I'd been working with the Israel Radio Orchestra as a French hornist. I started free-lancing in the Twin Cities, working as an "extra" musician with the Minnesota Orchestra and playing gigs around town.
One day I got a phone call from a fellow named Scott Crosbie, at a recording studio in Bloomington, Minnesota. He asked me to come down to the studio and record some music on French horn for a Minnesota Vikings theme song.
When you freelance as a symphonic musician, you take pretty much whatever work comes along. Just because you're used to working within an orchestra, playing symphonic music, that doesn't mean you turn your nose up at a recording date.
Actually playing this kind of session (commercials or "jingles") is fairly enjoyable work. You don't need to work in a tuxedo or tails. You can show up in your street clothes. The surroundings are very relaxed and stress-free, no bright lights and usually no conductor!
I got to the studio and they put some sheet music in front of me. Members of the Twin Cities Musicians Union (Local 30-73 AFL-CIO) began recording the "Vikings fight song". Trombonist Jim TenBensel and drummer Gordy Knudtson were also on the gig. The 30-second song went pretty well. We finished that part of the recording session in a couple of takes.
Then they excused the other musicians and asked me to stay. The recording engineer asked me to record a brief French horn solo "Vikings horn call" a glissando (starting on a B natural and going up to a G) that supposedly sounds like an ancient Viking blowing on an animal's horn. The idea sounded odd, but what the heck! I recorded several of those horn calls at varying speeds and then I packed up my French horn and left the studio. One of those takes was chosen as a recording track for use at home games and a couple of weeks later, I heard the horn music aired during a televised Vikings football game.
Over the past thirty years, the Minnesota Vikings have continued to use that "Viking horn call" recording. I heard it on local television in the Minneapolis & Saint Paul area this morning. I got paid maybe $150 for recording that spot and it's been broadcast hundreds, perhaps thousands of times in the past several decades.
Watch a Vikings game on network television and you'll hear the recorded horn call every time the Vikes score a first down.
That's me.
I should've asked for more money.
Comments(26)