Grade Level - 3

In the spring of 2003, I was asked to compose the sight reading for the Arkansas All-State jazz tryouts. "No-Nonsense Blues" is the result of that request. The head contains the usual sight reading pitfalls including accidentals, weird intervals and rotations around chord tones. I thought the tune was cool enough to make a basic blues arrangement, thus my first blues tune for big band. It's pretty straight forward, the tenor sax takes the first solo, then the solo section is open to anyone wanting to play some blues. After the solos, there is a pretty weird section where the band trades 4's with the drummer and the chords are pretty strange, but after that it goes back to basic 12 bar blues. This tune would make a great addition to the blues genre of any big band book.