The Killer Bees “Rude Boy” trombone solo breakdown

The Killer Bees were a fantastic Austin-based reggae band in the 80s and 90s. Founded by singer Michael E. Johnson and guitarist Malcolm Welbourne (later Papa Mali), they were the first American band to play the Reggae Sunsplash festival in Montego Bay. In the late 80s and early 90s in Austin, they were the shit.

For this post I’m going to focus on a live Killer Bees recording of “Rude Boy”. This show took place at The Back Room in Austin, probably in 1988 or 1989, and was broadcast by KLBJ radio as part of its Local Licks Live series.¹

As much as I love the guitar work of Welbourne, this is all about the incredible trombone playing of Wallace Hammond. Learning this solo is a study in melodicism, simplicity, and rhythmic feel. Incredibly, most of the solo takes place within one octave! It’s mostly (but not all) pentatonic and blues scales, so the theory junkies might be bored, but I’d say there’s something interesting for just about any musician here.

Before jumping in, be sure to listen to the whole song. (The trombone solo starts around 6:06.)

Aside from the James Bond / Mission Impossible theme intro (how cool is that?), the chord progression of the song literally couldn’t be simpler:

And that’s it! Over and over.

Let’s start with the first passage of the trombone solo. In fact let me start by pointing out that there are passages. As a guitarist, this is one thing I love about learning solos by players of wind instruments. They have to take breaks to breathe, and those silences help establish themes and melody. I don’t have to stop for a breath so if I’m not careful my solo will ramble on without a stop which tends to suck all the dynamics out of it. Here’s the start of the solo:

It’s short, but notice how much he repeats notes. The first note, a D, is played six times in a row, then the next E three times, then the G twice! This probably has something to do with playing the trombone itself— moving that slide around seems like a lot of work which you can minimize when you repeat notes.² But Wallace Hammond is obviously an expert player so this isn’t done out of laziness. In fact, it’s a theme throughout the solo and the repetition of notes makes for some great rhythmic possibilities.

Which brings me to another important aspect of this first short passage: it establishes a straight 16th note feel. No swing at all. This becomes important later.

More use of note repetition, but this time they’re 8th notes. Also whereas the first passage was all pentatonic, now we begin to hear more of the harmonic center of the chord progression, the aeolian.

Whoa! This is a pretty wild chromatic run of 11 notes. In a way it’s the antithesis of note repetition. The notes in that run are:³

A–B–C–C♯–D–D♯–E–F–F♯–G–G♯–A–A–A

And even though it lands on the first chord of Em, the final note repeated three times is A, which isn’t in Em, giving the passage an unresolved feel. Normally the tendency after that rest would be to resolve, but no…

…instead it gets more dissonant with this odd B / F♯ combination, still over Em. It almost sounds atonal.

It’s finally resolved nicely with a very melodic run that lands on G, the 5th of the C chord that occurs there. But as melodic as that little run was, there’s something odd about it. He plays a C♯ instead of the normal C natural. That kind of just shouldn’t work, so why doesn’t it sound obviously wrong? It would have if the song had gone to C already, but it was still in Em, giving it an Em dorian feel. Even so, 19 out of 20 musicians would have played a C natural there, which would have sounded fine but not special.

Continuing on, he reuses the rhythm of the dorian run to start the next passage which then drops down for another run up the chromatic scale. Except it’s not quite chromatic because he skips from the D to the E before ending with some bluesiness.

Do you hear what happened to the rhythm there? It’s simultaneously both subtle and incredibly impactful, if only subliminally. We’re halfway through the solo and so far all the playing has been straight 16th feel, no swing at all. But suddenly now he throws in a hard swing feel. In fact from here on out, almost all of the solo is swung!

Aside from that, this is just a groovy riff. And it boldly ends on the flat 5, as if to say that along with the new swing feel, things are about to get a lot bluesier on the harmonic front too. Most of the rest of the solo is in the blues scale, using flat 5s a lot.

Here the band goes into a breakdown “calm before the storm” and Wallace uses the shift to play more fluidly, still mixing blues with the aeolian. Also take note of this riff:

…that’s a good one to have in your blues repertoire.

The band exits the breakdown and the solo is finding its climax, leading to some chaos. Wallace is trying to play 16th triplets but that’s so fast and undoubtedly difficult to play on trombone, that they’re a little messy. I love that it’s messy. It adds to the chaos and the feel of risk taking. Exactly what I want to hear at the solo’s apex.

And now at the very end the chaos subsides, the swing feel is lessened but doesn’t return to straight 16s. And whereas so many epic solos will finish with the highest pitch register yet heard, Wallace ends everything with a groovy riff that drops down into the lowest register yet.

Every time I hear this solo, I have to hum along with it. What sticks with me most is how little Wallace actually needs to make it infectious. It’s almost entirely within one octave, with hardly any “fast” notes, and tons of space. I highly recommend that musicians learn this solo note-for-note. It’s fun to play and incredibly instructive. You can download just the trombone solo audio here.