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bloke wrote:from anyone who could add enough to add factual comments that would be of interest to us and that pertain to this topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Carpenter wrote:From 1965 to 1968 Karen, her brother Richard, and his college friend Wes Jacobs, a bassist and tuba player, formed The Richard Carpenter Trio.

Wes Jacobs went to high school with them. They played together in this group. After a while he won the tuba job with the San Fransisco Opera, and basically said, "I need to go do this. You all can keep the sound system" (which he had bought). And off he went to tuba. They remained friends and business associates ever after.

(Jerry Young told me about this a year and a half ago at the Army conference.)

Michael Bush wrote:

bloke wrote:from anyone who could add enough to add factual comments that would be of interest to us and that pertain to this topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Carpenter wrote:From 1965 to 1968 Karen, her brother Richard, and his college friend Wes Jacobs, a bassist and tuba player, formed The Richard Carpenter Trio.

Wes Jacobs went to high school with them. They played together in this group. After a while he won the tuba job with the San Fransisco Opera, and basically said, "I need to go do this. You all can keep the sound system" (which he had bought). And off he went to tuba. They remained friends and business associates ever after.

(Jerry Young told me about this a year and a half ago at the Army conference.)

I heard more or less the same story from Skip Gray.

The way Roger Bobo tells it is that one day Wes came into a lesson and said, "I have an important choice to make. The band I play bass in is starting to make it, but I really want to play tuba. What should I do? " Roger told Wes that if he felt that the tuba was his calling , he should follow that. I don't think that Roger had heard of the Carpenters when Wes had asked for Roger's advice but it wouldn't have influenced Roger's response.

The Winter 2009 ITEA Journal has a nice interview of Wes Jacobs, in which he discusses his involvement with the Carpenters. I got curious and dug out my copy.

Long story short, Jacobs met Richard Carpenter in college, and they formed a trio with Richard's sister Karen. He played bass and tuba on the group's first recording in 1966 (an album for RCA, not released), and he continued to play with them from time to time into the early 1970s, even after winning the job in Detroit.

Jacobs mentions a factor in his decision to choose a symphony job over the Carpenters. If he had stayed with the Carpenters he'd have played the same music for 200 concerts a year, while in a symphony job he'd play a lot of different music in those 200 concerts.

In addition to the info about the Carpenters, the Journal article (by Jacob Cameron) has a lot of interesting insights about Jacobs' career, the audition process, and his approach to playing. It's well worth seeking out.

It seems that Wes left SoCal in 1968 to pursue studies at Julliard with Joe Novotny. I won't live and die by the dates, but that was the sequence of events.

After graduation, he won the DSO job (in 1973 or so). I have some early ad materials from CMC that tout Wes' performing credentials with the "Detroit Symphony Orchestra", and "The Carpenters", even though he had long since left the group. Fred Marrich knew marketing! When I was introduced to Wes in 1974 through Howard Mitchell, euphonimist with the Detroit Concert Band, Howard told me that Wes had once "played bass in a rock band". That's how long it had been by then...

Wes maintained a long-distance friendship with Richard and Karen, though his concert schedule (and theirs) rarely afforded them opportunities to get together. I recall that he went back to record a session with them in the early 80s, and it seems the next thing I knew, Karen was gone. It was a tough time for him. They were obviously very close. The three of them not only used to play together, but spent a good bit of time on the beaches while Wes and Richard were classmates at USC.