TubeNet

Back in the early days of tuba quartet playing, A University of Miami student named Tuck Woo did a number of very good arrangements of popular songs for tuba ensemble. Copies of some of this music have been circulating freely ever since. I'm not sure whether the arranger ever made any money from them, but I, for one appreciate his gift to the community. I'm not aware of what has become of Mr. Wu or of any published music of his, but I would like to acquire more of the early material beyond three Beatles tunes and "Baby Face." This time around, I am happy to pay. Does anyone have a contact?

mbeastep
St. Albert, Alberta

Having sought information on Tuck Woo online, I know little more than I did before. However, being in possession of bad photocopies of When I'm 64, Yesterday, Yellow Submarine and Baby Face, I have recently commissioned a friend to recopy them. They look good, and make the arrangements so much easier to use. I don't want to profit from this, but I am willing to share.

I don't know Tuck Woo but the arranger was always listed as Woo. I thought it was a joke, like Who?

So when I started trying to make the Tuba Quartet a viable gig group, I used the Woo tunes once or twice but there were a number of errors. I got to work on Finale and cleaned them up.

i have most of the Woo book in my collection now, unfortunately for those wanting an urtext edition, over the years, I've made the tunes more "interesting" to play and better for gigs by adding modulations, repeats, etc. If you are interested in any of these, send me a message. I may even have the plain original files somewhere.

BTW, I was lucky that the manager of the Dallas Wind Symphony caught my vision. He booked our first tuba/euphonium quartet gig at a Valentines Dance and advertised it as TubaLuv. It took years to shake the TubaLuv handle but for almost 25 years we played 15-20 gigs a year including festivals, TV spots, 20k runs (where some of the runners stopped and danced while we played) and local German restaurants, grand openings... you name it, we played it.

I thought about organizing the quartet book for distribution but by now there are no gigs and not likely to be any gigs for anybody
in the near future. What's the point now?

Send me a pm or an email if interested.

Connie introduced me to Tuck at 2002 ITECH. She had a double quartet play a lot of those arrangements. Sam Pilafian and I played the 3rd part. They were great arrangements and Tuck is a super nice guy. I saw him last year at D.C. Tuba Christmas.

I first met Tuck Woo when we were both in about 8th grade... We were playing for a production of Hello Dolly. I haven't seen him lately but I'm sure I have his contact info and he doesn't live far from me.