Alexander The Great (356 - 323 B.C.C.) (before Chick Corea) may well have been King of Macedonia and conquered the enormous Persian Empire. But they called him ‘The Great’ because he was a great bandleader.

Everyone knows that Al studied with Aristotle who taught him logic, metaphysics and arranging for a military line-up. He explained to his young student that if he wanted to control Egypt, India and Asia Minor, he would first have to get to grips with voicings, chord substitutions and melodic line-writing. From Aristotle he learned that was all very well to be fearless in battle, but you also have to know which tunes to call. He admitted that Alexander was a brilliant strategist, but could he modulate smoothly from E flat to A major ? Alexander knew how to take a bridge, but did he know how to keep the singer from destroying it ? At the age of 20, Alexander took over from his murdered father King Philip, and within 5 years he had driven the Persians into retreat at Arbela on the Tigris. Alexander had 47,000 men, the biggest band ever assembled, before or since. The victory was decisive. The music swung so hard that the opposing forces couldn’t keep thier toes from tapping in time to the music. Their dancing became so frenzied that King Darius and the Persians (not a bad act in their day) lost their balance and fell on top of each other, at which time Alexander’s men attacked. The trombones (as usual) did the most damage. The shahnai wailed, the setar moaned, the drummers sped up, the trumpets popped out for a beer. It was all over before the tag ending. As any leader knows, the big problem was to keep the band together when they were travelling. Rope being scarce in those days, Al would tie each man to the next with bits of old cloth and make sure they marched to a very precise beat laid down by the ‘zarb’. As a result, they became known around the world as ‘Alexander’s Rag Time-Band’. Their theme song was later adapted (stolen, actually) by Irving Berlin in 1911.