Big band Jericho returns with original founders leading the charge
Jericho, which had not played together since 1986, has been reformed and is again playing engagements around the area as a commercial big band.
“We've been hanging around together since we were kids, riding bikes all over town,” said Corey Swinderman, one of the founders of Jericho in 1973. “At Dover High School, Fred Delphia led the band and really encouraged a lot of us who were playing. We were a practice band at the time, just trying to get better, but then we started to get offers to play.”
Brian Botdorf, co-creator of Jericho, said the center of music at the time was Lew Petricola's Dover Music store downtown.
“My dad Raymond ‘Skeets' Botdorf played with big bands for years. We used to hang around the store and get away when we could to hear the musicians playing.”
Botdorf remembered the first paid gig Jericho picked up, a backyard party for which they each received a $10 coin. “And I still have that coin,” he said.
Fast forward a bit, and Jericho had been split into a full big band and a seven-piece combo for smaller engagements. “One year we played New Year's Eve at the Spanish Ballroom,” Botdorf said.
In 1976 Swinderman shipped out with the US Navy band, where he played his trumpet through the next 12 years. Botdorf kept the band together until 1986.
“By that point,” Botdorf said, “It was getting much harder to find new talent. Our mentors were Maynard Ferguson, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, those guys. Younger players weren't as interested in swing or jazz or big band stuff. We had a lot of great players, but they were getting hard to find.”
Through the intervening years the two were active musicians, Swinderman in the Navy, then as a studio musician for film and television, teacher and performer.
While playing with the Navy band, Swinderman was able to meet his musical idol Doc Severinsen of The Tonight Show fame.
A trombonist Botdorf spent 35 years as a music teacher, retiring last year. It was then that the two got together, both now back in Dover, and talked about reviving their first band, Jericho.
Fate seemed to be on their side. Both had spent the years collecting original arrangements by the best bands of the past.
“My dad played with the Shively-Yates Band for years, and we are using the bandstands from Bill Yates' band from the 1940s. We also have boxes filled with fantastic original arrangements from many of the best big bands of the era. We have hundreds of pieces of music available.”
Then came the musicians themselves.
“We have a serious group of people in the band from all over the region,” Swinderman said. The band's main vocalist is Jerome James.
“We're a commercial big band,” Swinderman said. “That means we play all kinds of things, not just jazz and swing.” He offered a current playlist with tunes associated with Neil Diamond, Bobby Darrin, Michael Bublé, Adele, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and several others.
Jericho will play at Deis Hill Park in Dover on Aug. 18 at 7 p.m. as a part of the Dover Lion's Club Summer Concert Series. They also will play at Summer Showcase at Tuscora Park in New Philadelphia on Aug. 21 at 7 p.m., sponsored by the Tuscarawas County Public Library.
The band is on Facebook, and a website, Swinderman said, is in the works.