Baritone saxophonist, flutist, school teacher and group exercise instructor Bob Hassan is a man driven to excel. He strives not to procure a loving cup, fame, or hollow, fickle, public accolades, but to be the best he can be — for his exacting, life-long, stalwart work ethic demands it. 

Recently, over lunch at a local Asian eatery, I sat down with the Barrington resident to chat about his poly-employment career that has spanned more than thirty years. 

I found him to be humble, unpretentious, intelligent, light-hearted, yet matter of fact. And as an accomplished, veteran musician, he exhibited, surprisingly, no signs of an inflated ego. 

I wondered how Hassan viewed himself and how he got into music. 

“I see myself as a lucky guy. I’m a man who got to work in two fields that he is passionate about: music and fitness,” said Hassan. “So, I have the best of both worlds. Most people only find one in life if they are fortunate.” 

“I can remember being very young going to a wedding with my family. There was a band there with a saxophone player,” said Hassan. “I didn’t play an instrument at the time and honestly never thought about music very much but I really liked the sax and I said to myself I want to do this.” 

There must have been multiple instruments in that band. Why, I asked, did he gravitate towards the saxophone. 

Why the saxophone?

“I really don’t know. I was just a kid. Maybe it was because it was a shiny object,” laughed Hassan. 

During sixth grade Hassan and his classmates were tested for music aptitude. The school used the nationally recognized Farnum Performance Test, developed, interestingly enough, by Riverside, RI resident and East Providence High School teacher Dr. Steven G. Farnum. Hassan said that throughout the test, “I honestly don’t think I knew what I was doing at all.” However, the ninth-grade band director who administered the exam knew Hassan’s family and informed them that he believed their young son had musical proclivity. 

“I wanted to be in the school band because I had friends that were in it and it sounded like fun. I didn’t play at all before that,” said Hassan. “So, I got into the seventh-grade band even though I didn’t have or play an instrument. Honest to God, they gave me a metal clarinet and it was a pretty horrendous instrument.”  

“My friend in the band, Frank, played tenor sax and I wanted to switch to it from clarinet in eighth grade but they didn’t have a tenor instrument,” said Hassan. “But the band director took out this rather large baritone sax and I said I wanted to play it. As I can remember I had band every day of the week where I had to learn how to read music. Ever since that moment in eighth grade, I’ve been playing the baritone saxophone.” 

“I was listening to Jazz at home as a kid but not really knowing what I was listening to, especially in junior high. At the time I had trouble falling asleep right away so I was listening to the radio in bed,” said Hassan. “As I recall it was WICE in Providence and they used to have the CBS radio mystery theater which was great to listen to. It was followed by Fred Grady, the great jazz DJ. I was listening to all the great jazz players and big bands and I was really liking it. I was aware of the advent of rock music but I wasn’t playing it. I didn’t even know if there was an option to play a baritone sax in the rock genre.” 

The high school years

In high school Hassan joined a community group called the Eastbay Summer Wind Ensemble which included students from different schools in the area as well as some adults. Concurrently, he became a member of a side project that splintered from the ensemble called the East Bay Jazz Band. As his interest in Jazz progressed, so did the band which evolved into less of a community group and more into a proper gigging band with payed gigs which Hassan deemed, “exciting.” 

Throughout high school Hassan continued to play with the big band while pursuing his interest in fitness. In particular, swimming. 

“During high school I was doing gigs with the big band but, also, I was on the high school swim team. I was a state champion swimmer. I was now a swimmer and a musician. After graduating high school, I gigged a lot,” said Hassan. “One of the first gigs I remember was at the Castle Restaurant in Bristol. That summer after high school we played at Carly Simons club, the Hot Tin Roof, on Martha’s Vineyard. We didn’t get to meet her but we got to stay at her house. It was actually a guest house on her property and she let the band stay there during the gig.” 

After graduating high school, Hassan, being a swimmer and a musician, wasn’t sure if he wanted to pursue music or physical education. He eventually settled on music and was accepted to the music school at the University of Rhode Island.

The college years

“When I got to URI for music, my freshman year didn’t get off to a good start. I immediately realized that I was way behind everyone else,” said Hassan. “At the very moment that I was ready to dig in, right after Labor Day, the faculty at URI went on strike. There was nothing to do but party some and go home for two and a half weeks.”

 “After the strike was settled and things at school got back to normal, I began to realize how much dedication it took to be a music major. You would take 18 credits — classes at nine in the morning, lunch then classes all afternoon, music theory class and music history class along with general courses. After dinner I’d have rehearsals. That’s when I started to take lessons for music. It was a requirement to take private lessons each semester while you were there.”

Hassan said that while he was playing in the East Bay Jazz Ensemble, he met and gigged with noted music teacher Ted Casher. He befriended Casher whom “lo and behold” turned out to be his teacher in his freshman year at URI. 

“Ted Casher set me off on the rudiments. What I should be doing, the scales I should be learning, the kind of practicing I should be working on. In my sophomore year I studied under the legendary jazz trombonist Hal Crook.” (who played in the Tonight Show band, made countless recordings with jazz notables and became a professor at Berkley school of music in Boston), said Hassan.

“He was filling in at URI for the proper professor who was out on medical leave. Crooks’ tutelage was based of course on fundamentals but also about feeling the music. So once again I say I’m lucky because Hal Crook started his own big band and asked me to join. I got to play some great gigs with him including some in Newport.” 

After college

Hassan graduated college with the goal to be a music teacher. Teaching jobs were hard to find so he went back to the YMCA where he had worked as a youngster and even during college on the weekends as the building manager. He taught some classes in lifeguard and was a summer swimming team coach. Eventually he was hired full time at the Y as a program’s specialist. 

“I was still playing in bands while working at the Y. I was a member of a society band in Newport. Doing lots of that kind of work. Jazz and big band stuff. We played at the Newport mansions, weddings, balls, wearing tuxedos, that kind of thing. One of the bands that I was in traveled a lot. We would take coach buses to different places,” said Hassan. “We once played at the Park Plaza Hotel in NYC. It was an event for the then United States Attorney General Ed Meese back in the Ronald Reagan days. I was fortunate to be a younger guy playing with all these experienced musicians. In a lot of ways, they kind of mentored me and tutored me. It was great to hear all about the places they’ve been and just listening to their stories and great experiences.” 

Do you have any of those great, memorable stories for us, I asked. 

“Hmmm… none that I can repeat,” chuckled Hassan.  

“I had worked at the Y for some time and heard about some openings in teaching so I thought it might be time to get into teaching. My former teacher Ed Kasher told me there was an opening in Wrentham, MA teaching band grades four, five and six. I got the job but I always had it in the back of my mind to hopefully get a job teaching here in Rhode Island.”  

“I was playing in the Tony Giorgianni band, and once again, as luck would have it, one of the trumpet players in the band was the music coordinator for the city of Cranston and he told me that there was an opening at Parkview middle school in Cranston and that they would love to have me come aboard to help build up their band program,” said Hassan. “I interviewed for it and I got the job. When I started in September nineteen eighty-eight, there were nineteen kids in the band. I built it up to an advanced band of sixty to seventy kids and a beginning band of up to about eighty or ninety kids. I worked there for thirty-three years until I retired three years ago.”

At one point Hassan took a year off from playing but it apparently affected his demeanor. It prompted his wife to sit him down and state point blank, “I hope you get in a band soon because you are miserable.”

Hassan took the ‘subtle’ hint and got back into music. He joined the local band The Rock and Soul Horns which played 50 weeks out of the year and four nights a week in the summer. They opened for Delbert McClinton among others and once shared the stage (and dinner) with Hootie and the Blowfish. 

He’s gone on to work with the likes of Del Shannon, Henry Mancini and Johnny Mathis as well as local greats The George Thomas Band, Rory and the Blueshounds, Steve Smith and the Nakeds and The Rock and Soul Horns, as well as recording on the Matt “Guitar” Murphy tribute album. 

Present day

Today Hassan plays in The Amy Winehouse Project band, (an Amy Winehouse tribute ensemble which recreates the live 2008 Amy Winehouse performances), Rory and the Blueshounds and The New Providence Big Band while still working part time at the YMCA as a group instructor. 

He is also a much sought after freelance musician who can be seen playing at any given time with various outfits all across New England.  

Finally, as we wrapped up our lunch and our chat, I asked Hassan what advice, if any, would he give to people coming up who want to play an instrument and become working musicians.  

“I would say learn to read music but also learn to play by ear,” said Hassan. “Do both and practice as much as you can.”

Does practice make perfect, I asked? 

“Well,” Hassan replied. “Practice makes you better.” 

You can reach Bob Hassan at rnshorns@aol.com 

Michael Khouri is a Barrington resident writing occasionally about the Rhode Island music scene. Reach him at mkhouri@cox.net.