Ben Baldwin & The Big Note in 1980

Note: Our philosophy, at the Exeter Writing Project, was that writing teachers must be real writers. In fact, we wanted all teachers to be writers, because if you don’t know the stresses and secrets of putting words on the page, how can you understand what your students are feeling? I tried to model this by publishing stories and sharing them with my high school students. If I couldn’t get an editor to print my stuff, how could I expect the kids to learn from me? This was one of those stories. It appeared in Sweet Potato, a music newspaper out of Portland, Maine in June 1980. 
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Had it not been for Ben Baldwin and the Big Note, Benjamin Weiss, now four months old and cutting his first tooth, might never have been born. His parents, Neal and Martha of Kittery Point, Maine, fell in love to the melodies of this most romantic band. They call themselves “a Big Note couple.” They are not alone.

Others may spark to clashing punk guitars or light one-night fires at disco hot spots, but Ben Baldwin and the boys play torch songs; they kindle an old-fashioned kind of love. 

“We’ve married many a couple around here,” Ben says with a grin, “and we’re proud of it.”

Their whole show is a trip back in time. It begins with late-sixties songs by James Brown or Junior Walker and the All Stars, then zooms back to the fifties and forties jazz and R&B. While the new wave trend is to sterile rock, The Big Note, and newer seacoast groups like the Downeast Jazz Babies, and the Boo-Bette Band have gone back to retrieve the lush melodies their parents knew, gaining fans en route. 

Ben is a bandleader, a crooner, not a tunesmith. “I’ve never written a song myself,” he says, “but neither has Tony Bennett or Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra.”

His taste runs to Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Louis Jordon; strange heroes for a boy brought up in the midst of the British rock Invasion and a Wesleyan grad who majored in African music. It all sounds so cornball, so unchic, until the band begins to play.

The Big Note was wailing at Portsmouth’s packed Dolphin Striker recently, oozing through oldies like “Ain’t Misbehavin,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” and “One Mint Julep.” Ben has Sinatra appeal, with his dark sports coat and loosened tie. There is distinct charm to his movements, and to the way he caresses the lyrics of ballads you can only find on 78 rpm records.

The man is a professional; he has range, stage presence, good patter, and a rapport with the audience. He can sing seductive verses to the girls in the front row, then, eyes closed, lean back and belt a tune to the ceiling. He can charm any crowd, pulling people to the dance floor with a B-side Ray Charles number like “It Shoulda Been Me,” or calming a rowdy bunch at closing time with an impossible song like Belafonte’s “Day-O.”

Behind Ben, who plays baritone and alto sax skillfully, is a well-schooled band. The personnel has changed in the past five years, since the mid-70s summer, when they were a house band in Cape Neddick. Only Kent Allen, who Ben calls his “deputy,” has weathered the changes. Now on bass, Kent has been lead guitarist and pianist as well. There is a gang of followers who will travel any distance to hear Kent talk his way through “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer.” The lyrics change nightly.

Swing, bebop, rhythm and blues, and some sophisticated jazz form the repertoire of the present band, which includes Dave Bowler (from Franklin St. Arterial) on drums, Charles Burman on lead, and Greg Mangiafico at the piano. Charlie Jennison, a former Big Note and the most versatile musician in the area, added sax, flute, and clarinet to Sunday’s performance. They brought a big band sound to the tiny Striker stage with songs like “Band-stand” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” The harmonies on “Shaboom,” a Big Note cult favorite, were as tight as ever.

Sincerity, Ben believes, is the key to their local success. They’ve been described as “a show band without the show.” There’s no hype or pretension. It’s the music that counts, the music and the people.

© 1980, by J. Dennis Robinson. Edited 2026. All rights reserved.