2008 McDonalds McVeterans - Mark Madsen - My Way

Mark began his professional performing career at the age of nine, with a pop trio, The Precisions. Four years later he began working three nights a week in a suburban Chicago nightclub, with his father's group, The Bob Madsen Quartet. While drumming and singing in his father's band, he spent four years playing guitar and vocalizing in one of the premier high school jazz bands in the United States. The Notre Dame High School Melodons under the direction of the late noted music educator Rev. George Wiskirchen, C.S.C., a 20-piece jazz ensemble, traveled extensively throughout the country for Selmer Musical Instruments, Downbeat Magazine, and the National Association of Music Educators (MENC) doing concerts and clinics. During his final appearance with this remarkable band he was excited to share the bill with The Count Basie Orchestra, under the direction of Count Basie, and the Al Cohn/Zoot Sims rehearsal band at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. in 1971. They had the dubious task of following Count Basie, but The New York Times declared they actually upstaged Basie: "More than the other three bands, this high school jazz band showed an awareness of what has been done in jazz, what is being done and what may be done" (The New York Times, John S. Wilson, Sept. 26, 1971).