In my salad days, I played a bunch of beauty paegants. As a pit orchestra drummer, you get a unique perspective on pageants, much like you do when you get to see a magician’s act from behind the curtain. As an arranger/composer/orchestrator, my father got a good bit of pageant work, too. He did arrangements for some high-profile contestants, the biggest of which was Miss Louisiana, Anita Whittaker, who placed in the top five of the Miss America pageant. So when I talk about pageants, I’m not simply doing the armchair quarterback thing – I’ve been there and done that. [Read more…] about Beauty is their Bidness.