JazzWax

Interview: Wendell Brunious

If the name Wendell Brunious is not familiar to you, I assure you that the sound of his trumpet will stick with you the moment you hear it. Wendell, 66, has spent much of his life in New Orleans, growing up in a family rich in the New Orleans jazz tradition. From 1987 into the 2010s, he led the city's Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and he has been recording since 1977. [Photo above of Wendell Brunious courtesy of Karen Kennedy]

Last week, I had an opportunity to ask him a batch of questions:

JazzWax: Growing up, where in New Orleans did you live?
Wendell Brunious: I grew up in a close-knit Creole community in the 7th Ward. Our house was filled with music. I come from two of the most important families in the early development of jazz, particularly New Orleans jazz: the Brunious family and the Santiago family. My dad, John Brunious, was a great trumpet player. He went to the Juilliard School of Music in New York and wrote a lot of music for Billy Eckstein and Cab Calloway. He did an arrangement of Minnie the Moocher that I still play today as a tribute to him. He was followed by my brother, John, who was a great trumpet player for Preservation Hall Jazz Band for many years.

JW: What about the Santiago family?
WB: On my mother’s side, my great uncle Wilfredo Santiago was one of the first jazz guitar players. My mother’s brothers, Burnell and Lester Santiago, also were prominent piano players. This is what you get when you come to New Orleans—a whole lineage of families who pass this music down, generation to generation to generation. This music isn’t stuff you can find in a book. It’s not technical. It’s not a trumpet exercise. It’s the feeling in the music down here. I’m so lucky I was raised on it.

JW: What influence did you family have on your?
WB: I had lots of older brothers and sisters, and everyone could play the trumpet to some degree. My dad would gather them around and jot out a little arrangement and say, “OK, you’re on the first line. You’re on the second, you’re on the third, and so on.” He’d have all those heavy chords written out with five or six trumpet players in our living room. I was one of the youngest kids so I would just watch and listen. As a little boy, I never thought I’d get to their level, but I kept a mouthpiece in my back pocket, and I would blow on it every day. I still do that today.

JW: What about your mom?
WB: Any money I earned working as a teenager, I gave it to her. She could do more things with five dollars to feed a large household than I could. She taught me a lot about money and being on a budget. She made us feel like we always had plenty even when we didn’t have much. She was also very encouraging of my trumpet playing and pushed me to show my dad what I was capable of when I was too afraid to show him myself.

JW: For example?
WB: This one day I was at home practicing an old Savoy record of Dizzy Gillespie playing All the Things You Are, and my dad gave me a look out of the corner of his eye like, “Hmmm.” He could tell I was hearing something. Something that is difficult to teach. So he called me into his bedroom and showed me this arrangement he had written for the song What’s New? with a beautiful introduction. He said, “Play this. But when you play it, I want you to really sing it out of your horn.” So I did, and he looked at me, very surprised and said, “That’s good, man. You played it how I wrote it to sound.” I impressed him. That moment changed my life forever.

JW: Who taught you to sing and which singers influenced you most?
WB: In New Orleans, there is so much music being played that you hear it all of the time. You hear instrumental music as well as vocal music. As a youngster, growing up in New Orleans, I heard singers like Fats Domino, Ernie K-Doe, Lloyd Price, Mardi Gras Indians and all the songs on the radio. It’s so beneficial for a young, aspiring musician to hear all of this. You don’t need a teacher for most of it, you just have to pay attention. Later on, in my teens, I gravitated more toward the style of Nat “King” Cole. I’ve always loved ballads, and he was one of the greatest ballad singers I ever heard.

JW: Was Southern University valuable for you?
WB: It was very beneficial to go to Southern University. I had gotten an associate degree from Delgado College in business when I decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree. When I got there, I discovered students that were more advanced than I was scholastically in music. That made me take inventory of my own abilities. I played mostly by ear but realized there were rules for the sounds that I’d been playing. I had done some study by ear with my dad, but bythe book seemed to be much stricter. I was a music minor, but I still had to operate under what the book said. A great awakening.

JW: You decided to remain in New Orleans. Why?
WB: First, being a trumpet player from New Orleans is a great responsibility because it goes all the way back to Buddy Bolden, King Oliver and of course, Louis Armstrong, the greatest. We set a precedent for how the trumpet should be played, the melodic concept of the trumpet, having the element of the blues and playing the lead. Not just jazz but rhythm and blues and brass band music. When I perform on the road, of course, I’m representing my years of practice, study and experience, but I’m also representing New Orleans, and that’s very important to me. During my two decades traveling with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, I performed our music all over the world as an ambassador. I’ve lived in other places like Sweden and California for short periods, but I always come back home. I was born to be a trumpet player in New Orleans.

JW: For those who might be unfamiliar, what is so special about Preservation Hall?
WB: From an artist’s perspective, Preservation Hall is a great place for a young, aspiring musician to visit, listen and observe. The setting is very intimate, you’re really close to the musicians, and you can observe and hear them communicating with each other on the bandstand. You also get to hear some of the more simple forms of jazz music and how we take them to a different level. It’s a very beneficial visit if you pay attention.

JW: What do you love about the feel of New Orleans jazz that’s different than anything else?
WB: New Orleans music has an identity unlike any other. The feel of the blues is ever-present. The feel of gospel music is also apparent. It’s music that makes you participate. Whether it’s clapping your hands, stomping your feet, rocking from side to side, it demands something from you. We are there for the audience and they are there for us. This relationship makes New Orleans music so culturally special and based in feeling rather than technique and how many notes and scales you can put on a chord. We’re there to make the audience have fun, dance, intermingle and have a good time. I feel really lucky to have grown up in this environment.

JW: Which of your albums are favorites?
WB: Well, I don’t really sit around listening to my own recordings, but every now and then I’ll hear something that pleasantly surprises me. My most popular albums are: Mama Don’t Allow It and In the Tradition. But I also like how I sound on Witchcraft, from an album I did with Tom Hook called Where Do You Start? I also did a few cuts with Henri Smith. We did Walk On By, and I thought I played pretty well on there. I just try to be in the moment when I perform. That’s what I owe my audience and how I honor my forefathers who taught me everything I know. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to play When the Saints Go Marching In for tourists over the years. But I guarantee that if you hear me playing it in New Orleans, I’ll be playing it to the very best of my ability that day.

JazzWax note: For more on Wendell and Preservation Hall in New Orleans, go here.

JazzWax clips: Here's Wendell and pianist Tom Hook at the singing and playing All of Me at the Danny Barker Banjo & Guitar Festival in 2019...

Here's Wendell singing and playing Witchcraft...

Here's Wendell Brunious playing I Can't Believe That I'm in Love with You with the Louis Nelson New Orleans All Stars in 1988...

And here's Wendell on Buddy Bolden's Blues...

A special thanks to Karen Kennedy.

Colman, Esther and Paula

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed actor-producer Colman Domingo for my "House Call" section in the Mansion section (go here). Colman plays Cutler, the bandleader and trombonist, in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, now streaming on Netflix. We talked about Rainey, growing up in West Philadelphia and coming out to his parents and Colman wondering if they'd ever speak to him again. They did. His mother called him back in 20 minutes and put his father on: “Hey, Jay, we know you’re a good boy. We love you, and there’s nothing you could tell us that would make me stop loving you.” [Image above courtesy of YouTube]

Here's the Ma Rainey trailer...

Bassist Chuck Israels sent along the following clip of him playing Who Can I Turn To with trumpeter Charlie Porter and guitarist Dan Faehnle. Chuck tells me they're starting to work on a trio recording...

Pianist Jan Lundgren, last November, teamed up with the Gotenburg Orchestra to play arrangements of Swedish folk music. Ian Mackenzie in Canada sent along the video clip...

Singer Esther Bennett in London takes on Janis Ian's At Seventeen...

Antonio Carlos Jobim radio. This Monday, January 25, WKCR-FM in New York will feature its "Jobim Birthday Broadcast," spinning the Brazilian composer's music for 24 hours starting at midnight (ET). Listen from anywhere in the world by going here.

Roy Eldridge radio. Next Friday and Saturday, WKCR-FM will present its annual "Roy Eldridge Birthday Broadcast," celebrating the career of the legendary innovator and virtuoso of the jazz trumpet. Listen from anywhere in the world by going here.

The Liner Notes Project. Steve Lieblich informs me that he's created The Liner Notes Project, an online resource for musicians, writers, DJs and music enthusiasts. There's no log-in or personal information or credit cards required. The retired software developer just created the site as a labor of love. You can search by featured artist, musician, producer, writer, song, album title or record label. Go here.

Here's Ahmad Jamal performing Poinciana in 2015...

Here's Paula Castle singing Why Can't I in 1955 backed by Sam Most (fl), Ronnie Selbey (p), Chet Amsterdam (b) and Herbie Wasserman (d). This was Selbey's only record date...

And here's something that will put a smile on your face...

Phil Spector (1939-2021)

Phil Spector, a record producer, songwriter and co-founder of Philles Records whose "wall of sound" studio formula launched a new, influential approach to pop-rock orchestration in the early 1960s, died at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton on January 16 at age 81. He was 11 years into a 19-year prison sentence for killing actress-model Lana Clarkson in 2003 with a gun in his home just hours after meeting her at a club.

Known for his eccentricity, cruelty, egomania and, later, severe paranoia, Spector was part of a new generation of producers to emerge after the 1959-'60 Congressional payola hearings who geared R&B and rock for a younger and more innocent generation. His R&B and pop-rock songs were less sexually explicit than those in the 1950s and his vision for instrumentation was more dense and sophisticated than anything that preceded him. He referred to his signature layered sound as "little symphonies for the kiddies."

In the early 1960s, he produced and co-wrote songs for a range of unknown artists, including the Righteous Brothers, the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Dixie Cups, Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans and Darlene Love. Many of the songs on his label became hits thanks to the anxious arrangements, rocketing some of these artists to stardom.

Born in the Bronx in 1939, Spector moved to Los Angeles with his mother in 1951, returned briefly to New York in 1960 before returning to L.A. Despite his passion for L.A., Spector's singles on Philles had a distinctive New York urban vibe. His so-called "wall of sound" approach behind singers used a staggering number of musicians in a small studio space, a formula that was rather ingenious.

While Motown, Stax, Fame, American Sound and other R&B studios used house bands on the records produced there, Spector brought in a cavalry of young Hollywood studio musicians who were shunned by an older and more traditional generation of session players. These musicians were encouraged to be creative and invent the mood Spector was seeking. Spector's studio musicians came to be known as the Wrecking Crew, many of whom recorded on pop-rock hits of the 1960s and '70s, including singles and albums by the Beach Boys, the Carpenters and, eventually, Frank Sinatra. By the late 1960s and early '70s, Spector was producing the Beatles, John Lennon and George Harrison.

Here are 10 of my favorite Phil Spector productions:

Here are the Righteous Brothers singing Cynthia Weill, Barry Mann and Spector's You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'...

Here are the Ronettes singing Be My Baby...

Here are the Ronettes singing How Does It Feel?...

Here are the Ronettes singing Walking in the Rain...

Here are the Ronettes singing Do I Love You?...

Here's Darlene Love and the Crystals singing Gene Pitney's He's a Rebel...

Here are Ike and Tina Turner singing Spector, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich's River Deep, Mountain High...

Here's the Beatles' The Long and Winding Road...

Here's John Lennon's Instant Karma!...

And here's John Lennon and Yoko Ono's masterpiece, Imagine...

Bonus: Here are takes 38 and 39 of the backing track (the basic instrumental) to You've Lost That Lovin Feelin' with the Wrecking Crew. And yes, it's great to pull up the lyrics and sing along as the track backs you...