Trumpeter Randy Brecker will celebrate his 70th birthday in November and has just released a new live album—
RandyPop! (Piloo). The album features re-imagined arrangements of pop songs by James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Donald Fagen and others. Joining Randy are Kenny Werner (p, arr), David Sanchez (ts), Amanda Brecker (v), Adam Rogers (g), John Patitucci (b) and Nate Smith (d). Randy has appeared on more than 700 known jazz recording sessions and easily double that in the pop, rock, funk and soul realms. A couple of weeks ago, I caught up with Randy:
JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Randy Brecker: In Cheltenham, Penn., which is right outside of Philadelphia. Our house was a block from the city limits. My father was a semi-pro pianist, so I heard music from the time I could walk. I took to jazz more than my sister, Emily, who studied classical piano. My brother Michael [Brecker] got serious about music in high school. Until then, he was into basketball and his chemistry set.
JW: When did you start playing the trumpet?
RB: In the third grade. I had a choice between trumpet and clarinet. I went with the trumpet because my father, Bob, was a trumpet fanatic. He loved Clifford Brown and had seen his band with Max Roach at the Rendezvous and Blue Note clubs in Philly. I remember my father playing me one of Brownie’s EmArcy albums and at one point grabbed my arm and said, “Randy, the trumpet is the greatest jazz instrument.”
JW: And Michael?
RB: He got stuck with the clarinet and played it for six years. In the 9th grade he switched to the alto saxophone and came into his own. I was four years older than Michael, so I missed his transition. I was already in college. [Pictured above, Emily Brecker, Mike Brecker and Randy Brecker with a department-store Santa in the early 1950s]
JW: How did you wind up playing jazz as a teen growing up in Philadelphia at the height of R&B and rock ‘n’ roll?
RB: My father had a huge jazz record collection. When I was 10, he bought me a record player. I’d take his LPs up to my room and play along on the trumpet. Most often I used Miles Davis’s
‘Round About Midnight, Chet Baker’s
My Funny Valentine and Shorty Rogers'
Martians Come Back. I’d just play along after practicing my classical pieces.
JW: How did playing along help you?
RB: It gave me a chance to pretend to be playing with the bands on the albums, which gave me confidence. I channeled their instincts. It was good for me but not so good for my father’s record collection. I’d play the records over and over, improvising over the piano solos when the horns took a break.
JW: Why didn’t’ your father become a musician?
RB: He was a lawyer working his way up at his corporate law firm. But he was always really a musician. He grew up as a player and went to the same music camp as Mark “Moose” Charlap, Bill Charlap’s father and a terrific musician. But my dad was afraid of not being able to feed his family. He knew he could always play piano, so he went into law. But we had great jam sessions at home.
JW: Were you a fast learner?
RB: Pretty much. When I was 15, in 1959, I went to Indiana University to play in Stan Kenton’s band camp. Kenton had just started to hold clinics at colleges to inspire kids to play jazz. There were a lot of great players there—Dee Barton, Marvin Stamm, Louis Gasca, Buddy Baker and others. I met David Sanborn, Lou Marini and Don Grolnick at the camp.
JW: When you graduated high school, you attended college at Indiana University, yes?
RB: Yes. The university had a fledgling jazz program in 1963. I played mostly by ear, but David Baker helped codify things for me. He wasn’t playing trombone then. He was playing cello. He taught me a great deal about harmony. A lot of musicians came to the school, including Booker T. Jones (above) of Booker T. and the MGs. He studied music composition at Indiana University and had a band at school during the time he was there. I played with him for a couple of years. By the time I left school, I was a pretty darn good reader and pop player.
JW: What did you do after you graduated?
RB: Actually, I didn’t graduate from the Indiana University. In my senior year, at the start of 1966, I decided to take four months off and go out on a tour of the Middle East and Asia with the university's Jazz Ensemble. When I returned, I moved to New York in September 1966 to finish my degree at New York University. The New York jazz and pop studio scene was pretty active. By then, I was getting mixed signals from my parents about whether I should become a professional musician. They were afraid I wouldn’t be able to earn a living to support a family. Finally, they backed off. My mom, Sylvia, was an incredible portrait artist, so she understood.
JW: Did you finish at NYU?
RB: Not really. I got sucked into the studio scene quickly. I had a suit and tie and was making a ton of money for someone my age back then. I was living in Greenwich Village at 21 Jones St., and I never had to take money from my dad to support myself.
JW: How did the Brecker Brothers form?
RB: Mike had flown to New York to play on my
Score fusion album in 1968. He moved to the city a year later in 1969. In 1970, we played together in our band Dreams for a few years with trombonist Barry Rogers, keyboardist Jeff Kent, guitarist John Abercrombie, bassist Doug Lubahn and drummer Billy Cobham.
JW: This was just when Cobham was getting hot.
RB: Yes. In 1973, Billy hit with his first album as a leader,
Spectrum. He hired Mike and me for his band, and I worked on a lot of sessions with Mike. During those years, I started to write for myself. I was listening to what others were writing. I had an electric piano and fooled around with scores. I put together nine arrangements. I brought Mike and David Sanborn together with me in a horn section and was getting ready to record a demo for a record. Then I got a call from Steve Backer, a producer who had joined Arista Records headed by Clive Davis. Steve had me meet with Clive. Clive said, “You know, if you call the band the Brecker Brothers, I’ll sign you right now."
JW: What did you do?
RB: I fought the idea for a while, but it was too good of an opportunity to turn down. We recorded my nine songs and arrangements in January 1975. When Clive heard the sessions, he called me into his office on 57th between 5th and 6th. [Pictured above, Michael Brecker, left, and Randy Brecker]
JW: What did he say?
RB: He said, “I love everything you guys recorded but you need a single.” I trudged back to the rehearsal studio and told the guys we need a tune that the label could put on the radio. We jammed a tune, went into the studio and recorded
Sneakin' Up Behind You. It became a hit. Pieces fell into place. Next thing I knew the band was opening for Chaka Khan and Rufus and the Parliament. Many people thought we were black, but we were white and the single is what sold it.
JW: Looking back, what do you think of fusion?
RB: Well it ended like everything else: awash in mediocre records. Fusion morphed into the “smooth jazz” format, which, in turn, helped give fusion a bad name. But at it's best, fusion was a perfect blend of various musical genres and available technology. When you think of the best bands—like Miles Davis, Weather Report, Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Larry Coryell's Eleventh House, Billy Cobham's Spectrum and, yes, the Brecker Brothers—each had an individual concept based on mixing jazz, rock, funk and soul. It was an exciting time. Fusion was popular in the mainstream and there were no limits on what you could achieve musically. Every 10 albums on the Billboard 200 was a jazz fusion artist. Sadly, those days are long gone.
JW: What do you love most about your new album?
RB: The arrangements by Kenny Werner are terrific. He has an amazing ability to reinvent pre-existing tunes so that they keep their classic fundamentals but sound altogether different than the originals. It was also great to work with my daughter and singer Amanda. The band killed these difficult charts once we got them under our fingers, and I think the soloing also is unique. You couldn't rely on your bebop/funk vocabulary on this date. Instead, you had to think creatively and melodically to make something out of the unusual chord changes.
Used with permission by Marc Myers
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