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Lennie Cuje
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The Freedom to Play: How Jazz Saved Lennie Cuje

Lennie Cuje has been a fixture on the jazz scene for more than 60 years. A Local 161-710 (Washington, DC) member since the 1950s, the celebrated vibist has experienced life on a grand scale—in music, in war, and in two homelands.

Born in 1933 in Giessen, Germany, (40 miles north of Frankfurt)  Cuje grew up during the Nazi regime. He was enrolled in an elite music school at nine years old. Like all German boys, it was compulsory to join the Hitler Youth, making the pledge, he says, “‘born to die for Germany.’”

Near the end of WWII, when there was a shortage of soldiers, he and other 12-year-old boys were drafted by the SS to train on MG-42 machine guns. His conductor father got into trouble with the Nazis for refusing to play preferred music of the regime and was exiled to the front to drive a truck. After his school and city were bombed out, the family was evacuated from Frankfurt and became separated. Cuje and his classmate and friend Ulrich found themselves in the hands of the French. They were spared internment in POW camps and found refuge at a local convent to live out the remainder of the war.

The story of the boys’ journey in 1945 across Europe and a decimated Germany in search of their mothers is the subject of a play that recently aired on Hessian Radio Frankfurt and Kultur Radio Berlin. Ulrich, who made a career as an actor and in radio back in Germany, was instrumental in compiling their story, which has aired in Germany four times already in the last year. A recurring theme in the play is freedom, as Cuje explains. “We went to sleep in a barn and were surprised to wake up to realize that we were still free.”

At the end of the war, Cuje was going through an American sentry post when he first heard jazz. “I heard that strange music in the guard house, which I thought was African. It was exciting; it just grabbed me,” he says. The tune that enthralled him—which would define the rest of his life—was Lionel Hampton’s “Flying Home.”

Back in Frankfurt, his family subsisted on meager rations. He traded on the black market to provide for them. Cuje says, “The hunger, poverty, coldness, it was a part of our life. The currency was cigarettes.”

When Cuje immigrated to the States in 1950, he was already well versed in American jazz standards, owing to the jazz shows on American Armed Forces Radio. He says, too, that he formed the first German baseball team, the Frankfurt Juniors. “Baseball and jazz—that was going to be my life.”

With the support of his aunt who had been in the US since the 1930s, he embraced everything American. He was drafted into the Air Force in 1952, later attending East Tennessee University to continue his music studies. He learned to be American, Cuje says, “penny loafers and all.”

“When I left Germany, I left everything German behind,” he says. “The way they taught it, Germany was the only country that could save the world. Reality for me was a lie. By 1945, when it all collapsed, my friend Uli, he knows. Suddenly, we realized we’d been lied to for the first 12 years of our lives. I didn’t want to have much to do with Germany. As a Hitler youth, I had to take an oath to die for the swastika. And here, in the air force—I had to swear to two flags. It makes you think about a lot of things.”

“Jazz was like medicine for the mind and it brought a feeling of freedom. Baseball had that same feeling—freedom!” His late wife, Reneé, a professor of German at American University, convinced him that he needed to revisit his past in a profound way. She encouraged him to re-establish his Frankfurt school connections.

In 2016, after 71 years, Cuje and his old friend, Uli, were reunited. “We always wondered whether the other made it out alive. When Uli found out I played the vibraphone, he was amazed. Uli said, ‘My god, Lennie Cuje is a known jazz musician in America.’”

Cuje began speaking German with his wife again, which he had not done in many years, and it helped him reconcile past and present. “It brought peace to me. It was important for my musical career. I was able to put the two Lennies together,” he says. “That’s when I started my career all over again, from the beginning.”

When he began playing in the 1950s, Cuje was one of the few white players on the U Street corridor of Washington, DC, part of the Chitlin’ Circuit. He says, “I had all black cats in my band so I played on the black scale, which was less than the white union. We’d go from one juke joint to another and pass the hat. My nickname was ‘snowflake’,” he laughs, adding, “Those were glorious days for me.”

In 1960, he joined the Buck Clarke Band with Charlie Hampton, Duane Alston, and Billy Hart and recorded with Clarke for Argo Records. At the height of the avant-garde movement in 1963, like many musicians, he made an exodus, anxious to join leading players like Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and especially John Coltrane in New York City. He landed his first gig with Dave Figg and Paul Bley, whom Cuje knew from DC, and studied with renowned vibists Warren Chiasson of Local 802 (New York City) and Dave Pike. He played gigs with David Amram of Local 1000 (Nongeographic), Philly Joe Jones (Miles Davis’s drummer), and Larry Coryell.

Later, back in Arlington, in 1983, he began a 10-year engagement at DC’s famous One Step Down with Nasar Abadey of Local 161-710 and at Baltimore’s Harbor Court Hotel with Lou Rainone for 20 years. Spike Wilner of Smalls Jazz Club in New York City became a good friend and frequent collaborator and even now, on occasion, he plays vibes with Chuck Redd, with whom he’s performed over the last 30 years.

In 2000, Cuje’s artistic vision took him in another direction. After Cuje’s aunt, Magdalena Schoch, died, he found poems and a handwritten manuscript of music in the family’s basement, which were composed by Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy (grandson of composer Felix Mendelssohn) and dedicated to Cuje’s Aunt Lena.

Cuje explains that she was Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s protégé. “It was a love affair that never was. They were partners who formed the first German international law office in the late 1920s. She was a professor at Hamburg University until 1934, when Mendelssohn Bartholdy—a scholar and advocate for peace—fled Nazi Germany for England. He died there in 1936, and the Nazis warned that if Lena attended the funeral, she’d lose everything.

With Reneé’s help he arranged the music titled “Lieder for Lena,” which premiered in West Berlin’s Mendelssohn House. “We decided to bring it to life in honor of my aunt who brought me to this country so I could live my dream,” says Cuje.

At 85 years old, Cuje calls himself a “civilian.” He’s retired the tux, but plays local gigs and occasionally when his old friend Spike Wilner comes to town. Cuje has come full circle, embracing everything American, German, and jazz.

His favorite baseball team is the Yankees. “I love to see a good baseball game,” he says. “It’s like jazz, you’ve got the pitcher and the batter and when that ball hits the wood, everything goes into action, like a band. It’s wonderful.”

International Musician, Member Profiles

Daryl Davis: A Life Driven by Harmony, On Stage and Off

When Daryl Davis of Local 161-710 (Washington, DC) was 15, he did what some people say you should never to do: he met his hero after sneaking backstage at a Chuck Berry concert.

Davis was always enamored with the blues and early rock ‘n’ roll icons, especially Berry. A child to two parents in the Foreign Service, he experienced the cultural lag of listening to international radio. “While my peers were growing up with Frankie Avalon and the Beach Boys, I was hearing Elvis Presley [and] Chuck Berry. I was kind of an anomaly when I would come back,” says Davis.

A self-taught guitarist and pianist, Davis copied the piano playing from Berry’s songs on the radio. He studied music in the library for hours, and sat in with local bands at gigs. When considering a career path in his junior year, Davis looked to Berry. What Davis really admired was how Berry touched people and brought them joy and happiness. “I decided that’s what I want to do,” says Davis. After his senior year, he enrolled in Howard University to study music.

Though his dream of someday playing with Berry seemed improbable, Davis began writing him letters. “I told him I was learning to play piano like Johnnie Johnson and Pinetop Perkins; I told him everything about me,” says Davis. Berry never wrote back until Davis’s 18th birthday when he got a message from Berry and a poster of the rock icon.

Pianist, author, and lecturer Daryl Davis of Local 161-710 (Washington, DC) has built his life around the promotion of racial and musical harmony.

Shortly after graduating from Howard, Davis joined the AFM and convinced a promoter to let him play piano and hire the backing band for a Baltimore Chuck Berry concert in 1981. At age 22, Davis achieved his dream.

“I went to his dressing room [before the show] and asked, ‘Is there anything in particular you want me to do on the piano’ and he said, ‘Well, you wrote in your letters you’ve been playing like Johnnie Johnson and Pinetop Perkins. Do that,’” recalls Davis.

From that day, Berry became a mentor and friend. Eventually, Davis acted as bandleader for Berry’s East Coast shows. “I learned a great deal, not only about music, but about life,” says Davis. “He was a shrewd businessman and I avoided some of the pitfalls that a lot of musicians fall into. He spent a lot of time with me and that’s certainly shaped who I am today.”

Thanks in part to that wisdom, Davis built an impressive career as a respected boogie-woogie and blues pianist. He has played with the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll and blues, including B.B. King, Bo Didley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Percy Sledge. He was heralded by mentors Johnnie Johnson and Pinetop Perkins for his ability to master a style of music popularized a generation before he was born.

Another key to his success was his union membership. “It’s benefitted me by being around other professional musicians—networking, getting legal advice, and contract advice. I’ve met a lot of wonderful people, serious musicians that I can call and rely upon,” he says. “It’s also a comfort knowing that there is a union that will fight for me and provide me things that I need to further my career.”

Davis also acts as artistic director for multiple groups across the country. When he’s not working, he mentors young musicians in the Artist in Residency (AIR) program at the Strathmore Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. The program teaches them about the business, including self-promotion, contracts, and booking agents.

Davis says it’s a way to give back. “[My mentors] could have easily said, ‘Don’t bother me; go learn somewhere else.’ But they sat down and showed me stuff,” he says, “and that inspires me to do the same thing for young musicians who are in the place I was some 55 years ago.”

To Davis, it means a great deal to the pass down the legacy of the music as well. Last year, he was asked to write and produce a play about the history of the blues to be shown to all fifth graders from Montgomery County School District in Maryland. “It’s important to learn the history of American music, and the blues is definitely underrated and under-taught, especially in elementary schools,” he says. “[Black musicians] have always been under-credited with the musical contributions we have made to this country. Almost every form of American music has some roots in blues, which was born out of slavery,” says Davis.

The history of blues and its roots in slavery are not overlooked when Davis talks about his decades-long mission to promote racial harmony, which has brought him face to face with white supremacists. It all began following a gig at an all-white country bar. A man came up to Davis and said that this was the first time he’d ever heard a black man play like Jerry Lee Lewis.

“He invited me to his table to have a drink,” Davis says, who explained to the man that the roots of Lewis’s music were black musicians. “The man said it was the first time he ever sat down and had a drink with a black man. I was naïve, so I kept asking why. He told me, ‘I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan,’ and when I started laughing, he produced his membership card.”

This encounter sparked Davis to seek the answer to a question that had been on his mind since childhood: How could you hate me, without even knowing me? Davis figured the best way to answer that was to get face-to-face with Klansmen and ask. He has spent around 30 years studying the Klan, attending rallies, and setting up surprise meetings with Klan leaders who were unaware of his skin color.

Not every interaction was as amiable as sharing a drink. He calls to mind an incident at a courthouse where a group of Klansmen and women assaulted him before law enforcement intervened. Eventually he published the book Klan-Destine Relationships about his experiences.

However, Davis was welcomed by many Klansmen, in part through his music. He even played piano at a Klan funeral for Frank Ancona, former Imperial Wizard of the Traditionalist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, whom he considered a friend. Davis says that 200 Klansmen have given up their robes after talking to him.

Though Davis is an in-demand lecturer on race relations, he has also faced backlash from those who believe his methods are “politically incorrect.” “People will criticize me and call me a sellout. It’s not that I support [racist] ideology. I support people’s right to speak their mind. I’m willing to sit down and listen to them and talk,” Davis says.

He believes dialogue is essential to improving modern race relations; there is no other choice. “If you and I agree racism is bad, then we don’t accomplish anything by talking to each other. We have to go out and find those that disagree with us,” he says.

For Davis, all his efforts on stage and off come down to the pursuit of harmony. “It is my job as a band leader to bring harmony among the voices on my stage,” he says. “When I step off the bandstand, I maintain that concept. I want to bring harmony among the people in the society that I want to live in.”

 

How do you connect with your community? Is there a cause that you support? Tell us about it. Please write to International Musician managing editor at: cyurco@sfm.org

Improvisation
International Musician, Member Profiles

Creating a Bridge to Improvisation

Krista Seddon of Local 92 (Buffalo, NY) is a pianist and composer whose modern arrangement of Johannes Brahms’ “Lullaby” was selected for Buffalo’s new John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital, which opened in November. The hospital launched a contest for a new rendition of the old masterpiece, which is heard each time a baby is born. Her arrangement has a distinctively jazzy feel. “My objective was to take something so pure and beautiful as the Brahms’ ‘Lullaby,’ and respecting it fully, bring it into the 21st century,” she says. “It was a challenge.”

Improvisation

Krista Seddon’s arrangement of Johannes Brahms’ “Lullaby” was selected as the official recording for the maternity floor at Buffalo’s new Oishei Children’s Hospital. She is a member of Local 92 (Buffalo, NY).

A classically trained pianist with degrees from The New England Conservatory and the University of North Texas, Seddon has had a long affiliation with the Buffalo Philharmonic that includes recordings and solo performances. The Director of Ensembles at the historic Trinity Episcopal Church of Buffalo, Seddon regularly conducts dual lecture performances at schools and universities. In addition, she often collaborates with Alan Broadbent and Robert Nowak, members of Local 802 (New York City), and previously, she transcribed works for the late jazz pianist Marian McPartland.

Next year, in honor of what would have been McPartland’s 100th birthday, Seddon plans a tribute lecture tour performing McPartland’s signature portraits of artists and discussing their 10-year collaboration. Seddon’s work with McPartland included transcribing the portaits.

“I’ve always believed in totality, a universality of music. It’s a good thing for musicians to be able to improvise—and there are different ways to go about it, not only through standards, but through composing. That is Marian’s influence on me,” she says.

“Jazz is the thing that encouraged me to compose,” Seddon says, “It doesn’t have to be large scale or follow strict rules. In jazz, we’re composing more to improvise.” In her own music portrait series, Seddon takes the audiences on a journey into the lives and work of the world’s major composers, exploring the connections between classical music and jazz.

Great jazz musicians—McPartland, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, and Duke Ellington—drew heavily on classical music, she says. “Historically, in classical and Baroque—they all improvised, especially in the Baroque era. Improvisation was required, if you were to be considered a musician of any kind.”

Ideally, Seddon says, jazz techniques to support classical players could be taught and incorporated into university music departments. “I use jazz extensively,” she says. “For example, taking a big classical composition and making it into a lead sheet with just melody and chords. Instead of 20 pages of complicated music, you can boil it down to its essence. It’s the difference between reciting and telling a story.”

The strict theoretical confines of classical music restrict improvisation. She says, “I like to decode that for people, especially for classical musicians because we have so much in our toolbox. It’s a natural progression—to grow out of the classical training and take it to other places.”

There are other benefits to learning improvisation skills. Seddon explains, “If during a classical performance, a musician gets off track somehow, instead of crashing and burning, with some improvisation techniques, there is space to find your way back. Jazz teaches us to get real with the music.”

“Classical musicians tell me, ‘I wish I could improvise. Would you teach me?’ Music of the day should be flexible, improvised over, and shared with people. It’s how I live my life. I hope to teach that and bring it to a wider  audience,” she says.

Seddon is in process of recording a CD of mainly original compositions.

How do you connect with your community? Is there a cause that you support? Tell us about it. Please write to International Musician managing editor at: cyurco@sfm.org

International Musician, Member Profiles

Trumpeter Goes the Distance for Charity

Roy Wiegand’s career has crossed nearly four decades—and of late, many finish lines. For the last eight years, the Los Angeles-based trumpeter turned ultra-runner has taken on solo challenges in support of local and global charities.

Trumpeter

A busy freelancer in the LA area, Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) member Roy Wiegand’s passion for running charity ulta-marathons can sometimes have him running from race to gig.

Wiegand of Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) first collaborated with Lifewater International, a nonprofit organization that builds wells for remote villages in East Africa and Southeast Asia. In an ultra-marathon in 2013, in which he ran 250 miles over a week, he received a hero’s welcome after finishing at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Stopping at a couple of elementary schools along the way, he says, “I had a bottle of brown water from a village in Ethiopia to show people. Those kids sold cookies and brownies for a month before the run to raise money for other kids in Ethiopia.” He raised $25,000 over four years. “The disease rate had dropped 93%. Now, they can actually wash their hands.” According to Wiegand, “Between digging and maintaining the well it costs $40, which provides a lifetime of clean water per person.”

In June, for the Michael Hoefflin Foundation—a local organization for families with children fighting cancer—Wiegand ran the equivalent of four marathons in 24 hours (approximately 105 miles). He’s raised $40,000 for the organization. Roy’s Run for Christopher, now in its fifth year, is named for the 12-year-old friend of his son who died of a rare cancer.

Though Wiegand started running late in life, in his 40s, he says being a brass player pays off. “I’ve got lung capacity—and can run long distances without getting tired,” adding that it’s his colleagues who are all heart. The LA music community and the union serve him well on the trail. “Many musicians donate financially or with their music, or coming out and bicycling beside me.” During the grueling 24-hour  runs, whether it’s encouragement on the sidelines, supplying water, or a place to sit down, Wiegand is grateful for the support of his Local 47 friends. “It’s definitely not a one-man show. When you’re running through the dead of night, it’s good to have company.” One year, he says, there was a brass quintet to usher him over the finish line.

A few years back, the night before the LA marathon, he had a gig that went overtime. “I dropped off my trumpet and tux at the finish, ran the marathon—and actually, did my best time—took a nap, put on my tux, and played the next gig.” Laughing he says, “It’s typical of a freelance player who’s always trying to shoehorn in work or running wherever they can.”

Live club dates are his mainstay, but in his spare time Wiegand is a private music instructor who also coaches a high school jazz band. “Sometimes, it’s hard for parents to wrap their heads around music or the performing arts as a major and a potential career. It’s a leap of faith,” he says.

It was not much of a stretch for Wiegand whose father, Roy Wiegand, Jr., of Local 47, is a trombonist who played around the country in Stan Kenton’s and Woody Herman’s orchestras. The family moved around a bit, with stops in New York City, Miami, New Orleans, and Las Vegas. Wiegand showed prodigious talent at age seven and was naturally drawn to brass. He says his dad’s only seeming objection to his career choice was, “The trumpet, not the trombone?”

Wiegand moved to Los Angeles after high school and attended Los Angeles City College. After a year, though, he started getting calls to go out on the road. “Being paid to play was too strong a lure,” he says. “Plus, years ago, there was a lot of work out there.” He’s a versatile session musician, who plays jazz, classical, klezmer, bebop, mariachi, Dixieland, even salsa. He is also principal trumpet for the Desert Symphony in Palm Springs, California.

Trumpeter

(L to R) Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) members Angela Wiegand and Roy Wiegand, and their daughter Sophie, pose for a photo midway through his 105-mile run to benefit the Michael Hoefflin Foundation for children’s cancer.

In 1997, a unique opportunity came up. After a symphony performance, he heard that The Who needed brass players for a revival of their 1973 rock opera, Quadrophenia. “A guitarist whose wife was a bassoonist in an orchestra I played with got the call for brass players. She happened to be near the phone and said, ‘Give them Roy’s number.’” Wiegand says. That call led to a year-long tour that took him around the US and throughout Europe.

This past September, 20 years to the day, he played again with The Who at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. “It was a reunion of sorts,” says Wiegand, who was joined on stage by his wife, Angela Wiegand, a Local 47 member and flutist for the Los Angeles Opera. 

One of Wiegand’s regular gigs these days is performing with the band, Jack Mack and the Heart Attack, a longtime LA rock and soul band. In between concerts, he is planning his next charity initiative, collaborating with Shelter to Soldier, a nonprofit that adopts dogs from local shelters and trains them to become psychiatric service dogs for combat veterans dealing with PTSD and other challenges. Their mission is: “Saving lives, two at a time.”

How do you connect with your community? Is there a cause that you support? Tell us about it. Please write to International Musician managing editor at: cyurco@sfm.org

Unknown Hinson
International Musician, Member Profiles

Unknown Hinson Leaves a Mark with Persona and “Chart Toppin’ Hits”

Unknown Hinson

Stuart D. Baker of Local 342 (Charlotte, NC) performs rockabilly and blues tunes onstage as his redneck, Dracula-inspired persona, Unknown Hinson.

The story of guitarist and performer Unknown Hinson is closer to rockabilly myth than biography. His wild, womanizing, honky-tonk persona has been carefully crafted by Stuart Daniel Baker of Local 342 (Charlotte, NC), a music teacher and studio musician.

Unknown Hinson was first conceived by Baker as a character for the Charlotte, Virginia, public access TV show, The Wild, Wild South. With his creative partner Don Swan, Baker would perform politically incorrect songs and skits and feature Hinson’s music videos. Wild, Wild South came to an abrupt end in 1995 when Swan, who played Rebel Helms on the show, passed away. Baker then spun off Wild, Wild South into the Unknown Hinson Show, which found success, winning Creative Loafing’s “Best Of” poll for Best Public-Access Television Show four years in a row.

Baker’s Hinson persona is a legendary oddball outlaw. The story goes, Hinson learned one chord on the guitar from his mother who mysteriously disappeared when he was 10, leaving him orphaned. His father—and namesake—was “unknown.” Hinson went to work for a traveling carnival, playing the guitar and working as a sideshow act biting the heads off live chickens.

In another chapter in Unknown Hinson’s legend, in 1963, at age 21, he was framed for the murder of his boss at the carnival. Sentenced to 30 years in the Illinois State Penitentiary, he spent most of his time “pickin’” guitar and growing his knowledge on the instrument by listening to the radio in prison. Rumors also persist that he is a 400-year-old vampire.

“If people believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, or call me a vampire, I’m going to let ’em. It doesn’t bother me none. I’m just going to go out and put on a good show for ’em,” says Baker, in character, as Hinson.

Rarely does Baker appear out of character. Baker grew up in a musical family in North Carolina. His father was a musician who taught him to hold a guitar right-handed, even though Baker is left-handed. He also played the drums in a local band he started with his brothers.

Baker decided to move to New York City in 1979. He found the “studio racket” as he put it to be a “dog eat dog” world. “I learned a lot but everything I was making was going to rent and food,” says Baker. After two years of session work, subbing on guitar for bands, and even putting together his own group, Baker returned south. During the day, he would do more session work on the guitar and bass. He began moonlighting in the house band of a honky-tonk bar in Darlington, South Carolina. This is where Unknown Hinson began to materialize.

“I didn’t realize what I was doing in a honky-tonk full of drunks six nights a week. I told myself ‘well, what you were doing then was R&D for Unknown Hinson,’” Baker explains.

Baker also found inspiration for Hinson from his childhood. “Any small southern town is going to have interesting, funny characters,” he says.

In 1999, Baker moved away from the Unknown Hinson Show, taking his act on the road. He started recording albums of the songs he performed on the show. He soon built a cult fan base performing as Hinson with songs like “Unlock This Bathroom Door” and his signature appearance characterized by a tuxedo, silk bow tie, and jet black hair slicked into a high widow’s peak. Baker based this look on a combination of the redneck persona and his fondness for old horror film icons like Frankenstein and Dracula.

Baker’s break from television didn’t last long. He has been the voice of Squidbillies—a cartoon that pokes fun at southern hillbilly stereotypes—as backwoods patriarch Early Cuyler for the past 10 seasons and he is currently working the 11th.

Not surprisingly, admiration for the actor and musician in the industry is expressed in unconventional ways. The grandson of Hank Williams Sr., Hank III, has a tattoo of Hinson on his bicep, which Baker considers “an honor.”

While he’s known for his comedic and outrageous character performances, Baker proves he has chops and has been a frequent touring partner of Reverend Horton Heat and also as a bassist with Billy Bob Thornton and the Boxmasters. Baker has earned accolades and professional recognition, including the Independent Music Awards and Vox Pop vote for Best Alternative Country Song for “Torture Town” in 2009, and the Ameripolitan Music Award for Best Male Outlaw in 2014.

After more than a decade of performing, Baker announced his retirement from touring in late 2012. Shortly thereafter, his wife and manager, Margo Baker, lost her battle with cancer. That fall, he began touring again. “It’s what I do. You’ve got to do something to justify your life,” Baker says. “I didn’t want to sit on the couch all day, watch television. I’m about making music and playing for people.”

Because of his larger-than-life appearance and colorful lyrics, Baker’s character is often pegged as a comedy act, a designation he thinks shortchanges his talent.

“A lot of people pin me as just a ‘hee-haw act,’ but I try to have quality music,” he says. “I’m known as much, if not more, for my guitar playing than my songwriting.” In the end, Baker seems indifferent to all labels, vampire or comedian, concentrating instead on what he does best: pleasing the crowd.

“They can make of it what they will, I’m still going to play the same for a crowd of 300 or a crowd of 3,000,” he says.

Lorraine Desmarais
Member Profiles

Bandleader and Jazz Pianist Lorraine Desmarais Takes Charge

Lorraine Desmarais

Lorraine Desmarais of Local 406 (Montreal, PQ) is among a handful of women big band leaders. She and her bands are regularly featured at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

Lorraine Desmarais of Local 406 (Montreal, PQ) made her solo debut as a jazz artist at the Montreal International Jazz Festival in 1983. Before that, in 1982, her trio was the first jazz group to tour through the Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, which at the time, she explains, presented mostly classical music. “So, we were delighted to be the first jazz trio ever to be put on the road!”

In 1984, Desmarais won a Yamaha Jazz Competition at the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Entering the jazz scene at age 21—old for a jazz player, according to Desmarais—the stage was set for her to be prominent in the festival’s lineup for years to come.

Among prizes she’s received are First Prize at the Great Jazz Piano American Competition (in 1986), the Oscar Peterson Award of the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Artistic Creation Award of the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec prize, and the Ontario Arts Foundation Prize for Keyboard Artistry.

She joined the union in 1982 when she began doing a number of club dates, concerts, and touring, and sat in as a keyboardist on television shows. In 1983, while finishing her master’s degree in classical piano, Desmarais received a grant to study in New York City with Kenny Barron of Local 802—her first formal jazz lesson. She joined a few jazz combos, and at McGill University, she devoured the jazz standards and the history of jazz piano, from ragtime to nu jazz. She began transcribing solos by Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, and Herbie Hancock of Local 802 (New York City).

In 1999, Desmarais played keyboards for a two-month, 45-concert world tour with the Diva Big Band out of New York City and she fell in love with the big band sound. “It’s so exciting being surrounded by soloists and playing charts and arrangements,” she says.

By 2004, her status as a virtuosic jazz pianist was well established. But she still had a dream of playing with Chick Corea of Local 802. Desmarais says, “He was one of my greatest influences. I love his music; he’s a great pianist. His solo and electric band corresponded to my own career.” When he and his electric band trio performed at the Montreal Jazz Festival that year, she asked if they could arrange something for her. Twenty minutes before the pair went on stage, Corea asked her, “Do you know ‘Spain’?”   

“In 2005, I said, it’s now or never. I took many of my compositions written for trio or quartet and rewrote them for big band. It’s a way to learn arrangement,” she says. It was challenging, she admits, writing for wind instruments and making the sax or trumpet soloist front and center. “In smaller groups, you have more freedom; it’s more spontaneous, everybody is soloist from time to time. But in a big band, it’s almost like a portrait of a soloist.”

Her 2016 big band album, Danses, Dansas, Dances, showcases to full effect the talents of each musician. Along with her all-union, 16-member big band, she is the leader of a trio comprising longtime big band drummer Camil Belisle and bassist Frédéric Alarie, both members of Local 406.

Desmarais says she is a big fan of Brad Mehl-
dau of Local 47 and was inspired by the piano stylings and compositions of McCoy Tyner and big band leader Maria Schneider of Local 802, the latter of whom also influenced her approach to arrangement and orchestration. She has played with luminaries: the late Marian McPartland, Jacky Terrasson, and Joe Lovano both of Local 802.

It was a great honor for her to premiere the song, “For Lola,” by Dave Brubeck at a 2013 concert with the Brubeck Brothers (members of Local 802) at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe during the Montreal International Jazz Festival.

With 12 albums of mostly original compositions to her credit, a number of which have become jazz standards, the ever-humble Desmarais acknowledges that she seems to have earned a distinguished place in the world of music and jazz. In 2013, she became a Member of the Order of Canada and received a Prix Opus from the Conseil québécois de la Musique. Three of her albums (Trio Lorraine Desmarais, Jazz pour Noël, and Big Band) have received Félix awards.

Growing up in Montreal, Desmarais studied classical music, all the while playing pop music. “The best part was trying to improvise and compose on piano,” says Desmarais “Luckily, I had a teacher who encouraged me.” At the French-language college, Cégep de St-Laurent, Montréal, Québec, where she teaches jazz piano, Desmarsais emboldens her students to do the same. She uses two pianos in her classes to improvise with them, explaining that playing off each other makes the music more accessible. “It really has to be fun. You have to make young people feel they have potential and it’s possible to develop.”    

As she looks ahead, Desmarais calls 2018 her symphonique year. Among other projects with symphonies, she’ll perform with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony to create a soundtrack for the 1965 film The Railrodder and produce a number of commissioned works, all of which have her stepping out of her comfort zone. She says, “When I return to my work, I’m that much stronger.”   

What’s next for Desmarais?  She says she’d like to go back to where it all began: “I would like to do more tours with my big band.”

joe ely
Member Profiles

After Years on the Road, Joe Ely Takes a Literary Turn

joe ely

Writer, musician, and longtime Local 433 (Austin, TX) musician Joe Ely says the solidarity and protections of the AFM are important to him. He’s been inducted into the Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame, was named 2016 Texas State Musician, and most recently was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.

Joe Ely of Local 433 (Austin, TX) was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters, which he says came as a shock, something he never saw coming. But it’s storytelling, after all, and no one tells a story like Ely. He’s been writing songs since he was a kid growing up in Amarillo, and later, in Lubbock. Ely says, “I was always listening to things, background noise, the wind blowing a branch against a screen window.”

Ely has kept journals for years and often sketches to have a visual. He recalls Tom T. Hall once telling him, “Some people can travel all around the world and not see a single thing, others can travel around the block and see the whole world.” “That made me continue to keep writing down observations and eventually building them into a form,” says Ely. The University of Texas eventually published some of the journals as raw material titled Bonfire of Roadmaps.

As a songwriter turned novelist, it was difficult for Ely not to keep the words to a minimum. “Instead of a line in a song, it’d have to be three pages in a book. It was the first thing I had to overcome,” he says. Like Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy—of whom Ely is a fan—he draws on the landscape to deliver the emotional depth of his characters. In his autobiographical novel, Reverb (2014), he writes of Lubbock in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s a gritty world, but Ely digs into the story of young working-class men, usually in trouble, driving barren roads, living with the threat of going to war.

It’s easy to imagine the narrative running through his life. Ely left home at 16, went to Fort Worth and joined a band. From there, he went to Houston and Los Angeles. “My daddy died a few years before that and I was not doing good in school. I just didn’t see any future in Lubbock. I was playing in bands. I was kind of the sole breadwinner in the family. I’d play till midnight or one in the morning and try to go to school the next day. After school, I washed dishes at an old fried chicken place. I didn’t see an end,” he says.

In the mid-1960s Ely would periodically return to Texas to appear before the draft board, which at the time, he remembers, was drafting about 50,000 kids a month. “I’d always come back and regroup and go somewhere else, from one coast to the other,” he says. In New York City, he ended up joining a theater troupe and going to Europe. “That’s how I started traveling and collecting songs, during that era.”

In the summer of 1971, back in Lubbock, Ely teamed up with friends Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore to form the country-folk group, The Flatlanders. The band toured extensively, headlining small shows and opening for bigger acts. Among these, remarkably, was the punk rock group The Clash. (In fact, Joe Strummer was supposed to record with Ely’s band, but died before it happened—one of Ely’s greatest disappointments.)

Such offbeat arrangements are not unusual for Ely, who once made a record with German opera conductor Eberhard Schoener. Ely says, “He had the first Moog synthesizer, which he bought from John Lennon—who hated it. We worked with that synthesizer and two acoustic guitars and did an experimental piece. A couple of years later, I bought an Apple computer and started working on songs as an experiment. He kind of inspired me.” 

Ely has always been something of an artistic maverick, seamlessly moving between country music and rock and roll. In the 1970s and 1980s, especially, he championed the progressive country scene in Austin. “At a young age, I discovered Woodie Guthrie, who lived in Amarillo for a good part of his life. In my teenage years and early 20s, I just happened to run across some of the songwriters who would influence me for the rest of my life,” he says.

Ely has played with mandolinist Chris Thile of Local 257 (Nashville, TN) on A Prairie Home Companion and with Bruce Springsteen of Locals 47 (Los Angeles, CA) and 399 (Asbury Park, NJ), James McMurtry, The Chieftains, Tom Petty of Local 47, and John Mellencamp. With Guy Clarke, Lyle Lovett of Local 257, and John Hiatt he formed a group that played 40-50 shows a year for about 20 years. “We’d go all over the states, a different city every day. We’d all sit on stage together in a guitar pull, where one person does a song and passes it on to the next.”

On his albums, Ely likes to incorporate cover songs, especially ones he feels have not gotten their due. When he was working on Letter to Laredo, he was just about finished with the record when he went to Europe for a few gigs. “I was in a bar in Norway and heard a song on the jukebox about a guy who crossed over into the US with a fighting rooster and went up and down the coast of Texas and California trying to win enough money to buy back the land that Pancho Villa stole from his family,” he says, explaining that the song eventually made its way onto the album.

A member of the AFM since 1972—when the first Flatlanders’ record came out in Nashville—Ely says the union is an important part of being able to make a living, especially as a traveling musician. That solidarity informs his work. The Flatlanders song, “Borderless Love,” (2009) about the fence on the US-Mexico border, is even more relevant amid today’s political tumult so the band has reintroduced it to live sets.

“I think you take from what’s been and give to what will be,” says Ely, who now lives in Austin and works with a number of young musicians there. Just after the 2015 release of the more literary and deeply personal Panhandle Rambler, he was inducted into the Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame and was named the 2016 Texas State Musician, an honor previously bestowed on Willie Nelson of Local 433 and Lyle Lovett.

Along with 25 albums to his credit, the 70-year-old Ely has about five books of poetry written, which he hopes to compile into a single collection. He’s led symposiums for Texas Tech University; he recently conducted a solo acoustic tour in the Midwest; and for the next couple of months, he will tour Texas and California. “I like to mix it up. Playing with a band full time can be restrictive. You’re always herding people. I prefer to go out, me and the guitar and a bag of stories.”

garry pressy
Member Profiles

Out of the Ball Park: Organist Plays the Big League

garry pressy

At his organ in the press booth at Wrigley Field, Gary Pressy of Local 10-208 (Chicago, IL) shows off his 2016 World Series ring.

Gary Pressy of Local 10-208 (Chicago, IL) enjoys a seat at Chicago Cubs games like no other player. From his perch in the press booth overlooking Wrigley Field, the Cubs organist, since 1987, has played 2,446 consecutive games without missing a beat.

For Pressy, 59, playing the sonorous organ at Wrigley Field is a dream come true. From the time he was a kid, he knew it was exactly what he wanted to do. He became fascinated with the sound of the organ when he was a just five years old. “I’d listen to games and in the background, you’d hear the organ. My mother says I’d be in the backyard humming the national anthem and ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’”

After years of instruction, including private lessons with local teacher and mentor Russ Caifano, Pressy started playing the organ for Loyola basketball, all the while sending out his resume to teams in Chicago that he knew employed organists. Sports executive John McDonough finally responded. At the time, he was working for the pro soccer team, the Chicago Sting, and he hired Pressy to play. When the time came for the Cubs to hire a full-time organist, McDonough recommended Pressy. “I had my eyes set on one job, and I got lucky. This was always my goal,” says Pressy.

Pressy arrives a few hours before game time. He does his research and brushes up on new songs, but says the standards are crowd pleasers. “I spread the songs around. I won’t play to one generation: Lady Gaga and Sinatra. I don’t want people to scratch their heads, but they’ve got to be catchy tunes,” he explains.

To adjust and time the music, he follows the game as closely as any announcer. “When players come on field, it’s got to come from the top of your head, it’s spontaneous. If the Cubs have players on first and third, I’ll play the song, ‘Down on the Corner.’” Years ago, he’d even supply trivia—this day in Cubs history.

The seventh-inning stretch is the hallmark of the Cubs’ home games, which began when longtime Cubs sportscaster Harry Caray sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” After his death in 1998, the Cubs continued the tradition, but with guest conductors leading the crowd.

It all starts out with “Ah-One! Ah-Two! Ah-Three!” And celebrities from every walk of life have been featured: politicians, athletes, and musicians, like diehard fan Eddie Vedder of Local 76-493 (Seattle, WA) and Ozzie Osborne. In game three of the 2016 World Series, Bill Murray famously performed his rendition as Daffy Duck.

Pressy says, “We have so much fun with the live guests. When these guys come in here, they shed the celebrity persona; it’s pure fan, and just shows their amorous relationship with game of baseball.” 

When former Major League player Dave Collins came to sing, Pressy (a huge Boston Celtics fan) says they talked Celtic basketball and reminisced. “All these people are so down to earth. It’s their honor to do it,” he says. After last year’s win, Pressy was on stage playing at Grant Park. “The parade must have had 5 million people. It was a glorious day weather-wise and for a Cub’s fan.”   

The Cubs became the first major league team to install an organ at the ballpark in 1941. Roy Nelson played the pregame program to entertain the crowd, but it was short-lived and the organ would not return permanently to Wrigley Field until 1967.

Organ players are a tight-knit group and Pressy says he’s had the privilege of meeting greats like Fenway Park organist John Kiley and Ernie Hayes of the St. Louis Cardinals. Pressy’s longtime friend and White Sox organist, Nancy Faust of Local 10-208, started the now legendary “Na-Na-Na-Na, Na-Na-Na-Na, Hey, Hey, Good Bye.”

By his own admission, baseball is a hobby that got out of hand. He’s got audio recordings of 250 baseball games from the 1960s and 1970s, plus Boston Celtics games. Pressy says, “I like to listen to those games driving back and forth to the games, fighting traffic. It’s just something I really enjoy. You can hear the organ in the background,” He adds, “Someday, I’d like to write a book about the history of games.”

Pressy joined the union in 1978, which among other things—benefits and pension—initially helped him get a credit card. Of his famous association with a World Series winning team, he says, “I’m just a guy who’s earning a living.”

Member Profiles

Dawn Hannay: Shining Light on the Union

Dawn Hannay of Local 802 (New York City) looks back on her career and activism as a violist with the New York Philharmonic.

Dawn Hannay of Local 802 (New York City) practically grew up on the stage of the New York Philharmonic. Having joined at 23, in 1979, the violist was one of a handful of women performing with the orchestra at the time. Now comprising more than half women, the oldest ensemble in the country is steeped in history and tradition. Hannay, who retired from her position last October, says she learned quickly, “I was always a bit of a rabble rouser so it wasn’t long before I was elected chair of the musicians’ committee.”

Back then, for an “inexperienced young woman,” there was a learning curve. Hannay explains that in those days music schools did little to prepare string players to master the overwhelming orchestral repertoire. “You had to be a great sight reader and fast learner,” she says, remembering the first time she played Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe suite in Studio 8H at NBC with the mics on, no rehearsal. “It’s like jumping on a speeding train. You have to be tough, especially as a young and very naive woman in what in those days seemed like a good ole boys club, complete with poker games, chain smoking, and even occasional fisticuffs!”

Hannay inherited the torch from those older and more experienced musicians who had fought so successfully to improve the lives of orchestral musicians. She says, “I took on the challenge, and spent decades doing my utmost to improve the working life of my colleagues, negotiating contracts and helping to resolve disputes.”

“The union is crucial in maintaining fair wages and working conditions for all musicians. Younger musicians who prefer to remain independent need to learn the history of their business, and how essential the union is in ensuring that musicians could earn a living from their craft. It is easy to take for granted the 52-week season, health benefits, and pension that we enjoy today,” she says.

What distinguishes prestigious orchestras like the New York Philharmonic from the Vienna Philharmonic? She says it’s “the communication between older players and the next generation. There are many traditions of phrasing and tempi, of fingerings and articulations, of tone quality and bowings, and even jokes that are handed down, such as applauding in rehearsal at the false ending in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.”

Hannay explains that a wise conductor lets an orchestra play, shaping his or her own interpretation, but allowing the unique character of the orchestra to shine through. She says, “There may be fewer than a dozen musicians left in the orchestra who played West Side Story under Leonard Bernstein, but they still play the score like nobody’s business. That’s tradition.” 

Not long ago, playing in an orchestra was among the most precarious of livings. Hannay explains, “It’s almost unheard of nowadays in any profession for people to stay in a single job for 30, 40, or even 50 or more years. It’s the norm here. We owe this extraordinary stability to a whole generation of musicians who fought to make it so. Their work created the continuity that enables the unique musical traditions to be carried forward from generation to generation. Through the efforts of the past generation there are contracts and fair wages.” 

Orchestra standards were set by flutist Julius Baker, clarinetist Stanley Drucker, trumpeter Phil Smith, and concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, of Local 802. Bassist Orin O’Brien of Local 802 shattered the glass ceiling and became the first woman in the orchestra. Legendary players Buster Bailey, Bert Bial, Ralph Mendelssohn, Newton Mansfield, and John Ware created and added to the history and traditions that make today’s daily performances possible. 

Hannay performs chamber music, appearing often with the New York Philharmonic Ensembles. She spends the summers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, playing with the Grand Teton Music Festival, where she is a founding member of the string quartet Wind River 4. In 2001, she was a featured soloist and guest principal viola with the London Chamber Players on a tour of South Africa.

Donn Trenner
Member Profiles

Donn Trenner: Pianist, Musical Director, Arranger, and Author

by Ginny Bales, Member of Local 400 (Hartford-New Haven, CT)

Donn Trenner

The remarkable career of Local 802 (New York City) and 47 (Los Angeles, CA) member Donn Trenner is highlighted in the book Leave It to Me: My Life in Music.

It would be remarkable enough to have played with jazz legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Anita O’Day, and many others; to have entertained the troops with Bob Hope or led the band for the original Tonight Show; to have served long stints as musical director for Ann-Margret, Nancy Wilson, and Shirley MacLaine; and to have declined doing the same for Frank Sinatra. But can you imagine what it was like to tour with big bands led by Les Brown, Charlie Barnet, or Buddy Morrow?

Donn Trenner, a member of Locals 802 (New York City) and 47 (Los Angeles, CA), has done all of these things in his dream career characterized by consistent hard work, unstinting devotion to quality musicianship, and careful attention to making gigs run smoothly on all levels.

The AFM is important to Trenner. “I am a very devoted union member, starting in New Haven when I was 15 years old. I believe the benefits of being a member outweigh anything else,” he says.

Trenner’s life and career began in Connecticut, and we are fortunate that he has returned to this area where he continues to lead the Hartford Jazz Orchestra. Everyone who has ever known or worked with Trenner appreciates his depth of musical experience, gentlemanly charm, and sense of humor. 

The book Leave It to Me: My Life in Music (BearManor Media, 2015) by Trenner and Tim Atherton, jazz educator at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Westfield State University in Massachusetts, tells the tale. It’s filled with gig stories and anecdotes often involving well-known musicians and entertainers. 

Those interested in understanding how to write arrangements that work well will find Trenner’s insights invaluable. One section of the book is devoted to his philosophy of orchestration, and the entire book is peppered with observations on arranging, dynamics, instrumental balance, stagecraft, and how to bring the best performance out of other musicians. 

At age 90, Trenner continues to be a role model. He connects us to iconic music “scenes” from classic jazz and big bands through international touring, TV, and Las Vegas-style shows. He continues to create beautiful music and also entertain through writing and speaking engagements.

A quote on Trenner’s piano reads: “Don’t just play notes—tell a story.” His key to happiness? “Keep music in your life.  Music and laughter are the most important beneficial ingredients in a person’s life.”