Download Fred Wesley and the New JB Horns

Fred Wesley and the New JB Horns
Fred Wesley - trombone & vocal
Bruce Cox - drums
Dwayne Dolphin - bass
Peter Madsen - keyboards
Reggie Ward - guitar
Phillip Whack - saxophone
Gary Winters - trumpet
www.funkyfredwesley.com
Island of Sv. Nikola, June 24, at 9 p.m.
Fred Wesley is a unique phenomenon on the American musical scene. Whether he plays funk, jazz,
blues, soul, or anything else, his precise, firm, and rhythmically catchy improvisations never leave the
audience indifferent. Raised in Alabama, the son of a high school teacher and a big band leader, he
started his musical education with the piano, continued it with the trumpet, and at the age of twelve, his
father gave him a trombone, which was to become his instrument.
The audience knows him best for his cooperation with the legendary James Brown. From 1968 to 1975,
Wesley was musical director, trombone player, composer, and arranger in Brown's JBs with whom he
greatly influenced the development of the contemporary pop music. As an instrumentalist, but also as an
author, he has left his mark on numerous hit recordings such as For the Elders, La Bossa, No One, Say it
Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud, Mother Popcorn, Hot Pants and Doing It to Death. Having left James
Brown, Wesley cooperated with George Clinton in Parliament-Funkadelic for several years.
In 1978, he joined the Count Basie Orchestra where he showed his prowess in jazz, which he studied in
his early days. His first jazz album, To Someone, was released in 1988, followed by New Friends (1990),
Comme Ci Comme Ca (1991), the live album Swing and Be Funky, and Amalgamation (1994). In the
early 1990s, he performed with his old James Brown's band fellows Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker as
the JB Horns. When Ellis left the band, the group changed name to The Maceo Parker Group. In 1996,
Wesley founded his own Fred Wesley Group which now performs as Fred Wesley and the New JBs.
During his forty-year-long career, the instrumentalist, arranger and producer Fred Wesley worked with a
number of world-known musicians, including Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton, Randy Crawford, New York
Voices, and Van Morrison. In 2002, he published his autobiography Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a
Sideman (Duke University Press). Wesley also teaches music. From 2004 to 2006 he taught at the Jazz
Department of North Carolina University, and now he teaches as a visiting professor to many schools,
including Berklee College of Music and Columbia College of Chicago.