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Willie Waldman delivers jazz Memphis-style

It was on Beale Street in 1983 when trumpeter Willie Waldman began his musical relationship with saxophone player Herman Green.

Waldman was a young musician on a marching band scholarship at Memphis State College, spending his evenings hanging around the downtown Memphis strip that was home to numerous clubs. Green was a saxophone player who had played with Rufus Thomas and Lionel Hampton, was a session player for Isaac Hayes and was a regular in the house band at Stax Records. Waldman was eager to play, and he sat in with Green’s band, struggling to keep up. At Green’s encouragement, both to help improve Waldman’s playing ability and to keep the young musician from fouling up his bands set, he began taking lessons from Green himself. That led Waldman to join Green’s band permanently, moving through the many sub-genres of jazz during their setsand incorporating a rock-fusion sound into the music they were making in and around Memphis.

Their relationship continues to this day. The Willie Waldman project will play at the Animas City Theatre on Saturday. In addition to Waldman on trumpet and Green on saxophone, Brian Jordan, Lee Leonard and Eric Delaney play guitar and Jim Brit plays drums.

In the 1990s, Waldman left Memphis and ended up in Los Angeles. Session work found him playing trumpet around the city, and eventually on the Snoop Dogg record “The Doggfather.” The branches of Los Angeles networking kept opening doors, and Waldman became the go-to trumpet player for Southern California rock bands. Sublime guitar player John Frusciante and others all were making use of his talent. Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction recruited the trumpet player to play with his other band, Porno for Pyros. Waldman then developed a relationship with Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros drummer Stephen Perkins, who was revitalizing his free-jazz and punk band Banyan, featuring a cast of musicians including Wilco’s Nels Cline and Minutemen/fIREHOSE bass player Mike Watt.

“Banyan was anti-singer. We could go down the whole list of problems with lead singers,” Waldman said last week while driving through Minnesota. “We formed Banyan by sticking the drums up front; the trumpet player is the singer. We basically formed what I consider a real jazz group in a modern sense, and we’re playing punk rock.”

That improvisation carries over to what the Willie Waldman Project does now. What musicians such as John Coltrane were doing decades ago influences this hectic yet structured, aggressively beautiful and formed-on-the-spot jazz.

“Everything we’re doing is jazz improvisation,” Waldman said.

Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu. Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager.

Bryant’s best

Friday: Bluegrass with Running Out of Road, 10 p.m. No cover. The Balcony Backstage, 600 Main Avenue upstairs, 764-4083.

Saturday: Jazz with Willie Waldman Project, 9:30 p.m. $5. Animas City Theatre, 128 E. College Drive, 799-2281.



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