Kenny Rampton Trumpet Interview
Welcome to the show notes for Episode #129 of The Other Side of the Bell – A Trumpet Podcast. This episode features trumpeter Kenny Rampton. Listen to or download the episode below:
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About Kenny Rampton
Trumpeter Kenny Rampton grew up in Las Vegas, and studied music at both the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and the Berklee College of Music. In 1989, he moved to New York where he quickly established his reputation as a versatile musician, touring and performing with a veritable who’s who in jazz. Kenny’s first road gig was a world tour with The Ray Charles Orchestra. After leaving the Ray Charles band, Kenny went on the road with legendary jazz drummer Panama Francis and The Savoy Sultans and soon thereafter, with The Jimmy McGriff Quartet. As a sideman, Kenny has also performed with jazz greats Wynton Marsalis, Jon Hendricks, The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, The Lincoln Center Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, Chico OFarrill’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Big Band, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Persip and Supersound, Illinois Jacquet, Dr. John, Edy Martinez, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Reuben Wilson, Charles Earland, Tony Monaco, Clark Terry, Slide Hampton, Marcus Roberts, Christian McBride, Geoff Keezer, Richard Bona and a host of others.
Kenny Rampton joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis as a full time member in 2010. He also leads his own groups in addition to performing with the Mingus Big Band, The Mingus Orchestra, The Mingus Dynasty, George Gruntz’ Concert Jazz Band, and The Manhattan Jazz Orchestra (under the direction of Dave Matthews). In 2010 Rampton performed with The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival, and was the featured soloist on the Miles Davis/Gil Evans classic version of Porgy and Bess. He toured the world with The Ray Charles Orchestra in 1990 and with the legendary jazz drummer Panama Francis, The Savoy Sultans, and The Jimmy McGriff Quartet, with whom he played for 10 years. As a sideman, Rampton has performed with Mingus Epitaph (under the direction of Gunther Schuller), Bebo Valdez’ Latin Jazz All-Stars, Maria Schneider, the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, Charles Earland, Dr. John, Lionel Hampton, Jon Hendricks, Illinois Jacquet, Geoff Keezer, Christian McBride, and a host of others.
Kenny was hired in 2010 as the trumpet voice on Sesame Street. Some of his Broadway credits include “Anything Goes” (lead/solo trumpet), “Finian’s Rainbow,” “The Wiz,” “Chicago: The Musical,” “In The Heights,” “Hair,” “Young Frankenstein,” and “The Producers,” “The Drowsy Chaperone,” “Spamalot,” “Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me,” “The Wedding Singer,” “Hot Feet” and several other shows on Broadway. Kenny can also be heard playing on many R&B, Blues, Pop and Hip Hop recordings. Rampton also toured the U.S. with the pop band Matchbox Twenty. Kenny has also recorded dozens of jingles for such products as Bell Atlantic, Coca Cola, Dos Equis, Pacific Bell, Garden Burger, Popeyes Chicken, Hersheys, Mercedes, Sears, KoolAid, Head and Shoulders, Blistex, BestBuy.Com, Huggies, Pampers, Burger King, Hummer, Red Lobster, AT&T, Verizon, PEDA, Ameritrade, Wheat Thins, Miller Lite, Charles Schwab, Kohls, Arbys, Wendys, Old Spice, Nivea, Stay Free and York Peppermint Patties.
Kenny Rampton Links
Podcast Credits
- “A Room with a View“ – composed and performed by Howie Shear
- Audio Engineer – Ted Cragg
- Cover Art – Phil Jordan
- Podcast Host – John Snell
- Cover art photo credit: Blushing Cactus Photography
Transcript
Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. It may contain spelling and other errors. If you would like to assist us in editing or translating this transcript, please let us know at info@bobreeves.com.
John Snell: Hello, and welcome to The Other Side of the Bell, a podcast dedicated to everything trumpet, brought to you by Bob Reeves Brass. We’ll help you take your trumpet playing to the next level. I’m John Snell, trumpet specialist at Bob Reeves Brass, and I’ll be your host for this episode. Joining me today is trumpeter Kenny Rampton.
We’ll get to Kenny’s interview here in a moment after a word from our sponsor and some trumpet news.
News: [00:01:00] We had an amazing show last month at the National Trumpet Competition, and I want to take a moment to thank Denny Edelbrock and Rebecca Wilt for organizing such an amazing event. John [00:02:00] Burgess is the trumpet professor there, the host at Texas Christian University. I can’t speak highly enough about this event.
800 and some odd trumpet players all performing at the highest level. Whether it’s the solo competitors in the jazz or classical or the ensembles, the small ensemble, large trumpet ensembles. speaking of which we were happy to sponsor the large trumpet ensemble division this year. A huge honor for us and happy to support the organization.
But if you missed the event, you weren’t able to go there or you didn’t catch the live stream. They have all of the competitors, I think the semi-finals and the finals available on the National Trumpet Competition YouTube channel. And I highly recommend checking it out, just to see what these young students, what level they’re performing at.
It’s not just the competition to see the comradery, people practicing outside, you know, meeting friends from all over, the world and, building relationships and sharing ideas and things like that. Really, really cool to see all of that going on. And of course, we [00:03:00] were super busy. I mean, there was three of us there at the booth and we sold out of alignments.
We sold several of the Shires horns we brought that found happy new homes. Lots of mouthpieces. A lot of folks are finding the Bob Reeves mouthpieces, whether it’s the classical stuff or the lead commercial stuff that we make mutes. I know a number of you went home with a new dizzy bop mute from Vin, the bop and the cup mute, of course.
So we sold out of those. And, no surprise, the guard bags are always a huge hit. So thank you to everyone who came by and thank you for the folks that just came by to say hi and are listeners of the podcast. I say this every episode, always, I have to pinch myself cause it’s super cool when folks come by and wanna say hi and tell me about what their favorite moment is from the podcast. Speaking of guard bags, we have a new shipment coming in, and this is gonna be a killer one. This is our shipment of triples for the year, triple trumpet bags are the most popular bag they make.
And we have a lot of styles, a lot of cool styles [00:04:00] coming in. Some of these styles we haven’t had in stock in over a year. We do have a pre-order list already formed, but if you’re not on there and wanna be, we are putting them up for sale this week. So all of our inventory, uh, we have some in stock, but all of our inventory that’s coming in in the next few days, you can pre-order.
And what’s more as a special gift to you, the podcast listener, we’re giving you a 15% off code. So during checkout, if you put in the code podcast, during checkout, you will save 15% off of any of our guard bags, not just the ones that we’re getting in on this shipment. than any of the ones we have in stock.
We have some wheelies. We have some doubles and singles in stock, some trumpet, flugel doubles. and then of course a ton, literally a ton of triple bags coming in with different styles. Some of those styles sold out last a shipment in under a week.
So if you see something on the website, trumpetmouthpiece.com, that you like. I would say hit the [00:05:00] checkout button because they won’t last long and it’ll probably be another six to eight months before we get more in.
Also, and this is no coincidence, we just started carrying the Hirschman mutes, including the popular Kenny Rampton Indigo Mute and the KR Indigo Max, plunger mute. These are excellent plunger mutes. it’s hard to find good ones at the department store, in the Home Goods store anymore, which.
Kenny and I will talk about in this upcoming interview. but we just had Wayne Berger on up the other day and he uses that in the studios and in his big band performances. so you can get those from trumpet mouthpiece.com as well as the cool the pixie mute. There’s not too many good pixie mutes on the market.
And they’re pep, pixie mute, which we also talk about. We have in stock. Last but not least, I do want to talk about some of the trips we have coming up. I still do not have a date for the Dylan music trip. It is gonna happen, I promise. It’s just we’re busy and they’re busy, and so trying to nail down dates that are gonna work out for the [00:06:00] both of us, is a little bit difficult, but we are both committed to making that happen.
I know a number of you have already emailed and said you wanna secure your alignment spots, and don’t worry if you email us, we will make sure. whether we’ve announced the dates or not, that you have those slots secured. And of course, as soon as the dates for our trip to Dylan music are announced, we will let you know.
Also coming up, as I mentioned in previous episodes, the International Women’s Brass Conference at the end of May. That’s Memorial Day weekend over in Connecticut. We have an alignment signup sheet for that, on our website. If you go to bobreeves.com/i wbc. You’ll have all the information for, International Women’s Brass Conference.
I’ll be doing valve alignments there the following week, the last few days of May, is the International Trumpet Guild Conference at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. That alignment link is up, that is expected to sell out as well. So if you’re going to IG and you want a valve alignment pre-order now, [00:07:00] that website is bobreeves.com/ig
And last but not least is the William Adam Trumpet Festival in Clarksville, Tennessee. That’s the middle of June. and that one, will be bobreeves.com/williamAdam. And of course we’ll have all of those links down below in the description and the show notes for this episode. And, I know there are a few months out, but like I said, ITG is always a sellout.
Adam Fest is always a sell out for an alignments. this is our first domestic IWBC conference. We went, to one in Japan last year in Mito City. Had a great time, unfortunately ’cause of the facilities we weren’t able to do alignments, but I’m guessing, uh, as these things tend to go, uh, we’ll be popular at IW WBC in Connecticut as well.
So all of those links are down below and you can always go to bobreeves.com or trumpetmouthpiece.com and search for those events and they should pop up. And last but not least, you can always email us [00:08:00] info@bobreeves.com. if you can’t find what you’re looking for.
Well, we’re looking forward to seeing you on the road one of these days this year. And with that, that’s all the news I have. Let’s get right to my interview with Kenny Rampton.
Kenny Rampton bio: My special guest today is acclaimed trumpeter, Kenny Rampton. Growing up in Las Vegas and studying music at UNLV and Berkeley College of Music, Kenny quickly made his mark after moving to New York in 1989. His career includes world tours with the legendary Ray Charles orchestra and jazz greats like Panama, Francis, Illinois, Jette, Lionel Hampton, and Dr. John.
A mainstay of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Since 2010, Kenny also leads his own ensembles and is the trumpet voice behind the beloved PBS series, Sesame Street. His Broadway credits span from anything goes to the producers and his versatile sound can be heard in numerous r&b, pop and hip hop recordings.
Additionally, Kenny [00:09:00] collaborated with Hirschman Mutes to design the innovative KR Indigo plunger mute. We’re thrilled to have Kenny Rampton on the show today.
Interview
John Snell: Well, I’m so happy to have joining me on the other side of the bell today, Kenny Rampton. Kenny, thanks for joining me.
Kenny Rampton: My pleasure. Great to see you on the other side of the screen, John.
John: And I gotta say you’re a real trooper. I know. Just a, like a few days ago you’d lost your voice and uh, you wanted to keep the commitment to doing the interview. Really happy to have you here and talk about the trumpet.
So let’s do it.
Kenny: yeah, man. Absolutely.
John: And let’s start right at the beginning. How, How did you find the trumpet? You grew up in Vegas were see a show and see a trumpet player, or how did it come along?
Kenny: My parents were both musicians. My mom played piano. My dad was a percussionist. my dad, most people who, if you ever saw the Jerry Lewis telethon, when you were a kid, you saw my dad. My dad was the guy who did the timpani roll. Every time EB McMahon said Tim Roll and would give the tote. on the Jerry Lewis telethon back [00:10:00] in the day.
That was my dad. My dad was the first call percussionist in Las Vegas. He played with all the top cats in town. so I was always around great musicians from the time I was born. My dad used to have jam sessions in our garage at night after he’d played shows, and I got to hang out and listen to people like Carl Fontana and, um.
Just great players that come by the house, Tommy Turk. and they’d have jam sessions with my dad. So I was always around the music from day one, and my mom taught me how to read music. I used to go to church on Sundays and sit next to my mom. She had the best seat in the house.
She was the organist for the church, and she taught me how to read music so I could help her turn pages. While she was playing the organ. at first she would just nod her head and then I started to figure it out, when it was coming up, learn how to read music a little bit
John: rec, recognizing the patterns and stuff. How cool. You know, it’s, It’s interesting how many, church organist, musicians we’ve had on the podcast. Yeah. It’s amazing. Yeah, my mom played, or my dad played organ in [00:11:00] the church. It’s just being exposed to that music.
Tell us about Vegas when you were growing up. I know things have changed a lot now, but uh, do you still have like the house bands at that time and, shows coming through?
Kenny: Back then they had full orchestras on stage. It wasn’t just, a rhythm section and a horn player. It was a full string section with a full orchestra, with a big band inside of the orchestra. So I. My dad would play with Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett or any of the Rat Pack guys. My dad was playing with all the Rat Pack guys when they recorded the original they filmed the original Ocean Oceans 11 movie.
My dad was on the gig with I, I think at the Sands at the time, and playing with all those guys. Back in those days it was a full orchestra on stage. a lot of working musicians. It was unbelievable the scene in Vegas.
John: So you were hearing the best of the best, basically
Kenny: Yeah. Yeah.
John: by them having a jam session in your garage. so then how did the trumpet come around?
Kenny: my big brother Dale, who’s a marvelous musician, he’s a great percussionist and he’s still rounds, still in Vegas [00:12:00] playing. I had to fall in his footsteps. And he was the best drummer in the state. He was phenomenal. He had a reputation. I had to fall in his footsteps.
And when it came time for me to play, I actually wanted to play the saxophone, because Dale told me, saxophone players got all the girls and he said, you don’t wanna play percussion or drums because you’re setting up and tearing down, when everybody else is leaving, going to the party.
So you don’t want to do that. Keyboard player’s gotta bring their keyboards base, got a bunch of stuff they gotta haul, so you gotta play a horn. And he said saxophone players always got the girls. So I wanted to play saxophone when I was a little kid, but it was more expensive than a trumpet.
And my dad actually took me to a rehearsal. He was playing with Johnny Hagues Relief Band and the lead trumpet player in that band at that time was Rick Baptist. And so Rick let me play his trumpet and talked to my dad about it. Lee Trump bone was Carl Fontana. Carl, let me try his trombone out.
Lead Alto was Charlie McClain. I got to try Charlie’s Alto, and see which one felt the best. And Rick told my dad that I would be a [00:13:00] natural at the trumpet after, he just showed me how to blow air through it and I could get a sound right away. So Rick told my dad I should be a trumpet player.
And my dad, because the trumpet was a lot cheaper than a saxophone. at the time my dad got me a trumpet. so that’s what I started when I went into sixth grade. At 11 years old, I started on the trumpet.
John: so we all have, we have all all have Rick Baptist to thank
Kenny: Yeah, that’s, yeah.
Rick is still a dear friend, man
John: yeah. Yeah. Love Rick. Yeah. I just had a, had breakfast with him, just a few. He’s, he lives right around the corner from the shop now,
Kenny: Oh, right on. Tell him I said, Hey, next time you see him, man, give him a hug
John: Well, You gotta come out and we’ll have breakfast together. It be
Kenny: That sounds good. Yeah, man. I.
John: you started, you said it was 11 years old. Did you, were you playing in the school bands? Were you getting private lessons?
Kenny: Yeah, I started off just playing in the school band. My band director in sixth grade, his name was Jeff Barish great saxophone player, UNLV grad. He used to give us these little cards to fill out. We had to take home and when we practiced, we put how many minutes a day we would practice.
And then my [00:14:00] mom had to sign the card, to say yes. He actually practiced 15 minutes today and, to make sure we practiced. So I did. And, it is funny ’cause I realized when I practiced a little bit more, I got better quicker, and so that first 10 or 15 minutes that you’re required to do, became 20 minutes, became 30 minutes, and then by the end of the semester, the end of the year, I’m showing up with a card that says five and a half hours.
And and my mom signed it, said you really practiced five and a half hours. I was 11. Yeah,
John: Wow.
Kenny: I discovered that when I practiced, I got better. When I got better, it became easier. I. When it became easier, it was more fun, and I got more attention from other kids and I started to become popular within that little community of the band students.
And, all those things just fed my ego basically, so I found that I got. Fairly good, fairly quick, then by the time I went to seventh grade, I got into junior high school. I made first chair [00:15:00] in the band, in the, the school band. And I made first trumpet and solo trumpet in the jazz band, and I made the junior high school honor band and all that kind of stuff.
Wow, this is cool. I’m, I have a knack for this. I, and it was a combination of having a knack for it and having. I really practiced a lot when I was pretty young. that, just made me a little bit better than I would’ve been otherwise. I was lucky to have band directors like that, like Jeff Barish or, Dennis Figuera, who’s my band director in junior high school or Alan Lewis in high school, or, when I got to college, Frank Galli at UNLV I was lucky to have some really good band directors. I. Who saw talent and fed that talent, and encouraged me a lot. Alan Lewis was a great band director in high school.
He was also a member of the Band Directors Association in California, which meant his students in Las Vegas could audition for California honor bands. So a couple of us, we actually auditioned for like a California Allstate band my senior year and made it. I think I was first or second [00:16:00] chair in the California Allstate Band or honor some honor band, and he would, he drove us out there to participate.
John: Yeah, and that’s great acknowledging that the band directors, these music educators are for so many of us are our our first foray into music. And sometimes our only ones, ’cause I know some folks can’t afford lessons or don’t have the opportunity. They live in places where they can’t have private lessons.
And, to have band directors that really foster that passion and that drive that’s great.
Kenny: They’re the unsung heroes, man. They
John: Yeah. Yeah. The unsung heroes. Yeah. So did your parents obviously being musicians, I’m assuming they helped you along with your passions supported you. ’cause I know sometimes the parents are like, you want to be in a creative field, not a doctor, a lawyer.
Kenny: Both of my parents were musicians, so they got it. My dad connected me with my first private trumpet teacher, who I still look at as one of my teachers. He’s still around, he’s still playing. he’s a dear friend. He’s like a, one of my father figures in this life.
he’s still in Las Vegas named Tommy Perello.
John: Oh, [00:17:00] Tommy. Yeah.
Kenny: Yeah, so I, he was my first private teacher. we’re still in touch. Every time I go to Vegas I reach out to him to at least say hi. If not, go and have some Italian food somewhere. Tommy’s a dear friend, man.
John: What was it like studying with him? ’cause I, I had, folks that aren’t aware, Tommy was like the guy in Vegas for decades, right? I mean, Since maybe the beginning of Vegas when it first,
Kenny: yeah, I mean, he’s, he’s one of the guys in the history of Lee Trumpet playing period historically. What he’s done in his career and who he’s played with. And, everybody’s heard Tommy Perello play, whether they realize it or not, sweet Caroline, that’s Tommy Perello, ba excuse my singing voice,
John: the, those three notes. That’s it.
Kenny: That was Tommy. He played that, but he played lead with Harry James, with Woody Herman. He played Lead on Broadway. Funny girl. back in the early days of, when a funny girl first came out. Was it Streisand, I think. Is that, Tommy is a phenomenal player.
He’s a great educator, great teacher, passionate [00:18:00] about the trumpet. he’s a wonderful cat man. I love Tommy, man. He’s family,
John: Yeah. So what, when you were young, I’m assuming when you studied with him, like you were already practicing five hours kind of thing, like she was probably happy to have a young student like that coming into his studio.
Kenny: Yeah I think so. But we worked a lot outta the book. I like the Arvin book and thi things like that and really, focusing on fundamentals and, um, he used to, he would tell me to always play, always play with beauty. He would always say play it beautiful.
That’s how he pronounced. Beautiful. Play it beautiful. Make it beautiful, and he would, always emphasize the importance of having beauty in your sound of singing through the horn. And, there’s a reason why he was the first call lead trumpet player for decades, in Las Vegas, man he’s one of the greats, so the lessons, I’ll never forget the lessons I had with him.
he was a wonderful. Wonderful teacher and mentor. And he, and quite frankly, he still is on a lot of levels. At a certain point, I [00:19:00] started studying with somebody different. I, I studied with Tommy through, junior high school in my first couple years of high school. And then one summer, during high school I went to a, a summer camp. Back then it was called Snms, SNSM. Snms
John: That’s a great one.
Kenny: stood for Southern Nevada Summer Music School. It was up in Mount Charleston. And, the trumpet teacher, there was a guy named Walter Blanton, and I met Walt, and Walt had a very different outlook on everything from anybody I had ever met. Walt was all about artistry and the artistry of playing the trumpet, the artistry of composing artistry of.
Playing creative music. Walt played principal trumpet with the Las Vegas Symphony at the time. It’s now the Las Vegas Philharmonic, but at the time it was the Las Vegas Symphony. he had a brass quintet doing kind of crossover, classical and jazz. he had a piano list [00:20:00] quartet. he was really into Don Cherry and Miles Davis.
He was really into Maurice Andre playing the shit outta the piccolo trumpet. Chamber music, orchestral music playing lead in a big band. Walt could do it all. He had the most glorious Sonora tone I’d ever heard on the trumpet, and I got to study with him at schisms and it just opened my eyes up.
he saw the potential in me. He didn’t try and steal me away from Tommy or anything like that. He just, he saw the potential in me and he told me that, he said, you’ve got the pot potential to really grow and to become a great artist. He said, right now you’re a pretty good trumpet player, but there’s life beyond that and you could become a great artist and,
I had never really thought about it in those terms. And at the time I was a mess up as a kid. I was, doing stupid shit the kids do and and Walt I was having trouble, my parents were divorced and, having family trouble and I was kinda lost and Walt took me in, him and his wife, Carol [00:21:00] Blanton, who Walt passed away a few years back.
I miss him every day, man. Carol is still around. I talk to her not as often as I should, but whenever I do, we talk for three hours straight. Carol is still like a mother figure to me in a lot of ways. Walt was another father figure to me. when I left Vegas and, moved to Boston to go to Berkeley and then later moved to New York, I’d get on the phone with Walt and we would talk for hours on end.
It would just be like, you know, Walt was one of my greatest sources of inspiration for life. I. Not just trumpet, but life, he was one of those people, like when he would talk to you about anything, it could apply to the trumpet, it could apply to. Ideas for being a composer, for being a creative being, for being a human being.
And Walt was really dedicated to the depth of humanity of really what it’s all about in a bigger picture, so Walt was a huge influence on me. So I, man, I was very lucky to have not only great band directors, but great teachers like [00:22:00] Tommy Man, I, and Wal
John: Yeah.
Kenny: Incredible.
Educators and humans, human beings who really saw a kid, Walt saw a kid who was clearly troubled. I was, I had some problems when, and Walt was like, come on man. I think it was my 16th birthday, he took me to a records store. I think it was Odyssey Records, and he bought me, I think he bought me 16 records on my 16th birthday. And it was basically the history of jazz trumpet. He bought me all these records. Then he started making me tapes of the ones that I really liked and identified with Miles Davis or Kenny Wheeler. He would start making me tapes, he’d make me a tape of Miles Davis on one side.
He’d put kind of blue on the other side. He put live evil. So it’d be completely contrasting versions of Miles Davis, and I would listen to ’em both and be like, oh my God, that’s, incredible. So Walt, Walt was an incredible educator and inspiration man.
John: Oh man. And it just fell in your lap then at the festival. And at a young [00:23:00] age, and it seemed like the right time. Just like you said and he was he teaching at UNLV at the time too? So did
you went on and study with him?
Kenny: yeah. That’s why I stayed in Vegas. I, after high school, I stayed in Las Vegas for two years before I moved to Boston. To go to Berkeley. Because I wanted to keep studying with Walt. ’cause I was learning so much from him. It was, and I was like a sponge at that time, and Walt was like my second dad,
John: yeah. I I never got to meet Walt. But I studied with Charlie Davis and they were obviously close friends.
Kenny: Yeah, they went to college together at iu.
John: They were at, yeah, they were together,
Kenny: In fact, Charlie and Carol Blanton are still very close friends.
John: Yeah.
Kenny: I got a lesson from Charlie like a year and a half ago or something, man, when I was in la. I love Charlie, man. Good dude.
John: Got old Charlie, you got, gotta do the glasses, do the Charlie Davis look, have that ingrained in me. well That’s great and I’m great you brought up Wal because he is one of those players that I wished I could have interviewed when we first started the podcast, just to have his voice out there.
But, the best we can do now is have those [00:24:00] kinds of stories. since he went to Indiana, I mean, what did he did he give you things from the Adam routine or did what kind of trumpet plane stuff would you guys do?
Kenny: Yeah. When I got with Walt, it was all Bill Adam. In fact, he brought Bill a Adam to Vegas a couple times and I got some lessons with Mr. Adam. but yeah, it was all routine. I still do the routine every day. I’ve been doing it since then. I was, I think I was I don’t know, 14, 15. I. When I started studying with Walt, so somewhere in there, 15, 16, somewhere in there.
I studied with Tommy my first two years of high school. Then I switched over to Walt my second two years of high school and two years in college. When I was at UNLV, I studied with Walt and it was Bill Adam routine every day, and like I said, I got a couple lessons with Mr. Adam, who was amazing.
I still, I have videos. I still. Like I said, I still do the Bill Adam routine every day. I got Charlie’s book on it, Charlie Davis’ book. I’ve gotten lessons, in the last couple years with Charlie, in person with Greg Wing. I’ve worked with other Adam students, [00:25:00] both online and in person, cast in New York, like Jeremy.
How do you say Jeremy’s last name, Miller.
John: Yeah.
Kenny: together and practiced with Jeremy one time, and, he wouldn’t call it a lesson and he said, let’s just practice together. But I learned a lot from him in that one day that I hung with him for a few hours. We hung and played routine and man, he is a hell of a trumpet player, man.
And he grilled some killer steaks too. I gotta say. He’s a good dude, man. He’s a great guy, man.
John: gotta look him up next time I’m in. I know Jeremy’s called the shop a number of times through the years. but yeah, I have to, next time I’m out in New York, I gotta look him up. So what were your aspirations at the time? I know you’re saying Walt Lan was talking to, inspired you to be an artist and the, bigger picture stuff.
Did you have any kind of direction in terms of where you wanted to go for with your career? Or did you just wanna play trumpet?
Kenny: It’s interesting. I was just telling this story, this workshop I did with these kids yesterday. I was studying at UNLV studying with Walt. we’re working out of all the books, the beach book the Char. Of course, all the Bill Adams stuff the [00:26:00] Schlossberg, the Herbert, l Clark, the Arvin book, and working on orchestral excerpts.
and, I was thinking maybe I wanted to be an orchestral trumpet player. And, I played like in high school, I was first chair Allstate Orchestra and that, that kind of stuff. And I enjoyed playing certain orchestral pieces. I really liked when our civic symphony in Las Vegas played Lieutenant Kii suite.
It had some nice stuff for the trumpet to play, you know, those really beautiful lyrical solos. And I enjoyed doing that kind of stuff. but I really loved jazz.
I really, I loved listening to Count Bassy Band, which my dad listened to a lot. My dad listened to a lot of the Ma Modern Jazz quartet.
I was hearing Count Bassy. I was hearing a lot of Buddy Rich and Louis Belson records. My dad was a percussionist and drummer. My brother, my big brother’s a drummer, so I heard a lot of great big band drumming on record and really loved it. And I had a lot of fun playing in jazz band. in high school I was always the lead trumpet player.
When I got to college, I wasn’t the lead trumpet [00:27:00] player anymore. There were guys who had better range than me and who could do that better. So I started focusing more on soloing and Walt started turning me on to, from Louis Armstrong on, through Booker Little and Freddie Hubbard, and Clifford Brown, and Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Durham.
And, he was turning me on to all these great jazz musicians. I was listening. Started transcribing and started wanting to play jazz. I wasn’t the jazz, the best jazz trumpet player at UNLV either, but I wanted to play, so there was a little pizza place across the street from the music building.
It was called Venos Pizza. And we used to hang out in there and, eat pizza and drink beer and, I was underage, but they didn’t care. And I became friends with the owner and I asked the owner one day, I said, what’s your slowest night? He said Wednesday. I said, could I bring a jazz quartet in here on Wednesday nights and play for free pizza and beer?
He said, sure. So I booked, I got a little steady gig once a week and put together a quartet, sometimes a quintet, and we would just play [00:28:00] tunes. And so I started working on it, really focusing on playing jazz and found, there were a couple other students in the school, bass player named Glen Brady, who was a great musician.
And we became best friends. For a period in college and, started really focusing on that. So I went into a trumpet lesson one day with Walt, so I was focusing on jazz, classical, I knew that I could never be, a Maurice Andre. He was my favorite. My favorite classical trumpet player.
It was mostly pickle trumpet, but he was my favorite, but there’s also, bud, there was, Charlie Schluter, all these amazing orchestral players who were just flawless with the most crystal clear, beautiful sounds. And I didn’t see myself ever getting to that level. I just couldn’t imagine that I would ever get good enough to be the best, So Walt, he saw that I had talent and he was working with me to become the best that I could be and give me these orca orchestral excerpts to work on and, Bach things to play on the trumpet, [00:29:00] cantata, or whatever, prelude and, all these things that I was working on.
And I went into a lesson one week. He gave me a piece by Bach, and I’ll never forget this man, I hadn’t practiced it. And I didn’t really like it, and I went in and tried to bullshit my way through it. You can’t do that with somebody who knows the difference. Walt knows the difference, he knew the difference. So I went in and he stopped me. He said, Kenny, what the hell are you doing, man? You sound like you haven’t practiced this at all, and I said, yeah, I haven’t really, I was working on the changes on the loan together.
He said what do you want to do with trumpet? Man? You’ve clearly put some time into learning how to play the horn. You, I get the impression we wanna become a professional trumpet player. What do you want to do with it? And I, you know, I had talent for playing classical music. I was pretty good at it.
And I was pretty fundamentally sound in most ways as a trumpet player. And I told him, I said I wanna play jazz. And he got a [00:30:00] really serious look on his face. ’cause Walt played jazz. He toured with Woody Herman. He, he had done, he’s done it all. Classical and jazz, lead, commercial, everything.
He got really serious with me. He said, you wanna play jazz? I. Said, you don’t play jazz. You don’t even know what jazz is. He said I’ve walked in and seen you playing with a jazz band and you’re all wearing funny hats and sunglasses. Think thinking you look cool. He said, that’s corny, man. That’s not jazz.
And he explained to me, jazz music is an art form and it’s not something that you just play. It’s something that you dedicate your life to if you want to do it. He said, don’t expect to ever make any money. You’re dedicating your life to an art. Don’t expect to ever have a family. Don’t expect to ever be able to afford to buy a house or a car.
You are in it because you’ve dedicated your life to that art. That’s what jazz is. You wanna play jazz, that’s what it is. But then he said, but if you take care of the art, the art will take care of you. [00:31:00] And it is like when he said that to me, like a light switch went off in my head. I took that to heart and was like, yeah, that’s what I want to do.
I want to dedicate my life to this art form of jazz. And so that’s when I decided, Las Vegas wasn’t the town that I wanted to live in because there’s always been a strong jazz community there. There’s always been like the Las Vegas Jazz Society promoting, to bring Dizzy Gillespie in, or Freddie Hubbard, you know, and I got to see some great players when I was a kid.
Because of that. But where did Dizzy Gillespie live? He lived in New York. New York? Yeah. You know where did Art Blakey live? New York. And man, if I really want to be serious about this art form, I. I’m gonna need to move to New York. And that’s, I decided like within a couple weeks after that lesson with Walt, I gotta get to New York somehow.
And just so happened, they came in with pamphlets and whatnot, like recruiting from the Berkeley [00:32:00] College of Music and passed ’em out and I took that and I applied to the Berkeley college music scene, Boston as being a stepping stone to New York and. Made a recording, sent it in. I got a full ride, to Berkeley.
I ended up moving to Boston and leaving Las Vegas to, I. Take a chance and see, you know, ’cause I figured, man, if I didn’t do this, I’d regret it the rest of my life. My dad told me I was crazy. He’s like, Kenny, you got your whole career mapped out for you here in Las Vegas. You already, you’re already studying with Tommy Perello.
Walt Blanton, you’re gonna be working on the strip as a pro. You’re a matter of a couple years. You’re gonna have a great career here in Las Vegas. But I told him, I said, I don’t wanna be a show musician. I didn’t wanna play commercial music. I wanted to play jazz. And that, that was it.
And he thought I was crazy. He was like, I gotta take this chance. I remember, I. In my bedroom I had a poster of the New York skyline on the wall, and I used to go to sleep every night [00:33:00] looking at that poster, just imagining one day living in New York, and it happened, you know, I guess that was my vision board, when I was a kid, without looking at it in those terms, but it kinda was.
I got to Boston and moved to Boston with a great Alto player from Vegas who was following a similar path at the time, named Phil Wig Fall, who ended up moving back to Vegas.
And he’s first call Lead Alto for pretty much anything in Vegas now. But That’s how I ended up getting to New York event eventually.
John: And as a jazz player, all thanks to a, to Bach.
Kenny: Yeah.
John: But, and then also the again, Wal LAN’s, you know, how many trumpet teachers have a student came in and obviously didn’t practice, would say you need to practice, and then starts berating, or, basically going down that path instead of take seeing the bigger picture of why didn’t you practice?
Kenny: he berated me first before he,
John: Oh, okay. Yeah.
Kenny: He cursed at me for a good half hour.
John: Even if you don’t wanna do it, you still need to
Kenny: You stupid little mother. Yeah. He just went off on me and told me how [00:34:00] ignorant and stupid I was to say, Bach gives me a headache
And he was
John: a little bit of both sides there? Yeah. A little
Kenny: but then he said, what do you want to do?
Then when I did that, we shifted my lessons from practicing orchestral excerpts. To turning off the lights and playing free and playing jazz and telling me that I needed to understand the role playing in a rhythm section and I need to learn how to play a baseline on the trumpet. And he taught me, I need to be able to walk on, walk a 12 bar blues as a bass player on the trumpet, and it started to open up my ears and my mind.
To actually learning how to play jazz. So then my lessons took a shift, ’cause Walt understood that’s what I wanted to do, and he was, he saw I was serious and man he shifted things and taught me more than I could handle. I’m still learning from it. And he’s passed away several years ago.
John: going all in on jazz. And who, so who did you so you were jazz major at at Berkeley. Who did you study with there?
Kenny: Two different guys. My first year I studied with Jeff Stout. And then my second year I [00:35:00] studied with Greg Hopkins. Both were great in different ways. Jeff really focused a lot on learning tunes, and learning. Learning about the core changes and the functioning of the core changes. Greg, Focused a lot on creative improvisation and ideas for how to creatively improvise as well as ARR and compose. Greg was deep man. Lessons with Greg were. It wasn’t about learning tunes as much as it was about really getting inside your creative spirit and your creative mind, and being able to, share that through the trumpet and through music.
Both were great teachers in different ways, but I learned a lot from both Greg and from from Jeff. I also studied some with her Pomeroy. I took his line writing class. I played in the recording band. with her Pomeroy my second year at Berkeley, which is the top jazz ensemble that’s kinda like the equivalent of the one o’clock band at North Texas state, and a lot of great players went [00:36:00] through that band. a lot of very famous players went through that band, but, the, I had some wonderful teachers at Berkeley, Billy Pierce, tenor player, great tenor player, who I idolized, at the time because of his work with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
also Donald Brown, piano player who played with Art Blakey was teaching at Berkeley at the time. A lot of great ensembles. I played in the Art Blakey Ensemble. I played in the avant-garde ensemble, which was led by George Garone, who is to this day, one of my favorite tenor players.
Not alive, but who has ever lived. I just heard him play last week at a memorial for a friend who passed away, and he’s just one of the most deep. Brilliant improvisers I’ve ever heard on any instrument. George Garone. So I got to, Hal Crook was another great teacher, Phil Wilson. I got to work with a lot of great teachers and ensemble leaders when I was at Berkeley.
John: And were you freelancing at the time as well? Were you starting to your professional career getting groups together or sidelining[00:37:00]
Kenny: Of that. I was doing that in Vegas. I first played with Lola Flaa when I was 16 on the strip. and I’ve always, since then I’ve always, I. Had a foot in that world of being a working trumpet player. And when I got to Boston, I did a lot of Latin gigs first. A lot of cumbia salsa, meringue gigs, things like that.
A lot of students do, they all use trumpet. And then I. Met, I think it may have been through a friend of mine who’s in Cleveland, I believe, who was in Boston at the time. A guy named Steve Enos. He’s a great trumpet player. And I think he turned me onto the Winker orchestras. it was a family, the Winker family.
Their father Ed was a piano player. Their mother played bass. the sons, the two sons one. Bill Whitaker was a drummer, and his brother Bo Whitaker was a trumpet player. Bo I think was the little brother, but he was the prodigy. but they had a family band. They played at the Parker House in Boston every week.
And they, it was what they called a GB gig [00:38:00] in Boston gb. At first when I heard GB gig, I was thinking Gary Burton, ’cause he taught at Berkeley. But no, it was, it means general business. And in New York it’s called a club date. playing weddings and parties and that kind of stuff.
And they had several bands that they would, send around town. Their regular gig was at the Parker House, and they did a thing during the week for students that they wanted to help to train to become professional musicians. And so you go to the Whitaker’s house and you play a jam session basically, and they’d hand out music for you to learn, for you to memorize and learn.
And playing. They would stylistically teach you how to play it properly, and tell you who to listen to. And it was a great training ground. It was outside of school. This was not a school thing. It was a, it was just a situation. A lot of younger guys like myself were in it. I was in college at the time.
Bunch of us calls. College kids and then the Winker family. And a few of the pros would come out into the basically training sessions. And then when you got good enough, they’d send you to the Parker House to sit in, and then they would put you [00:39:00] on the gig at the Parker House and they would pay you. And it paid better than playing a Kumbia gig.
A meringue gig, and you could dress nice, put on a suit and you’d finish at a decent hour and. so I started doing those. A lot of great players came through the Winker orchestras playing one of, one, a dear friend of mine who’s in New York. He’s a first call trumpet player on Broadway, probably, or one of the two or three first call lead trumpet players on Broadway named Tony Ick.
Tony played with the Whitaker orchestras when he was at the New England Conservatory.
John: Yeah.
Kenny: it was a great training ground for me to learn songs, learn how to play, quote, like society, music, I’m still in touch with them. They’re on Facebook and, when I started making mutes and stuff, I sent Boa Plunger.
He asked me did I have any good old Harmon music he needed to find. So I sent him a Harmon too, you know,
John: How cool.
Kenny: I’m still in touch with them. They’re great guys.
John: so great little kind of training ground bridge the gap there between college and, and the professional world. How did you end [00:40:00] up in New York after Berkeley was, I know it was on your vision board, so to
Kenny: Yeah I mean it’s, it is funny ’cause, that was always the goal was to get to New York eventually. And, the Boston Jazz Society, had, I’m not sure if they still have it or not, but they had a program where they would, it was a scholarship program and they’d give two scholarships a year.
One to a student at Berkeley and one to a student at the New England Conservatory. The scholarship at the time was $2,000. And they would give it, like I said, to one student a year, the year before I won Tony Hart, Antonio Hart had won it, who is, all over the place playing with everybody.
Such a wonderful sax player, alto player man, phenomenal musician and educator. He won the year before I did. My last year at Berkeley, I applied for the scholarship. I didn’t think I would get it. There were a lot of players who I looked up to at the school who honestly were better players than I was.
But. They gave it to me and to, to a student at NEC. [00:41:00] But the thing is, they gave the $2,000 directly to me.
Part of it was I got to play the jazz picnic. I got to play with Nat Adderley, at the jazz picnic in Boston. And, I, he asked me what I wanna play. I said work song. So I got to play work song with Nat Adderley when I was a college
John: Oh, what
Kenny: Um, but But they gave that $2,000 directly to me rather than to the school to pay for anything. ’cause my classes, I was on full scholarship so I got the money. So I’d never seen that much money in my life. I thought I was a millionaire as far as I was concerned. And my best friend at that time in college was a young piano player who was at Berkeley with me.
Named Jeff Keer. And Jeff had just been basically offered the gig with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Art Blakey came through Boston, played the Regatta Bar, and Jeff and I went to hang out and James Williams had told Art Blakey about Jeff and invited him to come up and sit in. and he sat in and played his butt off.
And Art Blakey said, when you come to New York, call me, you’ve got a gig. And, here I am. I’ve got this [00:42:00] $2,000. My best friend has been basically been offered for where I was at the time, the greatest gig known to man for a jazz musician who was playing with our Blake and the Jazz messengers, so I talked to Jeff, I said, Jeff. We gotta move to New York now. It was like during, like the beginning of the summer, the end of the semester, he’s man, I can’t I’m only in my second year of college or first year of college. He just finished actually. And he had already been signed to a record deal.
He was gonna be going to New York to play a week of the Vanguard already. I’m like, man you’ve got a record deal. You’re going to New York to play the Vanguard already. Let’s go, let’s move there together. And I. If you asked him today, he would probably tell you that I talked him into moving to New York.
But we ended up moving to New York together. That $2,000 didn’t go very far, but it was, it was enough to, for us to be able to secure an apartment. He ended up getting the gig with Art Blakey. He was offered the gig with Miles Davis too. Um, At the same time he chose Art Blakey. That’s when I think Joey d Francesco went with Miles Davis at that [00:43:00] time.
But Jeff was he was a great and is a brilliant musician. He, I think he won a Grammy last year for a composition he wrote, or an arrangement he wrote, but he’s phenomenal. Great educator too. But we moved to New York together, man. And I worked odd jobs, worked temp jobs, worked at Chemical Bank at the time, which is now Chase bought out, got bought out by Chase, but I worked out in the, in the basement, open up, safe deposit boxes for people wanting to come and, count their jewelry or their money or their stocks or whatever they had in there.
- And I would sit down with my trumpet and the practice mute and the tape player and practice. ’cause nobody was ever down there, except occasionally somebody would come down, I’d get a call, Hey, so and so’s coming down. So you know those boxes, they have two keys. They have their key and I have the master key.
So we both open ’em up and they would do their thing and when they would finish, they would go away. Then I’d practice,
John: Interesting. That’s a
great
Kenny: That’s how I got to New York though, was the Boston Jazz Society and I felt really guilty about it for a long time. And I went back to Boston and played at the Regatta [00:44:00] Bar I think it was with John Hendricks.
The Boston Jazz Society had a table up front. All people, like the president of the Boston Jazz Society, all the heads of it sitting right there up front and I’m up there playing and I felt horrible. I’m like, man, they gave me this money to continue my studies and I used it to move to New York, and I felt really guilty.
And we finished the set and they called me over, Kenny, come here, sit with us. I’m like, oh God. So I went and I, and I sat with them and they’re like, Kenny, you’re doing such great things. We’re so proud of you and I. And it was just like weight was lifted. I was like, I felt guilty. This is like five years later or something.
And I said, man, I felt so guilty all these years, thank you for saying that. ’cause why do you feel guilty? I told him, I said, because you gave me money to continue my studies at Berkeley and that’s what I used to move to New York with, and I didn’t do what you asked me to do.
And I just felt bad. I said, no, that’s what you needed to do. That’s how you continued your education. And it’s true, so I’m, I’ll always be [00:45:00] grateful to them. And, I moved to New York. I worked at the bank until one day I got a lucky break. I was playing in a rehearsal band and I.
One of the trumpet players who I met that day, had just moved to New York from la, a guy named Jeff k. And Jeff, was on break from Ray Charles Orchestra. He was one of Ray Charles trumpet players. He was playing the solo chair with Ray Charles, very lyrical, beautiful player. And Jeff and I took the subway after rehearsal together, I was going back to Brooklyn.
He was going downtown, I think we took the train together and he asked me for my number. I’m like, yeah, man. He said, yeah, you never know. Sometimes Ray’s looking for somebody, and next thing I know, I get a call from Ray Charles and it wasn’t, it was from Ray Charles himself.
John: Not a manager or something, or a
Kenny: It was Ray Charles himself called, and then I called, I had a question later after I spoke with him and left a message and he called and he left me a message on my answering machine that I digit digitized.
And I still have that recorded message from Ray Charles answering a, I asked him, do I need to bring a tuxedo, and he’s no, son. We [00:46:00] got tuxedos for you there. There is a limit on the luggage. And told me the luggage size and stuff. I still have that recording of Ray Charles from my answering
John: I love
Kenny: But yeah.
John: love it. Wow.
Kenny: Jeff K hooked me up, man. I, I mean, Jeff,
John: old
Jeff.
Kenny: Jeff’s been a friend for a long time. I kinda out of touch with him a little bit. I don’t talk to him too often, but that’s another cat who I’ll always be grateful to man. He was.
John: Yeah, he’s a great guy. We’re fortunate to have him out here. He
Kenny: Yeah. I know.
John: Great player. Great guy. So what was it like being on Ray Charles Band?
Kenny: was a lesson every day. It was, you know, Ray Charles, what a musician, he never, ever phoned it in.
It was always a hundred percent. Just soul drift in grease at all times. It was always musical, everything he did was brilliant on the bandstand. Great musician. a lot of really great players in the band. A lot of really hungry players. We used to jam a lot. We’d go to jam sessions after the gigs.
You know, If we had a day off, some of us would go and we’d [00:47:00] play in the streets, put our hats out for change, whatever, play standards. We played a lot and it was, a lot of hungry musicians who could really play. And some really seasoned veterans who were kinda like our musical fathers within the organization.
Ernest Rese was an organist who played with Ray for years and years. he recently passed away, but, Man, Ernest Van Treese, we called him Gates or the Deacon, that was his nickname that Ray called him. He’s just one of those cats. Like he was there. He saw that, Rudy Johnson, tenor player uh, Rudolph Johnson, man.
He, he was phenomenal. Just, he’s somebody that, like George Coleman looked up to, Rudy’s passed on now. But we, I toured the world with Ray Charles and we came to New York. We played a week of the Blue note, and we’d go out and listen to music at night.
And I’ll never forget, one time we went to a club. Where mul grew. Miller was playing at the club and Mul grew. Saw that Rudy Johnson was there and had his horn. So he had [00:48:00] Rudy come up and sit in with him. Rudy was heaviest of the heavies, you know, he only put one record out that I know about. and I asked him, why don’t you put more records out?
He said I will when I’m ready. He’s one of these guys. He never felt ready, for whatever reason. But man, one of the most brilliant, beautiful improvisers I’ve ever heard, and he’s, he’s gone now, but. we had gems like that in the band along with some of us younger guys, like myself or, the lead player at the time was Chuck Parrish, man.
He was a great lead trumpet player and we became roommates and we’re still friends to this day. He’s in Chicago now. great lead player, great guy. Jeff Helson is another guy who was a monster jazz player. Wayne Coniglio was a bass trombone player, wonderful jazz player. Craig Bailey was our lead alto player.
It, there was a lot of wonderful musicians in the band back then. In race bands.
John: Man, what an experience and uh, to be on the road. That was your first time really on the road too. I know you’d
Kenny: yeah. Really on, on tour.
John: kind of extent.
Kenny: I’d [00:49:00] gone to France one time. With with Slide Hampton, I did a sextet thing in Bordeaux and in Paris. That with, it was Berkeley students with Slide Hampton, basically a Berkeley student from France put it together. I. With his friends from the school and hired slide, and he’d hired me to come over to France to play with bill Evans, the tenor player, and Joe Henderson and a couple other things like that.
But they were just spot gigs, just going out for a few days for a week or whatever. But Ray Charles, that was my first time on the road on tour and we did, I think it, it was six months straight of one nighters and hit and runs.
John: Wow.
Kenny: It was hard. It was hard. I’m not gonna lie, man. And Ray could be difficult.
I’m sure you’ve heard stories. I don’t need to go into that stuff. I don’t wanna get negative on anybody. ’cause Ray was Ray and God bless him, man, what he did for music, I put him on a pedestal with Mozart and the greats of the greats in [00:50:00] terms of what he did for music, period.
But you learned some hard lessons out there, especially when you were green man and when you were brand new to it. Man, I learned some hard lessons on the road. but man, what an experience. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
John: And I, we have so much to talk about and I, we I love this conversation. I don’t want to gloss over your whole career at New York and the Broadway and the recording and stuff. And I wanna get to the mutes as well. Um, We can’t be a trumpet podcast without talking about gear so, we’ll get to that.
I do wanna bring up Sesame Street ’cause uh, what, since uh, last 15 years, you’ve been the trumpet voice on Sesame Street. take us behind the scenes. What’s that
Kenny: Man, that is the most highly efficient gig of anything I’ve ever done in my life. Everybody involved with the Sesame Street Music. The Sesame Street Band is just so incredibly. Great at what they do is, so there’s, everybody’s so efficient. Joe Fier is our music director. I think I’m wearing a Sesame Street hat.
You can [00:51:00] see this.
John: Oh,
Kenny: The 50th anniversary. I think we’re in our 54th season now. Something like they’re 56th. I don’t, I’m not sure, but Joe Fier is a phenomenal arranger and writer and trombone player. Joe and I, like, when I first moved to New York, that’s when I met Joe Fier. We were playing like door gigs together with big bands, you know, making 10 or $15, playing for nothing coming up through the ranks.
Joe and I were doing that stuff together back in the day, and we’ve since, come to the upper echelon of playing and Joe has done a lot of touring and playing with people like Eddie Poi and the Mingus Big band, and. All kinds of other things. He leads his own band. He’s got several records out of his own, and he tours the world playing his own music.
But he, and he’s a very highly creative, jazz musician leaning towards the avant garde side of things, for his own music. But he’s an absolute master of commercial music. he played. Lee trombone for the Broadway show in The Heights, and he did the music. He played trombone for the movie as well in the heights that came out.
I think [00:52:00] that was during Covid when that was actually released, if I’m not mistaken. in any case, Joe Fier is a phenomenal trombone player and musician, and everybody in the band is in the Sesame Street Band. Through and through every instrument I go through, every member of the whole band for you.
And the leader, the, the coordinator for the music team for Sesame Street is a guy named Bill Sherman. And Bill is incredibly knowledgeable and can speak intelligently on just about any subject. he’s won Tony Awards. in the Heights. He’s involved with Hamilton.
There’s another one, and Juliet is on Broadway now, is his. He’s got another one that I know he’s working on. He’s, he’s done a lot on Broadway. he’s got a lot of Emmy awards. He’s got Grammy Awards. The only one he doesn’t have for the egot, I think is the Oscar. I don’t think he’s won an Oscar yet, but, he’s, I don’t, he’s maybe 30.
He’s young and.
John: it’s coming.
Kenny: It’s just a
John: a matter of
Kenny: He’s young and [00:53:00] brilliant and he’s a great guy, and but like through and through our, our engineer Tyler, Hartman is, I’ve been in the studio a lot in my career and a lot of times you end up, you’re in the studio and the engineer doesn’t know how to read a score of music, can’t really read, music, can figure out a little bit.
But Tyler can read music and he’ll say, let’s. I’ll start the click at bar 18. You come in bar 20, and boom, it happens. It’s so quick and so efficient. If he hears anything, you’re not quite centered on a note, he’ll just stop you and say, let’s do that again. And there’s no egos. I.
he’s right. It could have been better, even if I didn’t hear it. I just trust him that, he heard something there that I could have played better. maybe I was a little sharp and sometimes I’ll question, I’ll listen back and sure enough, Ty, Tyler knows, he knows music.
So like the whole team, not just the musicians, but the whole team with Sesame Street is top-notch. And also it’s like a family man, really great people who care about each other, it’s really, I love Sesame Street. [00:54:00] It’s really
John: I was gonna say OO over 15 years. How many, that’s a lot of episodes,
Kenny: couple. Yeah.
John: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And what I mean in terms of American institutions we all grew up on Sesame Street and the fact that it’s still going, still hiring musicians, of that quality, still putting music to their shows is amazing.
Did you ever, do you ever get to see any of the filmings or is that you guys are purely in the studio? Did they ever let you in? You get See Big
Kenny: A couple of times. Went in one thing, one time to do an episode where Ernie was playing the bugle and he was disturbing Bert, who was looking up pigeons on his computer, wanted to learn about pigeons and Ernie kept playing bugle calls. But they wanted jazzy bugle calls, the kind of bugle calls that you can’t really play on a bugle ’cause you need valves.
But, and I tried to explain that. I said, oh, we don’t care about all that. Just do something that sounds like a bugle call. I happened to be playing Lee Trumpet at the time on a Broadway show called Anything Goes That had a bugle call kind of thing that I did. So I touched on that a little bit and, but I went [00:55:00] on set and went into a booth and saw them on video and the puppeteers and.
played the bugle calls for Bur and Ernie. And that was a lot of fun. I get to, I got to go and hang out and, what’s his name? Mr. Hooper’s store and went to Big Birth Nest and to Oscar’s trash can, and, so I’ve been on set. I’ve gotten to know. Some of the puppeteers.
One of ’em I’ve gotten to know pretty well. Her name’s Leslie. She’s the one who uh, is a puppeteer for Abby Cabi, the magical fairy. And she’s just a wonderful lady man. Her and her husband. Her husband is the overall musical director for all of Sesame Street. He does all the voices, all the singing and the band.
He oversees everything. Joe Fier iss a MD for just the band. But Paul Rudolph is like oversees everything, but it’s, it’s really a cool organization. We play the gala every year, so I get to see Snuffleupagus and Big Bird and in fact, I facilitated a thing for Jazz Lincoln Center to do with sesame.
Sesame Street. ‘ cause they’re, that’s my two [00:56:00] main gigs. And they’re both, he dedicated to education, you know, and Sherman Irby came to me we were on tour in Brazil and I was bringing my mic with me and recording for the TV show for my hotel rooms, and sending in recordings. And Sher Sherman heard me and you know, we were talking, it’s man should facilitate something for Sesame Street and Jazz Lincoln Center to work together.
So I said, that’s a great idea, man. So I talked to Wynton and I talked to folks at Jazz Lincoln Center. I talked to Bill Sherman and Joe at Sesame Street, and I put them all together to talk and they created a thing for Sesame Street at Jazz Lincoln Center that ended up on, it’s on a, it’s on DVD, you can find it on YouTube.
I wrote two of the charts for it for Elmo’s World and for the Sesame Street fame sunny days. and you can see Elmo, he has playing with Elmo and. And all that. It was really cool. They came to Jazz Lincoln Center all the Muppets did, and we did a show with the Sesame Street characters that was written by Sesame Street in collaboration with Jazz Lincoln Center.
Uh, It was really cool.
John: [00:57:00] How cool. That’s great. Which also is a good segue ’cause I’d also want to talk about how you ended up joining the Jazz at Lincoln Center Band big band with Wynton. Was
Kenny: Yeah, more or less. Um,
John: Got around?
Kenny: The first thing I did with Winton was a series of videos called Marsala on Music. I think it was for PBS or CBS Sony, I forget. But it was a series of videos, five videos that that they did. And, one of them was actually a couple of ’em, I think were at the Tanglewood School, the summer program they have at Tanglewood and the Tanglewood Orchestra, which was a student orchestra, was being led at the time by Gio Awa, the great legendary conductor.
And so they did a video doing Tchaikovsky. Nutcracker with that orchestra and went and put together a big band, playing the Duke Ellington Billy Strayhorn version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. you know, I imagine you’ve probably heard that it’s, it is [00:58:00] become very popular over the years. They do it, they do special concerts every year in cities around the country.
Playing the Ellington Nutcracker, so we traded, traded movements with them. We would go back and forth. This is the classical version, this is the jazz version. This is what’s similar. This is what’s different, and went and analyzed it and talked about it, and, And it was an interesting video.
It was cool. That’s the first time I worked with Winton. That was around the time that they were starting the thing at Lincoln Center. It used to be called the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Now it’s called the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. They rebranded it, but back then it was a Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
It was just starting. So it was some of the members of that, some members of Winton’s quintet at the time, or sextet. and. The thing at Lincoln Center was older musicians, mostly. There was a lot of guys who had played with Duke Ellington or with bassy, or Thad Mel, big band. The thing during the summer at Tanglewood, because it was a student orchestra, they designed it so [00:59:00] it was a lot of younger musicians in that, so it was a few of the guys from the.
Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and a lot of younger guys that, Winton had heard about, so I had met Winton when I was in college. He doesn’t remember meeting me though. He came through Boston and played. and I introduced myself. I was just a student at Berkeley, you know, one of thousands.
I had met him, this is the first time, I got hired to play with him for these videos. Marcellus on music and it went well. Dan Miller was a lead trumpet player who to the day he died, was one of my dearest friends ever. I’ll always think of him like that. He died way too young.
but that’s when I met Dan actually was doing that. A couple other young trumpet players. You, a guy named Vin Everett, you probably haven’t heard of. Who’s still around, still playing. Another guy, young guy named Randall Haywood. Younger guys who, went and found through Marcus Roberts or different people that he worked with and respected.
So it was a younger big band that did that. And that’s when I first met and worked with Winton. And we had a great [01:00:00] rapport. We had a lot of fun. I like to joke around a lot. I always have. I always been like that. I think he kinda liked that. we always got along. We always had a good time.
So after that, go back to New York. After that summer we did the film filming for that, it went well. I. And Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra was doing a tribute to Lewis Armstrong and last minute, one of the trumpet players who was coming from New Orleans to be a part of the section for that. ‘ cause it wasn’t a set band back then.
It was different from one gig to the next. Guy named who’s a friend of mine now named Wendell Brunia. Ended up canceling last minute, not being able to make it. And wen’s like, well, let’s get that Rampton kid he could play. He’s a good guy so I went in and said, for Wendell, I got a poster of it.
It’s got Wendell’s name on it. My name’s not on even on it, but I have the poster because that was my first gig. In New York with the Lincoln Center Jazz
John: Your first gig?
Kenny: And then I would from one project to the next went and would try out different people. Sometimes Russell Gunn, sometimes Roger Ingram, [01:01:00] sometimes Lou Soof, sometimes John Fattest.
- Ryan, Kaiser, Marcus print, print up. Of course, were in the mix. But it was different guys for a while, depending on who went and felt was appropriate for a specific concert and depending on who was available, so I was doing it. I was in the rotation. And then I fell out of the rotation ’cause I had to turn it down a few times in a row.
’cause I was also, at that time I started working with John Hendricks. I started touring with George Grunts, which was an all star band from New York, basically. I was working regularly with a Mingus big band. I had already done a lot of touring with, I, I toured with Lionel Hamptons band with Illinois Jette with Jimmy McGriff, quartet and Quintet.
So I was working a lot, playing jazz, playing with a lot of different people. So I had to turn Ja or. Lincoln Center down several times and I went down on the list, as far as who they were calling. I never was in bad, bad graces or anything like that. It was just, if somebody’s [01:02:00] not available you start using people who were more available.
So that’s what happened. And then when was it? Around 2009. I think it was 2008, 2009, Sean Jones couldn’t make a tour. And by then it had become the jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and it had become set members. Like it wasn’t, it was no longer gig to gig. It was like, this is your chair, this is your chair, you’re in the band.
and when that happened, I wasn’t really in the loop so much. And so Sean Jones. Sean had been the lead player in the band up until a few years before that and he couldn’t make something. He bailed on something and Ryan Kaiser moved over and played lead and stayed there. Went and loved Ryan’s lead playing so much.
He said, Sean, sorry man, you’re on second. I. Ryan is putting something special on this and Sean, I’m sure. Agreed. And the pressure of playing lead is pretty intense too. And I would imagine, I don’t, I haven’t talked to Sean about this, but I would imagine he was like glad to step over the second and not have to do that.
’cause that’s a hard job. But um, [01:03:00] Ryan’s been the lead player since so now Sean had to miss a tour and. Ryan and I were good friends. I’ve, Ryan and I, in fact, Ryan Marcus print up and I were all in the monk competition together. In, when was it in the nineties? Ryan won the competition. He was in high school at the time.
Ryan was a high school senior. He won the Monk competition for trumpet that year. Nicholas Peyton was in it. All kinds of great people. Joe Magna Scotty Barnhardt. We were all nobodies back then. Alex Sip and Scott Wenhold, Joe McNare, just all kinds of great players were in this competition.
Ryan won it. so I met Ryan when he was in high school. We’ve been friends ever since. We played in the Mingus big band together. Now he’s playing lead with. Jazz Lincoln Center Orchestra and Sean Jones is having to miss more and they’re thinking, we’re gonna have to replace him. And Ryan actually called me and sent last minute, called me up like at eight o’clock in the morning, said, Hey man, I’m feeling sick.
Can you make a rehearsal at 10 o’clock for me today? I’m like, yeah. So I [01:04:00] went in and stuff for Ryan that kind of got me back in with Winton. I hadn’t seen him in a little while, and then I started subbing regularly. Then Sean. Jones had to miss a tour. They called me to do the tour. and after a couple tours, and there’s a lot of stories that go along with that are actually beautiful stories that will tell you about who went Marcellus is and his character as a human being.
Man, he’s one of the greatest humans on the planet. And I’ll say that till the day I die. He’s really a great human. But, um, he, you know, after I’d subbed on a couple tours and, went and saw that I got along with everybody ’cause that’s a big part of being on the road, man. You gotta be able to get along with people, in addition to play your butt off and show up on time and all those things.
And went and saw that it was, seemed like a good fit. And so they, he offered me the gig, the chair full time. So I’ve been doing it since 2010 full time.
John: Geez, man. I wish we had more time. I’d love to dig into some of your winton stories and
Kenny: All right.
John: We’ll save that for volume too. But I let’s, let’s talk about some equipment. [01:05:00] And how often does a new plunger mute come out that takes the world by storm? But maybe the only thing more ubiquitous than a guard bag these days in the trumpet trumpet player world is the uh, hirschman KR indigo plunger mute. So tell us about that. How did
that come
about?
Kenny: That’s a long story, man, but I’m happy to tell it and share it ’cause it’s important, man. And it, I, it’s important that it’s shared. I’ve always loved playing the plunger. When I was at that sch schism summer camp that I was talking about, and to pay for that, my family didn’t have money to pay for it.
I worked in the kitchen, I was prepping vegetables and washing dishes. That’s, and I was staying outside of the camp cabins where all the other students were sleeping. I was with the kitchen staff, which was right next to the recital hall. And that happens to be where Walt practiced at night.
So I would be laying in my bunk listening to Walt Blanton practice trumpet, and Walt was one of the most soulful plunger players I had ever heard. I’d never really heard the plunger played like that [01:06:00] before. he would go up and practice, play, whatever he needed to practice.
But that then he would always end by playing some blues, freeform. Playing the real blues, not the blues form. Like really truly expressing and playing some of the most soulful sounds I’d ever heard, and playing with a plunger. I. And I started getting that in my head, listening to him, sometimes I’d get up out of bed and go and sit in the room with him and just watch him play, and it was just beautiful man. And it changed my life hearing him do that and, and it made me wanna learn to do that. So I started playing the plunger a lot and. Loved it. I just have, when I went to Berkeley I wanted to go to the Banff summer camp at a jazz camp up in Banff, Canada.
Kenny Wheeler was a teacher there. I really wanted to study with Kenny, and I did. I got a study with Kenny and that was phenomenal. But I had to get a letter of recommendation for my teachers at Berkeley. So Herb Pomeroy wrote me recommendation and what he said about me. Was really beautiful and very complimentary.
[01:07:00] But he finished it with Kenny is one of the most accomplished young plunger players on the trumpet that I’ve ever heard, and he plays plunger well beyond his years. And this is coming from Herb Pomeroy, who by the way, played with Duke Ellington. You know what I’m saying? So I got a compliment like that.
I’ve always loved playing the plunger, and one issue I’ve always had with the plunger is like if I was doing a gig with Jimmy McGriff, like with a quintet or something, I played solo on the plunger after that solo, my chops were shot for the rest of the night, and I, it took me a long time to figure out I’m not a strong enough trumpet player.
I gotta get stronger, I gotta play more routine. I gotta play my long toes, you know? Well, no man, with a toilet plunger, it’s outta tune. It’s attitude when you play tight plunger, a lot of ’em are, it’ll go up even a, as far as a half step sharp, depending on the size of the plunger, you know? so I started to discover the size of the plunger size matters, the size of the plunger changes.
The [01:08:00] pitch of what comes out, the horror when you’re playing it, and the smaller, the plunger, the sharper the pitch goes. When you play closed tight plunger, it affects it less if you put in a pixie mute. But pixie mutes play horribly too. So I started, messing with it and I found, in fact when I was driving up with Dan Miller to Tanglewood to do those videos with Winton, we stopped off at a hardware store ’cause said, let’s see if we can find some good plungers for the trumpet.
Me and Dan Miller did, and we found some that were a little bit bigger. They just fit perfectly in the end of the bell, but they had more depth to ’em, a little bit bigger, and they played better in tune. So I bought every one of ’em that they had in the store, and I gave them out to all my friends. Then I went to a hardware store later in Brooklyn and found that same size plunger.
I bought every one they had. I gave them to all my friends, and then I couldn’t find them anymore. The problem with those hardware store plungers, one of the many problems actually is when they get old, they get hard and they crack. when they [01:09:00] crack, they’re done. And this particular size I couldn’t find anymore, you know, and so, I’d given one to Winton.
It was his favorite plunger. He loved it. And why does everybody love it so much? Because it’s a little bit bigger, and because it’s a little bit bigger, it plays a little bit better in tune. It doesn’t kill your chops as much. It’s more fun to play. We’re not hurting yourself. It’s simple, and. So Winton came to me one day. We’re doing a gig with, actually it was with Paul Simon, and he had his plunger there. He needed piccolo trumpet. He had given away his pic. He didn’t have piccolo, trumpet it. He didn’t own one anymore. And he asked, said, I have one. So I loaned him my piccolo trumpet, and they said, and also ma’am, my plunger, it cracked and he showed it to me.
Had a big crack like the liberty bell. He said, I, can you find me another one? So man. I checked every damn hardware store in New York City and Brooklyn and Queens that I could not find that size. I checked everywhere I could think of. I contacted the company. They weren’t making it anymore.
It’s gone. It’s done. [01:10:00] So I called my buddy, ed Hirschman, who just texted me by the way saying, how did it go? I called my buddy, ed and I said, ed, can you check? He lives in Princeton, New Jersey. I said, can you check your hardware stores near you and see if you can find this size plunger? Ed is a great trumpet player, but what people don’t know about Ed, he went to school for mechanical engineering, and got a master’s degree in marketing.
Ed is a brilliant guy. He’s a wonderful trumpet player. But beyond that man, he is, he’s a brainiac man. He’s a thinker. He’s always problem solving, coming up with creative solutions to anything you can think of. He, ed thinks outside the box, and so I’m telling him what I need it for, and Ed’s like, well, let’s just make one. Ed and I play in the McDonald’s jazz band together. By the way, we’ve been friends since high school. We were in the McDonald’s band with Wycliffe Gordon. You know, We’ve all been friends for a very long time, since we’re like 17. EZ like, why don’t we just make one?
I’m like, [01:11:00] make a plunger. How you know? I can barely make toast. What are you talking about? He is no, we can figure it out. And he came up with a game plan and, send me the one that you know that. Broke the Winton’s one. So I got it from Winton. I asked Winton to sign it first.
Winton autographed it, and I gave it to Ed as a gift. I said, here you go. And so he scanned it into his computer, you know, got a 3D scan of it, every nook and cranny of it. Then we started designing it from there. And, we took out the threading that’s in the top of it for the stick. ’cause that’s the, that gets in the way of the flow of the air and the sound.
We took certain things out. We took off the lip, we made the lip a little bit wider going out. I. Certain things that we wanted to experiment with, we put a little flange on the end of it so it wouldn’t slip out of your fingers. ’cause I had that happen one time. I was on a gig outdoors playing with a toilet plunger and the plunger slipped outta my hand when I did Aah.
And flew into the audience. So we put a little thing there to protect that. And Clark Terry [01:12:00] one time told me, You gotta put a coin on the inside where the hole is. ’cause you wanna adjust that coin to change the tamr of the sound, depending on what kind of playing you’re doing. If you’re doing something with the pixie mute, it gives it more wa effect.
If the sound can’t come out through the hole, and you know you want to have a certain tonal quality to it. So you can adjust the timur of the sound with a penny or with a, actually it was a, a. A nickel in there. And jokingly Clark said, and then, you know, also if you’re on the road, you get kicked off the bus, you got a coin to make a phone call with, it made a lot of sense. I always had a coin in my plungers after Clark told me that. And also Clark and Snookie Young are, are still to this day, and I’ve always been probably two of my very favorite plunger players ever. They both played really big blue plungers that they got from Sweden.
and I forget, I think it was Clark told me the story that they. a cleaning lady in a hotel in Sweden. Sweden came to clean his [01:13:00] hotel room and had this plunger toilet plunger that was big and blue. And Clark saw was like, I want one of those. Where do I get, where do I get that? And she told him where the store was.
He went and both, both Clark and Snookie played these big blue plungers. If you ever see pictures of them.
John: I’ve seen, yeah, I’ve seen
Kenny: and they’re bigger,
And why
do they like ’em? Not because they’re bigger. They’re, they play better in tune because they’re bigger. It’s easier to play, so Ed and I started experimenting with different size plungers, and we started having him 3D printed.
He got with somebody who does 3D. Design, who’s a friend of his. And Ed knows how to do that to a degree as well. ed decided we should have a butterfly valve in this, and what do we put in there? And let’s just start off with a penny. Let’s put a penny in there and see, let’s use two.
One is the handle, one is the valve inside the stem. So that’s what we did. And we were thinking, we would go another route and put something in there with a funny stamp with a logo on it, but [01:14:00] we couldn’t have anything made for less than a penny.
So we stayed with a penny and we were coming up with prototypes and people started calling it the Kenny Penny.
And that kind of stuck, and I think it’s silly, but it stuck and people still call it that and it’s Okay. Cool. And we probably had it narrowed down. We probably did about 15 different sizes, testing for depth versus circumference and see what affects the pitch the most, because Winton writes a lot of pieces.
For us to play tight plunger on, where the plunger’s so tight that it sounds kinda like a harma mute. It’s got that buzz, but when you do that with a toilet plunger, it’s always really sharp, and we’re, wind’s written a lot of pieces for orchestra, they just aired a thing we did with in She Taco with an orchestra of All Rise.
That’s one of as many symphonic works, and there’s. Tight plunger in there, and we’re sitting in front of a woodwind section with oboes and flutes, and sometimes we got unison with them with tight plunger, [01:15:00] and it’s painful. The pitch can be so bad. We’re all good enough musicians.
We know that we’re gonna lip it to the best of our ability, but it’s hard, so I really wanted to sign something. So it was in tune when you played tight plunger. And also I figured out how to do that and that’s the first plunger that we came up with. It was 3D printed when I tested it. It was like spot on in tune and that became known as a KR Indigo Max plunger mute.
And it’s in tune and it’s got the candy penny. You can open and closing close it depending on if you’re using an under mute or not. We’ve since just came out with the pep mute because. I’ve had issues my whole career with pixie mutes too. They’re horrible mutes. They’re made for cornet. It was a practice mute made for cornet by con, I believe in the 1920s.
They put ’em inside of a trumpet and put a plunger over it because it would fit over the bell with the. That doorknob mute in there. They had some other ones, but then Berg copied the Cornet mute and called it a pixie mute. You [01:16:00] know it’s a copy of the Cornet Mute. It’s not made for the trumpet. Clark told.
Terry told me those mutes are okay, but you gotta take the stem out. From the inside of a total project. Otherwise, it’s too stuffy. It won’t project for all the pep section stuff that Duke Ellington wrote. They Clark and all the guys in Duke’s band called that the pep section, the two trumpets with trombone, with undermine and plunger.
That was a pep section. So Ryan Kaiser turned to me. I don’t know, two and a half years ago. And I said, Kenny, the next mute you guys make, the plunger mute is great. I love it. You know, It’s got that CT vibe, you know, and it’s blue in Otter of Clark, Terry
and, and, and, and, and Snooky. And um,
Ryan’s like, the next mute you gotta make is a decent pixie mute man.
’cause these mutes are a drag. And, And I, full-hearted, full-heartedly, agreed with him. And so Ed and I spent a good year and a half developing. A mute that would give that nasally pixie straight mute sound. You know, That’s, more nasally than a straight [01:17:00] mute. But similar to a straight mute.
We wanted to have that nasally quality to the sound. but plays in tune also with those pixie mutes. You take that stem out so it projects, you can’t play a low C or below on it. It loses the notes completely.
John: Doesn’t exist.
Kenny: No. So I wanted to make
something that would play down to a low F sharp all the way up to the top of your range that would play freely that projects and plays in tune.
Ed and I spent the same process designing in the computer 3D printing mutes to come up with something that will work under a plunger. And so we came up with a pep mute. that’s a not to do Ellington, the pep section, and, but we wanted to have Pixie in the title. So PEP stands for Pro Edge Pixie.
you know, so it’s, it’s a, it’s a pep mute that, and it plays in tune. It projects over a big band, and it plays a full range of the instrument. So that’s our latest mute. In between we got our buzz mutes, which is more of a novelty thing, but I’ve always enjoyed playing with fun, [01:18:00] weird, mute, and they’re back in the twenties, thirties.
They made several different kinds of buzz mutes, and I love the effect. In fact, I recorded it’s, I haven’t released the album yet, but it’s on, I use this mute called the Chicago, which is a two piece mute. It’s a buzz mute on the inside, a little tiny buzz mute with a metal plunger on the outside. Real cool sound.
But man, this thing plays at tune and it’s stuffy. It’s so hard to play. So I wanted to make a buzz mute that could be played in tune. So we came up with our buzz mutes too. We’ve had a lot of fun developing these mutes and it happened to coincide with Covid. You know, when Ed and I, we’d been working on the plunger already for a good year before Covid hit.
Actually more than a year, a good year and a half at least. and we released it just a couple months after Covid struck and everybody was in lockdown. So we had a captive audience,
John: Yeah.
Kenny: All along the way, though, I was excited about it. I’m just, I’m a mute [01:19:00] nerd man. So I’m in my apartment in New York City, with 15 different sizes of plunger mutes.
Talking about it online, doing Facebook Live and talking about plunger mutes and sharing the process. And I think people dug that. I got a lot of positive feedback. It piqued a lot of interest. And then covid hit and we still we’re not done yet. We haven’t come out with a mute yet, and.
Ed and I, we came out with a mute during Covid a few months into it. So I was going out, I was driving out to Ed’s house, sitting in his basement, away from his family. We’re sitting across the table from each other, six feet apart in masks, washing, mutes, taking off all the extraneous pieces of rubber. I.
Putting the Kenny pennies together, building the mutes together, doing all that during covid. And it was the only interaction other than my ex-fiance who I was still living with, which was a complete drag. The only interaction with another human being that I really had was with Ed Hirschman putting together mutes and it really.
Doing those mutes, and making videos [01:20:00] about it, and doing that really got me through COI and it that positivity. Positivity got me through the ultimate negativity that hit us all super hard during covid and really caused a lot of people. A lot of I. Tough tough times, man. So those mutes, I’m extremely grateful and happy that they are doing as well as they’re doing, and that they did go viral globally.
They’re all over the world now. Um, I’m extremely happy about that, but even I’m even happier. Of what it was to me personally at that time, to get me through an incredibly depressing period in my life, as it was for a lot of people. So I’ll talk about those mutes all day long, and my relationship with Ed, ed is one of the greatest people I’ve ever known.
I love that man. Dearly, he’s just a good guy, man. He’s, I’ve been lucky man to have a lot of really good people in my life. People like Ed and Tommy Perello and Walt Blanton, and, Ryan Kaiser, Winton, Marsals, so many great people that [01:21:00] I’ve had. I. Jeff k believe in me and support me and help me help to bolster my career and help me out at points when I really needed it.
You know, Christian McBride is another one. My old roommate, he moved in after Jeff Keyser moved out in, into Brooklyn, and Christian helped me more than I can ever say, to this day, if he walked in the room right now, he would scream Rumi. We still call each other Rumi, I, I’ve been very lucky. to really have some wonderful people in my life, ma’am.
John: That’s great. you mentioned uh, real quick, uh, you, you were working on a recording. is
that another solo
project for
that you’re doing?
Is that anything you
wanna talk about or is that too soon?
Kenny: It’s not too soon, but I don’t know when I’m gonna be putting it out. It was actually recorded live at Dizzy’s. A year or two before Covid. So it’s, it’s several years old. It’s what’s seven years old? Now it’s a live recording from Dizzy’s, it’s all original music except for the song Nature Boy.
I did an arrangement on Nature Boy, which is on my first record, which is called um, Babylon After Dark, I think.
It’s a [01:22:00] live version and I changed the arrangement a little bit, live version of that with Bill Sims singing it, who’s since passed away. Bill was a wonderful guitar player and vocalist, and bill and I also did a studio version several years before that, of a duo version of Nature Boy, that I think I’m gonna put on the record as well.
as a teaser at the very, or at the very end as a bonus track. so there’ll be two recordings, very different from each other of nature. Boy, one totally stripped down and one with an octet. the rest of it is all original music that I wrote for a play called Para Paradise Blue. I turned all the music, all the little bumper songs and whatever else.
I turned them into a suite of music. The several movements the recording it’s two trumpets. Myself, Marcus Print up got Victor Goys on tenor Sherman Irving on Alto Sam Chess on trombone with bill Sims on, on guitar, on, on a couple things, Dan Nimron piano, Carlos Enriquez on bass and Arian Felder on the drums.
so it was, it was a nice [01:23:00] band and everything’s in the can and mixed. I had a label lined up and the label went belly up. So if I put it out, either I wait. For a label to pick it up, which I haven’t actively shopped it at all, or I put it out myself. I just haven’t decided. Part of the reason I haven’t decided is the plays that I wrote, the music for Paradise Blue, was written by a woman who their touting is the next August Wilson.
She’s a phenomenal playwright named Dominique Mauricio, and she wrote. The book for Ain’t Too Proud, it was on Broadway. She’s done a lot of amazing things. She’s from Detroit and she’s written several plays about Detroit and about the history of Detroit and Paradise Blue is part of that is a trilogy right now of plays about Detroit that she’s written and been, talk about this play possibly going to Broadway. [01:24:00] So I’ve been kind of waiting to see if that happens before I put the record out. ’cause if that happens, then I put the record out in tandem with Dominique’s play going to Broadway, and then it’ll, they’ll support each other. So I’ve, I haven’t been in a hurry to put it out and I’m still not, I want the timing to be right.
it’s a deep play. It’s about a lot of very deep, very important social issues racism and paradise, I’m not gonna get too deep into it, but I. There, there was an area of Detroit where all the businesses were black owned businesses and the local government, the mayor, and they started buying up those businesses to destroy them ’cause they felt threatened by ’em.
And they ran a freeway through that area of Detroit. To destroy it,
basically. And it’s about that. But, one of these businesses, in this play was a jazz club owned by a trumpet player, so the music’s very trumpet centric. The lead actor when it was [01:25:00] first done was Blair Underwood.
So I worked with Blair, I got to know him. We became friends. I recorded the music and then he had to learn how to look like he was playing the trumpet to the tracks that I had recorded. So we worked together and it’s actually out on audio books on the Amazon audio book thing, what, whatever it’s called.
we actually recorded it and they used my music for that as well, if you wanted to look it up and have some fun with that. It’s called Paradise Blue. Um. Yeah, and it, and it’s actually really cool, the, and it was a lot of fun, but all the pieces of music that I wrote for that play, I expanded into a suite with some phenomenal musicians.
So that’s in the can. I’ve got another one in the, can, another live at Dizzy’s that’s also all original music. Not for a play, it’s just music that I’ve wrote, written over the years. Um, that’ll be the next phase of my career at some point. When I decide, enough’s enough with touring with a big band, I’m 57 now.
I’m not ready to go yet, I’m about to leave in a couple days. I’m going [01:26:00] to Europe for a month, and I love playing with the band. I love everybody in the band. I love doing what I do. I. But at some point I’m gonna want to stop touring with a big band and start doing more residencies on my own and playing my own music.
And so when it’s time to do that, that’s when I’m gonna put those CDs out.
John: I can’t wait to hear them. Folks can find out about you. What’s the best place?
Kenny: There is kennyrampton.com. but I don’t really say on top of it. I am on Facebook. I’m easy to find. I do actually post a lot of career oriented stuff on Facebook.
Like when I’m going on tour, I post the cities that I’m going to, and, when Ed and I are about to release a new mute, I’ll post videos on my Facebook page and on the Hirschman mutes Facebook page, I think there is a hirschmanmutes.com.
Just if there’s this new thing out now called the Google it, somebody can just Google my name, they’ll
John: Hope and hopefully the albums will show up. Let us know when the albums come
out and we’ll let our listeners
know, because I’m sure folks will wanna listen to ’em. Kenny, even absolute [01:27:00] pleasure. We went over time. I’m so sorry. I was watching the clock here, but I wanted to make sure we get, we talked about as much as we could here.
Before I let you go though one last question. If you could leave our listeners with your best piece of
advice, what would that be?
Kenny: Best piece of advice is something. I mean, I’ve got a lot of things that I could say, but the one thing that’s coming to mind is something said to me by a woman, her name was Rosa. She is also, she’s one of the greatest teachers of my life. She was not a musician. She didn’t listen to jazz. In fact, one time she told me, Kenny, I don’t really like jazz and.
I said to her, Rosa, you are jazz, because who she is represents the best of humanity or who she was. She’s passed on now. But she was actually a shaman, a healer somebody I spent a lot of time with who was really in a lot of ways, like a life coach to me. And we all come to crossroads at different points of our lives, [01:28:00] right?
And should I do this or this? Or this, which one should I do? And she said to me, Kenny, when your heart and your mind agree that’s what you need to do. If there’s a conflict, that’s not what you should be doing. So it sounds very simple, but it’s not, ‘ cause a lot of times my mind and my heart are in disagreement with things.
But when they’re in agreement.
That’s the right thing to do, So follow your heart and when your heart and your mind agree, you’re on your higher path, follow that. Don’t get distracted from that ever. And that’s, that, that’s a road to happiness
John: it. Beautiful advice, or as Mr. Perello would say,
“Beutiful” advice.
Kenny: Yessir.
John: Thank you so much, honor having you on here, Kenny. Safe travels to Europe and yeah, well, I can’t, I can’t wait for volume two of this interview to, to pick up all that other stuff we didn’t get to talk about.
Kenny: Yeah, anytime, bro. Anytime. Just reach out, let me know. If I got a break on my schedule and I [01:29:00] can carve out an hour or two for you, man,
John: We’ll chat some more and maybe, god forbid, meet in person one of these days.
Kenny: I would love that.
John: Thank you.
Outro: What a great conversation with Kenny. A huge thank you. He was just getting ready to go on tour, with Wynton Marsalis and Lincoln Center and we went way over time. So, but we were having a good time talking and, really, really appreciate, Kenny and all of the great information and his story and the, the twists and turns of his career and how he ended up making it in New York.
I mean, this is no surprise, but by all means, if you get a chance to hear, Lincoln Center and Wynton Marsalis, I mean, what can you say about them? I mean, Wynton’s a virtuoso and you’re not gonna find a, jazz orchestra. I, we call it a big band, but I, I guess that’s what it is. a finer big band, maybe even ever.
I was fortunate to hear them at the Hollywood Bowl last summer. And man, it’s, uh, really, really cool that we can still [01:30:00] hear, that great of an ensemble these days. the Hirshman mutes, again, you can, uh, check out hirschman mutes.com We have them in stock, as I mentioned at the top of the podcast.
We have started carrying those, uh, the plunger mutes and the pixie mutes. And we’ll pick up some other things here along the way as well. Kennyrampton.com is where you can find out about him, although I think that leads to his, uh, his jazz outreach, program in Las Vegas. But that’s also, uh, worth checking out.
We’ll have links to all of those down in the show notes and in the description of the podcast, I. For you. coming up, we have a wonderful, slate of guests, um, Ashley Hall-Tighe, a wonderful teacher and solo trumpet player. And, just an amazing story. She’s, uh, coming up pretty soon. Eric Baker, you might know him as the “Trumpets Mic’d Up” on social media platforms. Also co-principal trumpet of the West Texas Symphony.
We have Jumaane Smith coming up on a future episode, Liesel Whitaker coming up, a lot of great guests. So make sure you hit that [01:31:00] subscribe button. Make sure you hit that five star review button. I read all the reviews, I read all the constructive criticisms, and I also read all of your guest suggestions that come in.
so I’m reaching out to some of you. Some of you just emailed me in the last week and I’ve already reached out to those guests. so we’ll see. Fingers crossed because you, you guys have some wonderful suggestions out there. All right, that’s all for this episode. Thank you again, for listening. See you next episode, and until next time, let’s go out and make some music.
