Wayne Bergeron

Breaking into the studio scene in Los Angeles is a highly challenging pursuit. It’s essential to maintain crackerjack reading [music] skills and virtuosity to be able to perform instantly in a wide array of styles. Those qualities go hand-in-hand with the understanding that you’ve got your professional music business skills at a correspondingly high level—including showing up on time, being able to follow directions, being cooperative, and ensuring that you’re on the call lists of the leading contractors. Because earning a living in the studio scene can be a very lucrative one, artists can be reluctant to get off the “merry-go-round” for even a short vacation—concerned with the idea of out-of-sight, out-of-mind among the contractors and decision-makers. One of the consequences can be that a great player may not be as well known to the general public as he is to his peers—despite prolific output as a musician.

One of the most active players on the Hollywood studio scene is trumpeter Wayne Bergeron. Over the past 20 years or more, he has performed on more than 300 movie soundtracks and TV shows, and hundreds of advertising jingles. He has also maintained a schedule of international touring, jazz concerts, guest soloist appearances and clinics. Earlier in his career, he performed and recorded with Maynard Ferguson’s Big Band. Bergeron’s own album recording, "You Call This A Living?" earned a Grammy nomination, along with a lot of attention and thumbs up from fans and press; and his follow-up recording, "Plays Well With Others," was another superb release. He has also been a sideman on the recordings by such leading artists as Beyoncé, Michael Buble, Frank Sinatra, Earth, Wind & Fire, Ray Charles, Diane Reeves, Diana Krall, Mel Tormé, Barry Manilow, Arturo Sandoval, Diane Schuur, plus big band dates led by Quincy Jones, Gordon Goodwin, Pat Williams, Sammy Nestico, Jack Sheldon, Tom Kubis, John La Barbara, Ralph Carmichael, Bob Florence, Frank Capp and others.

When I spoke with Wayne, he described his humble beginnings. “When I was a kid, sixth grade going into seventh grade, a lot of weird things happened. I switched from French horn to the trumpet. I chipped my front tooth, and I ended up being able to play high. Since then, I was a kid, I have been squeaking out high notes. I didn’t know I was doing anything special. I was just a kid. I couldn’t read music yet, but I had some natural ability. I had a little bit of a head start on the range. I learned to read music fairly quickly, but as far as being naturally, musically gifted, I wasn’t. But I had good band directors who were really good musicians that steered me along the way.”

There is nothing more important in helping someone build their confidence than encouragement and support from parents, teachers and mentors we respect. “Oh yeah. Actually, my junior high school band director was my trumpet teacher. He was a very good player. I took lessons from him fairly regularly when I was in high school—not every week, but maybe once a month. He steered me into being a working musician. Unfortunately, we didn’t work much on the technical side of the horn. He worked on music with me—made me listen a lot to different kinds of things. We played a lot of different styles of music in our lessons. At the time I didn’t realize the importance of that obviously. He was trying to groom me to be a decent player so that I could work.”

While every aspiring artist would love to go straight to stardom, and quickly from the practice room, as promoted in our instant gratification culture, that was not quite the reality Wayne experienced at the beginning of his career. “I started going to Long Beach City College, but just for financial reasons, I had to take a day job. I needed to work. So I left school, and I went to work at McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft. I was a tool and die maker—which is a machinist basically. My father was a machinist. I was following in his footsteps at that point but still playing on the weekends. I wasn’t taking the trumpet seriously by any means. Maybe that was around 1980. I was waiting for the world to beat my door down, musically—and that never really happened. I had so much to learn, and I didn’t realize it then. When you’re a kid and think you’re really hot stuff in high school, you don’t realize that when you leave there are a whole bunch of guys out there that can do the same thing you can. So, I worked at the shop at McDonnell-Douglas. I ended up getting a call, from a friend, to go on the road. From the moment I rehearsed with these guys, it was like, ‘Oh great, we’re going on the road!’ I didn’t know that it was for some real low money. We ended up going to New York where we had several gigs booked in area. We played about four of them and never got paid. Management stranded us in the Chelsea Hotel. They didn’t pay the bill, and we had to sneak out the fire escape. My first road gig was getting stranded in New York. I think the money was really stupid—like $250 a week, if that. I never got it. So I moved back in with my mother after that. Fortunately, I formed friendships with these guys, and there were some really good musicians in that band. One of them, Brandon Fields, is a really great saxophone player. I had never played with a musician of his level at the time. We got to be good friends, and he has recommended me for some jobs. All of a sudden, I started running into some great players. I had just never heard guys play like this. Walt Fowler was one of the first great trumpet players that I sat next to. I thought, ‘Man, what’s going on with this guy?’ It sparked me to start practicing—because when you hear somebody that does something so much better than you, it's inspiring. That circle of players actually steered my career in the direction it is now. Things happen for a reason, you know.”

Making the connection with Maynard Ferguson and playing with his band meant going through a few twists and turns as well. “When I was in high school, starting in the eighth grade, I discovered Maynard and that was it for me! I discovered him and Bill Chase. The power of that whole thing was very exciting and inspirational for me. It took a long time for me to start even listening to other guys. I didn’t realize that there were other guys beside Maynard Ferguson—but if you wanted to make money playing, you better learn how to do to some different things. I got a call to go out with him in 1984. I was out on the road with this soul singer, Bobby Womack; I got a call from a friend of mine, a trombone player with Maynard’s band at the time. They needed a lead trumpet player, but I was already on another tour. The other tour actually paid better, so I had to say no. I was kind of sad about that because here was a chance to meet my hero. It turns out that they hired a trumpet player that didn’t work out. So in 1985 I got a call about going out on the 1986 tour. In early January of 1986, I joined the band and did a six month tour.”

Maynard was known for being light-hearted and maintaining a great sense of humor—and Wayne experienced a bit of that as his introduction to the band. “I got the book about a week before I was going to go into rehearsal. There was some pretty hard music. I got into the first rehearsal, and there was one thing in particular, a little horn solo. After we played it, Maynard cuts the band off and looks at me, and says, ‘Is that all you got on that?’ I’m thinking to myself, ‘My God, what does this guy want?’ It was the best that I ever played it, and he didn’t seem happy. But he was just messing with me! Maynard was a very unique, easy-going, cool guy.

After touring with Maynard’s band, and getting back to Los Angeles, Wayne humbly described how his goal was simply to diligently work on becoming a better musician. In the process, the opportunity opened up for him to break into doing studio work in Hollywood. “I remember this specific movie, which my friend Warren Luening recommended me for. Warren is a veteran trumpet player here in Los Angles—a great lead player, great jazz player ... just a great all around trumpet player, and a complete veteran here. A contractor in town had gone through his whole list of players for this movie. There was a lot of stuff going on in town that week. Warren recommended giving me a shot. I got through it pretty well. It was a little nerve-racking, but I did a good job. That kind of helped and got me going. I remember being on that date with Malcolm McNab, Gary Grant, and Warren. These guys have been doing this their whole careers. I was very new at it, and it is a very high level of concentration of playing. Nobody misses. That alone was quite a learning experience.

What kind of stress or tension goes with the lucrative Hollywood studio recording career? “We have a saying in the business here—for a trumpet player anyway—that doing a recording session is 90 percent boredom and 10 percent sheer terror! A lot of times you don’t have much to play. But when you do, you are under the microscope. With a trumpet being such a loud instrument, every note is heard and exposed.”

Wayne went on to discuss the challenges of studio work. “The music is actually challenging sometimes. What is scary about it is you can have a part that you play really well. You got through it by the skin of your teeth—and yet you might have to do it five more times! Even though your first take might be good, you have to have several takes under your belt. The other scary thing about that is that you might have something difficult towards the end of the chart. There might be a really difficult violin solo and an unbelievably hard bass solo, and then you mess up a note at the end. These guys all have to play their stuff again. Not that we get bugged at each other. Everybody makes mistakes. But it’s a little nerve-racking. When you miss something, it rattles you because you start thinking about it. I’ve done it enough now that I don’t think about it too much. You’re amongst friends—you’re playing with the same people all the time. Sometimes they have a good performance from a previous take. So they’ll say, 'Don’t worry. We can pull that from the previous take.' It is cost-effective for them to do that sometimes. So that’s a technology that works nicely in our favor. I don’t get so nervous going into these jobs anymore. I go in, and most of the time, to be honest with you, it’s a little boring—and I don’t feel like I’m getting enough of a workout with my chops. You look at it like it’s your day job. There’s times where I haven’t played a note until lunch time. In one way, you can look at it like you’re getting paid to do nothing. But I’d rather be playing. You figure your chops can really go south on you if you are doing that kind of work all the time and not practicing, or you’re not doing any other kind of work … big band work or things like that. On the days I don’t work, I end up practicing. I’ll put my mute in on breaks, or when we’re not playing a lot. I’ll be back in the corner playing—just because I need to be ready to go when my part comes up. I’m usually one of the first guys to arrive at the studio. I practice long tones a little bit—depending on what I have to play. If I look at the music for the day and it looks very legitimate and soft, I will start with soft long tones and get the response happening, so I can play softly. I may have been playing the night before—thrashing my chops. That definitely makes doing the other thing on the horn, the classical side of the horn, difficult. It’s such a different way of playing. I always start very soft, and I try to not force anything out of the horn. I try to make the vibration as easiest as possible.”

Wayne is a wonderfully personable individual. The relaxed atmosphere of The Jazz Cruise is an ideal situation to catch up with him about his immense studio experience, performing on hundreds of movie and TV soundtracks, with some of the great big bands – and to talk to him about his own performances and recordings as both a lead trumpet artist and jazz player. The next The Jazz Cruise is in January 2013—a great way to get up close, make friends and hear Wayne making music.

Eric Nemeyer is one of the true authorities on jazz in the country. He founded Jazz Improv Magazine (1997), Jazz Improv NY Magazine (2005), Jazz Inside Magazine and Jazz Inside NY (print, digital) to help industry participants market to the broadest demographic that populates the jazz landscape. Jazz Inside NY Magazine is available as a free download at www.jazzinsidemagazine.com.

Mr. Nemeyer also produced Jazz Improv LIVE! 2007 Convention in NYC, created 80 panels/workshops, booked the artists for all 100 performances, created the marketing materials, advertising and PR copy, managed direct mail campaigns, and participated in sales of sponsorships.

Additional accomplishments include having produced 40 jazz albums including projects for Bailey's Irish Cream, Vandoren and Conn-Selmer, and composing and arranging over 125 published arrangements for jazz ensemble, concert and marching bands.

Eric will be writing a monthly column in Jazz Cruises’ Notes, and we welcome his voice and insights.