He’s Gonna Play His Trumpet NOW!
Chris Manson June 16, 2005 Issue

“I’m looking for musicians who have a passion for jazz and are willing to get together and see what kind of musical rapport we have,” John Robinson says. “I just want to make music. I’m tired of playing what everyone wants me to play just because they’re writing the checks. I want to explore the music I need to be making without the pressure of doing it for someone else.”

The ambitious trumpet player placed an ad in The Beachcomber recently. So far, he has gotten at least one promising response—from a drummer whom he just missed meeting in New Orleans a few years back when both were auditioning for John Wehner’s Dream Band. “He’s teaching at OWC, and they’ve got a trio—it’s him, a keyboard player, and a bass player. We talked about making it a quartet, throwing some trumpet in there. That was a positive thing.”

Robinson is a composer, too, and hopes to collaborate with like-minded musicians in a recording studio, a live venue, or both. “I wouldn’t know what to categorize them as,” he says of his compositions. “There are some ballads and a couple that lean more towards avant-garde type melodies over straight-ahead jazz changes. Maybe one funk tune I was messing around with. Sometimes if I get an idea I’ll write down four or five bars before it gets away from me. My memory’s not the greatest.”

He wants to explore a path that has rarely if ever been taken in the local music scene. “I think I’ve had about enough of Top-40 and dance pop as far as playing trumpet because I’m always playing the same charts over and over again. In New Orleans we had a pretty big book, but you can’t get through the night without some repeats—Brick House, things people want to hear. There’s no jazz club here, really—that goes for a lot of cities. It doesn’t seem to be what people want to hear when they’re out having drinks.”

But you never know what people will want, and maybe they won’t know until they hear it. I mention that I know a few musicians who perform in jazz duos. “You can have a nice duo with piano and bass, but trumpet and drums just doesn’t fly as well,” he says. “I’m kind of itching to get back to playing straight-ahead jazz. I’ve only played that a few times in my freelance career. I was in Orlando seven years, from Disney bands to leads in big bands at night—the 20-piece orchestra-type things. It’s probably been five plus years since I played that consistently. Last year I did a gig with Woody Herman. Those are fun to do, but they’re few and far between.

“Working full-time, there’s not a lot of time to go out and hear music,” he explains. Robinson currently has a construction job; before that, he detailed cars. “You have to pay the bills. That’s the catch-22 with music. You don’t have enough gigs to focus on your horn full time. I want to get back into music on my own terms. For 10 years I did freelance music, and when you do that it becomes a job. You have to take everything you get called for. That takes some of the enjoyment out of it. I’m looking for a happy medium, where I can focus on what I want to do.”

By straight-ahead jazz, Robinson is referring to the music’s old school—cats like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Freddie Hubbard. “Not ‘fuzak,’” he says, meaning smooth jazz or what I’m more inclined to call “wallpaper music.” “I left home at 17 to go to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.” He spent about a year and a half at the mainly classical school. “My teacher said if I played too many leads I’d ruin my chops. We parted ways after that,” Robinson says. “Jazz is spontaneous. It’s more from the heart. So is classical, but you can’t step outside the box. You have to play it exactly the way it’s on the page—you’re very limited as to what you can play.”

After Eastman, Robinson returned home to Belleville, Ill.—right across the river from St. Louis—and played in a school jazz band. It wasn’t long before he joined a contemporary Christian music group called Truth and hit the road for a year of hard touring. A bit later, he pursued jazz studies at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. “They had and still have a great jazz program,” Robinson says. A string of freelance gigs in the Orlando area kept him working steadily when John Wehner called and lured him to his New Orleans club. “The day I left to drive to New Orleans, the leader of the band I was in called and told me they got laid off. So it was good timing.”

Robinson picked up his first horn at age eight, and he’s been at it ever since. Doc Severinsen from TV’s The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was the first big name trumpeter Robinson admired. From there, it was a short leap to the heavier sounds of Miles, Hubbard, and Dizzy Gillespie. Growing up in a heavily musical family helped, too. “My dad still is to this day a minister of music at a Southern Baptist church in Belleville. He and my mom sing and play piano. My older brother played drums through high school. He never learned to read music, but he plays by ear and is phenomenal. He’s got a band now, and they’re doing well. It’s a mix of classic rock and roll, country rock, and Christian rock.”

Among contemporary performers, Robinson likes Nicholas Payton from New Orleans. I ask him to provide a short list of his favorite albums, and he almost immediately mentions Hubtones, recorded when Freddie Hubbard was just 20 years old. “That’s some of his most fiery stuff on trumpet,” Robinson gushes. “That, to me, was one of his most genuine recordings. He was at that age where he wasn’t afraid of falling on his face.”

He says he would include a couple of Hubbard-Woody Herman collaborations among his desert island discs, too. “I can name people better than I can name albums. Sometimes you listen to so much you end up paying more attention to the sound than the name. I’ve got the complete Roulette recordings of Maynard Ferguson that covers the Birdland Dream Band when he was on top. I don’t think anyone will ever play trumpet like he did. Maynard’s in his late 70’s, and he’s been on the road since he was 16. The longevity of his career doing what he does on trumpet is very rare.” Indeed, I paid a curious visit to the website maynard.ferguson.net and learned the legend will be touring heavily through October.

“Most players, their lip dies out or they get strung out on drugs,” Robinson notes. “Or they die before their time.”

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