Fred Wesley was born on July 4,1943 and is an American trombonist who worked with James Brown in the 1960s and 1970s and Parliament-Funkadelic in the second half of the 1970s.
10 Facts About Fred Wesley
2.
Fred Wesley played baritone horn and trombone in school, and at around age 12 his father brought a trombone home, whereupon he switched to trombone.
3.
Fred Wesley left Brown's band in 1975 and spent several years playing with George Clinton's various Parliament-Funkadelic projects, even recording a couple of albums as the leader of a spin-off group, The Horny Horns.
4.
Fred Wesley became a force in jazz in 1978 when he joined the Count Basie Orchestra.
5.
Fred Wesley released his first jazz album as a leader, To Someone in 1988.
6.
Fred Wesley recorded an album with San Diego soul-jazz luminaries The Greyboy Allstars in 1994 called West Coast Boogaloo, and toured with the band in 1995,1996 and again in 2012.
7.
In 2002 Wesley wrote Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Sideman, an autobiography about his life as a sideman.
8.
Fred Wesley served as an adjunct professor in the Jazz Studies department of the School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 2004 to 2006, and now works with students as a visiting artist at numerous other schools including Berklee College of Music and Columbia College of Chicago.
9.
In 2007, Fred Wesley accepted an invitation to contribute to Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino.
10.
In 2010, Fred Wesley contributed to Kings, the fourth album by Israeli funk and groove ensemble, The Apples.