John Bailey
About Me
Veteran trumpeter John Bailey imagines a world inherited from a President Dizzy
Gillespie administration on his celebratory second album.
Can You Imagine?, due out January 20, 2020 via Freedom Road Records, reflects on the jazz icon’s
tongue-in-cheek 1964 campaign with a swinging all-star group featuring Stacy Dillard, Stafford
Hunter, Edsel Gomez, Mike Karn and Victor Lewis, with special guests Janet Axelrod and Earl McIntyre.
“John Bailey is a great improviser. Since we met as teenagers I've been taken with how natural a
musician he is and how deeply his roots go into the tradition of jazz music. He's a joy to listen to!”
– Donny McCaslin, saxophonist
“Bailey's playing is full of passion and fire, and he brings that energy to several musical styles.” –
Jerome Wilson, All About Jazz
In 1964, Dizzy Gillespie announced his candidacy for President of the United States. The
campaign was, in the iconic trumpeter’s wry fashion, in large part satirical – particularly his proposed
cabinet,
which included Duke Ellington as Secretary of State, Louis Armstrong as Secretary of Agriculture, and
Miles Davis as CIA Director among others. But the issues that Gillespie raised on the campaign trail,
during one of the most heated periods of the Civil Rights movement, were serious, and resonate with the
conflicts we still face today.
On his new album, Can You Imagine?, veteran trumpeter/composer John Bailey posits an
alternate reality half a century on from a President Gillespie administration. (This is no passing fancy for
Bailey; as Allen Morrison points out in his liner notes, the trumpeter’s license plate reads “DIZ4PREZ.”)
Due out, appropriately enough, on January 20, 2020 – Inauguration Day – through Bailey’s own
Freedom Road Records, Can You Imagine? is also offered as a rhetorical question, a stunned response to
the fact that too many of us seem not to have learned the lessons on empathy and human decency
offered by our country’s artistic giants.
“It’s an open question,” Bailey says. “Here we are in 2019 and there’s a lack of compassion and
basic decency in our leadership and in our culture. I’m just asking: where would our culture be today if
someone like Dizzy had actually occupied the White House in 1965? Can you imagine?”
The modern world that Bailey imagines is built on a foundation of joyful swing, a melting pot of
influences from throughout the jazz tradition and Latin America. It’s a celebration of fellow feeling among a
knockout group of musicians well versed in making bold individual statements while melding their
sounds into a harmonious whole. The core sextet includes saxophonist Stacy Dillard, trombonist Stafford
Hunter, pianist Edsel Gomez, bassist Mike Karn and drummer Victor Lewis, along with guest appearances
by bass trombonist and tuba master Earl McIntyre and flutist Janet Axelrod.
Leading the band is John Bailey, whose distinctive trumpet sound graced countless concert
stages and record dates before he made his long overdue recording debut in 2018 with In Real Time. Over
more than three decades as an in-demand sideman, Bailey enjoyed long-running relationships with Ray
Charles, Ray Barretto, The Woody Herman Orchestra and Frank Sinatra, Jr., and contributed to a pair of
Grammywinning albums by Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra.
The centerpiece of the album is the three-part, 12-minute “President Gillespie Suite,” which
traces the candidate along the road to what he promised to rechristen “The Blues House.” While he half-
jokingly relates the idea of a “concept record” to the influence of Jethro Tull’s Thick As a Brick, Bailey
traces frontman Ian Anderson’s classic rock flute sound to the influence of one of his own key
inspirations, Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The jazz eccentric’s 1969 album Volunteered Slavery is a touchstone for
Can You Imagine?. McIntyre’s classic plunger solo style is featured over its theme and others, including
Stevie Wonder’s “Do Yourself a Favor” in the suite’s second movement.
Kirk was also the inspiration for Victor Lewis’ “From the Heart,” one of two compositions from the
legendary percussionist/composer, the other being the soulful “The Touch of Her Vibe.” Dillard
contributed “Elite State of Mind,” its lilting melody beautifully voiced by virtuoso flutist Janet Axelrod.
Can You Imagine? opens with “Pebbles in the Pocket,” which Bailey says references the “pebbles
of wisdom” that we each carry around with us from loved ones, mentors, or anyone who’s gone
before and left behind those crucial nuggets of knowledge that it would behoove us to heed. “Ballad from
Oro, Incienso y Mirra” is an excerpt from a suite that showcased Bailey with Arturo O’Farrill and the
Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra at the Apollo Theater in 2016, an evening that also featured Dr. Cornel West.
Bailey describes Chico Buarque’s “Valsa Rancho,” with Axelrod on bass and alto flute, as “an iconic
selection from the Elis Regina songbook,” another of the trumpeter’s wide-ranging passions. The
album ends with a wistful rendition of the classic “People,” in which Bailey’s warm, embracing tone
reminds us of our shared humanity.
Ultimately, that message is what Bailey hopes listeners come away with from Can You Imagine?
The album is not meant to bemoan our current turmoil but to offer a better alternative, one in which
we rise to our better natures. “Positive change is an important theme in this album,” he concludes. “I’m a
patriot. I love my country. I want to enlighten people, to have them contemplate not just Dizzy for
President in 1964 but any number of opportunities we’ve had, and will have, to champion compassion,
dignity
and civility. I’m a little frustrated that we’re not there yet, but I believe we will achieve social justice and I
am
compelled to serve the cause.”
John Bailey Known as one of the most eclectic trumpet players in New York City, Bailey is an in-demand
musician and teaching artist in all forms of jazz, R&B, pop and classical music. He became a member of the
Buddy Rich Band while still in college, and his career has included tenures with Ray Charles, Ray
Barretto and New World Spirit, The Woody Herman Orchestra and Frank Sinatra, Jr. He has performed and
recorded with James Moody, Kenny Burrell, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Barrett Deems and many others. His work
with Arturo O'Farrill won two Grammy Awards, for the albums The Offense of the Drum and Cuba -
The Conversation Continues. He has played on more than 75 albums and, as a jazz educator, has
taught at the University of Miami and Florida International University.