Richard Watters

Hi! I’m a long time jazz fan and occasional Chicago-area musician (trumpet/flugelhorn). I began playing trumpet about 1962 as a grade-school student. By my Senior year at Downers Grove South Highschool I was a member of five different music organizations: Marching Band, Chamber Band, Orchestra, Jazz Band and various brass ensembles.

During my latter years of highschool (1969-1971), I attended the 9th, 10th and 11th Annual Oak Lawn Jazz Festivals (a.k.a. Annual Chicagoland Stage Band Festival) as a member of the Downers Grove South Highschool Stage Band. The festival featured 110 or so highschool bands competing for the top 5 honors on the Sunday night show when the winning bands, ensembles and soloists were announced after a weekend of judging and clinics with the sidemen from the hosting band...during one of these fests I had the opportunity to "sit in" with the hosting band (for one tune) which happened to be Stan Kenton's Big Band. My musical career as a trumpet player has been downhill from there, but the experience instilled in me a life-long love of jazz, America's only true art form. As a result, during my first year at North Central College (in Naperville, Illinois) I briefly hosted a Friday night radio show on the college FM radio station WONC, which was dedicated to playing Stan Kenton's music for a half hour. The show was called "Stan The Man" and offered up all kinds of information regarding his musical organization and history.

I was in two Chicago-area “Garage Rock Bands” during the late 1960’s namely, CENTURA (led by Bob Siebert of Westmont, IL) and a band I started later named EMANON. These were 6 or 7 piece bands that covered music by Earth, Wind and Fire / Blood, Sweat and Tears / Chicago as was popular at the time. In the early 1970’s I was a member of the U.S. Navy Drum & Bugle Corps and also assigned as the bugler at the Naval Training Center in San Diego, California. I also did duty as part of the Color Guard for funeral details at the Brunswick Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine. I was a member of the Bath Municipal Band in Bath, Maine and played at many ceremonial ship-launchings at the Bath Iron Works there.

After the service, I joined a big band named The JKQ Swing Band and played until the late 1980’s. In 2006 I was a member of an all-original jazz/blues/pop band named TIMMS SISTER’S BAND led by Chicago-area jazz vocalist/lyricist Catherine Whitney. I have played with several Chicago-area jazz musicians such as drummers Isham "Rusty" Jones (of George Shearing fame), Johnie Faren and Freddy Sontag; pianists Johnny Gabor and Richard Drexler; bassists Kelly Sommers and Ron Overcash; guitarists Richie Mars and Clay Travis; The Barry Winograd Trio and vocalist Catherine Whitney.

Currently I am the editor of a syndicated jazz information-aggregation blog which has come to some popularity with internet-based jazz fans. It primarily showcases news and events happening on the Chicago jazz scene and is known as "JAZZzology" (http://JAZZzology.blogspot.com). I hope soon to start including items on the New York City and Los Angeles jazz scenes as well. JAZZzology is one of a series of 50 blogs ("TheZologyBlogs") on various topics of interest and study to me that I want to share with others in the on-line community.

My favorite all-time horn musician is the late jazz-ballad cornetist Bobby Hackett who had played with Glenn Miller’s Band and then in later years was featured as a soloist on several albums of The Jackie Gleason Orchestra. More current trumpet artist favorites of mine are Rick Braun and Chris Botti. Other jazz favorites of mine are trumpeters Miles Davis, Corey Wilkes, Roy Hargrove, Maurice Brown; pianists George Shearing, Tommy Muellner, Jose Valdes, Ben Paterson; saxophonists Von Freeman and John Coltrane.

Gear

Bach Stradivarius trumpet, Wurzenburg flugelhorn, Conn cornet