Jon Faddis -

Jon Faddis (born July 24, 1953) is an American jazz-funk trumpeter, conductor, and composer from Oakland, Calif., known for his work with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra and Dizzy Gillespie, along with the solo albums Jon & Billy, Good and Plenty, and Legacy.

Background

Jon Faddis was born July 24, 1953, in Oakland, California, to Woodrow Bruce Faddis and Mildred Marie Faddis. His father taught U.S. history at Ygnacio Valley High School and chaired the Oakland chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. Older sister Yvonne played piano, so Faddis chose trumpet when his parents offered music lessons.

Faddis fixed on trumpet after seeing Louis Armstrong on The Ed Sullivan Show, and his parents bought him an instrument at about seven years of age. Trumpeter Bill Catalano, a former Stan Kenton sideman, taught Faddis at Best Music in Oakland and brought him to San Francisco rehearsal bands, where he read short passages alongside working musicians.

Faddis attended Pleasant Hill High School, where band director Robert Soder included him in the school jazz program. Outside school, he played Motown and soul material with older R&B groups while still in junior high school. He also played trumpet in composer Robert Hughes’s Oakland Symphony Youth Chamber Orchestra, which toured the American South with The Black Composer in America program in 1970 and recorded material for Desto Records. By his mid-teens, Faddis met Dizzy Gillespie at Monterey Jazz Festival and sat in with Gillespie’s combo at Jazz Workshop in San Francisco.

Faddis graduated from Pleasant Hill High School in 1971 and joined Lionel Hampton’s big band as a featured soloist two days short of his eighteenth birthday. The engagement took him to New York, where drummer Mel Lewis invited him to sit in with Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at Village Vanguard. Faddis soon became lead trumpeter in the orchestra and studied for about a semester at Manhattan School of Music. Charles Mingus enlisted him for Charles Mingus and Friends in Concert at Philharmonic Hall on Feb. 4, 1972, where Faddis substituted for the ailing Roy Eldridge on “Little Royal Suite.”

Faddis entered New York sessions for organist Johnny Hammond Smith and singer James Brown that year, while he continued Monday engagements with Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. He also toured Europe with Mingus and developed further recording work through the New York jazz circuit. Faddis and Thad Jones/Mel Lewis bandmate Billy Harper entered Teichiku Studio in Tokyo on March 13, 1974, with pianist Roland Hanna, bassist George Mraz, drummer Motohiko Hino, and percussionist Cecil Bridgewater for the Trio Records session that became Jon & Billy.

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