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2013 Program!

The 2013 Hot Times Headliner Performance

Fred Wesley began his professional career as a teenage trombonist with Ike and Tina Turner. He was music director, arranger, trombonist and a primary composer for the legendary James Brown from 1968 to 1975 and thereafter, arranged and played for Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy’s Rubber Band. He has played with and arranged for a wide variety of other artists including Ray Charles, Pancho Sanchez, New York Voices, Slide Hampton, Van Morrison, Usher, the SOS Band and Cameo, to name a few. Scores of other artists including Janet Jackson and Nas have sampled his work. Since his stint with the Count Basie Orchestra, he has maintained a focus on jazz – playing, recording, writing and promoting it.

Fred is an extraordinary artist with many facets: He has no equals in American music. Whether it’s jazz, funk, R&B, blues or other, his solos never fail to thrill. From his direction of James Brown’s fabled JBs to today’s New JBs, he knows how to choose the best musicians and meld them into tight units that generate mad heat. Some of funk music’s biggest hits by James Brown, the JBs, Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy’s Rubber Band are living testaments to his gifts, as are his soulful jazz compositions such as “For the Elders,” “La Bossa” and “No One.” His half-century career is a treasure trove of stories, some of which fill the pages of his compelling memoir “Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Side Man” (Duke University Press 2002). The reliability and fire he’s contributed to bands ranging from the Count Basie Orchestra to the American Idol Band, make him a sure bet in any setting. Wesley shares his wealth of musical knowledge and experiences in settings including classrooms, band rooms and recital halls at colleges and universities and now at HOT TIMES.