User:Kusfo/Wally besser

Wally Besser (Minneapolis,Minnesota, January 16, 1936) is a trumpet and fluger horn player with a large career playing with best orchestras as The Glenn Miller Orchestra.

Early life
Wally Besser was born on January 16, 1936, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He attended Douglas elementary school until he was seven years old and then his parents bought a large old house in Excelsior, Minnesota on Lake Minnetonka.

Tha family had a very large garden and complete with a chicken coop, wich kept his mom and kids busy and helped supply them with food. His dad was a left handed piano player and singer in the style of Fats Waller and he continued playing until he built a small grocery store, after which he put aside the music business and ran the store, together with his wife and kids.

Besser took piano lessons as a kid but they did not take. Finally when he could not compete as an athlete (for health reasons), he took up the trumpet in his junior year in high school.

Getting into music
After graduation from Minnetonka High School, he went on to study privately at MacPhail College of Music. After three semesters he was offered a job in a Polka band and he spent the summer with them in western Minnesota. Besser quit the band in the fall when his dad got back into the music business, in order to get him a decent job. Besser went to work in a striptease club where they taught him “everything he knows”, as he said.

He spent a couple of years with the strippers until he had enough money saved to move to Chicago, in 1957, to continue his studies. He studied trumpet with Arnold Jacobs and arranging with William Russo, while doing gigs with local bands. Besser left Chicago with a Hotel Band and after a couple of months, when the band broke up, he moved to Los Angeles and spent a few uneventful months there. One day he got a letter form the military telling him to report for a physical. He went back to Minneapolis and failed his physical due to Asthma. He was now free to pursue his dream and travel the world.

Adventure to Barcelona
While living in the Devonshire Hotel in Chicago he became friendly with Jack and Phil Hand. Phil was an extrumpet player now playing valve trombone and Jack was learning to play bass. Jack had lived in Paris during the Second World War and was a devout follower of the jazz scene. Jack Hand had moved to Spain. He wanted to start a Jazz Club there and asked Besser to join him. Besser went back to the Strip clubs to earn enough money to finance his new adventure.

Besser arrived to Barcelona in February, 1959. Jack had already started a record Jazz Club in a bar called “La Selva”, and had built up quite a big following. The owner had promised that he would get all the necessary permits for live music. It never happened. Jack stopped paying the rent and one night they arrived to find a lock on the door. Together with Besser and a large group of jazz enthusiasts, they broke the lock and put Count Basie on the record player. One or two weeks after that, once again they were locked out. Finally, one night Jack Hand and Besser decided to try it on their own. The owner was ready for them and had them beat up by an off duty police man and the waiters. Besser was beaten across the back and legs and Jack had his jaw broken in two places.

The next day, Jack’s brother Phil Hand arrived in Barcelona with his pregnant wife, Nancy. While recuperating the two brothers and Besser went to Sitges to see about the jazz scene. In April they founded a club called “La Galera” which they started to play in until June. And then back to Barcelona for some jazz gigs while searching for a new venue. From novembre 15, 1959, to February 15, 1960, they worked out a deal with a club called Jack’s. Jack’s was doing great but without the necessary permits they were closed down by the autorities and out of work again. At that time, the Jack’s was the only place in Barcelona where you can listen to live jazz music every day.

The Jamboree Jazz Club
At the beginning of 1960, Besser and the brothers Hand had convinced Joan Roselló to convert the basement of his bar “Los Tarantos” into a jazz club. With the help of some of the jazz followers and especially a young artist, Jordi Bonás, who painted magnificent jazz murals on the walls, the club started to happen with The Jazz Brothers (Hand broters, Besser, plus the pianist Pere Ferré and drummer “Chip” Collins. Roselló obtained all the necessary papers and “The Jamboree Jazz Club” was born.

The Jamboree did great and The Jazz Brothers had a big following. It even appealed to the high society crowd, but the majority of the patrons were young students, artists and people seeking something new. The club was a big success. Since that moment, la Plaça Reial, where the club was situated, became the heart of jazz music in Barcelona.

Finally after a few months and several disagreements most of them with Jack hand, Besser decided to move on. Their pianist at that time, José Fuste, was offered a job as the leader of the band at the “Florida Park”, a night club in Madrid. He took Besser with him. Besser stayed a couple of weeks, but decided it was not for him. He quit and went to work in the “Whisky Jazz Club”, in Madrid too.

Around Europe
While working and jamming in Madrid, he met the members of the “Manny Kelley Orchestra”, with Manny Gree at the piano, the German bass player Pitt Rudolph, the German drummer Peer Wyboris, the Spanish sax and guitar player Pedro Iturralde and Audrey Gray at the vocals and congas. Those musicians were all basically jazz players but the band plated commercial music to make money. They worked and recorded around Spain, until one day they were offered a job in Athens, Greece.

In Athens, they played in “Casino de Athens and then were offered a job in Ankara, Turkey. A serious illness of his father made Besser went back to Minneapolis. When he arrived, his father was still holding on, so Besser had to find some work to pay the bills. He took a job with an entertaining lounge group that was working the Midwest, and his father finally passed away.

He returned to Athens to join the “Lavranos Orchestra”. Happily he quit the lounge group and went to Greece where he stayed for about two and a half years, playing in the best hotels and doing some recording. She still came back to “Jamboree Jazz Club” in Barcelona once where he played with his own band and Audrey Gray as a vocalist for about two weeks. Then went to Madrid to look for work, then to Seville, Kenitra, Morocco, and finally returned to Athens to re-join the “lavranos” band. From May, 1966, to October, 1967, they worked around Europe.

Big business in New York City
In October 27, 1967, Besser returned to New York City with the intention of joining a “Name Band” or else going to Las Vegas to seek work. Within two days he was offered a job traveling with “The Glenn Miller Orchestra under the direction of Buddy DeFranco. Besser stayed with the band until June 28, 1970, when he left to go with the “Billy Maxted Jazz Band”. He stayed with Maxted until the winter of 1971, when he decided to try to make it in New York City. At first he worked with some Latin bands, did a few gigs in the Catskills and a few nightclubs. In September 1971 he was offered a job in a new Greek/Isreali club “Sirocco”. He stayed for a year and then went to a new club “Alexander the Great” which only lasted a short while.

On september 7, 1973, he married Shelley Drayer, who was working in the stock market, then moving on to Swiss Air and then started her own financing business. They lived on west 91st street in Manhattan until 1974 when they bought a house in Long Beach Long Island. Besser was then doing private parties plus contracting the musicians and playing with the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus in Madison Square Garden, Nassau Colliseum, West Palm Beach, Miami and New Jersey. He was then accepted an offer to lead a wedding band for the Steven Scott Orchestras, where he stayed for approximately seven years.

Five gigs a week
In June 2007 Besser and his wife sold their New York home and moved to Jupiter Florida. After broken his left wrist, fractured his right hip and got through a left vocal cord cancer, he is now living Florida and playing five nights a week in many different bands.

Studies

 * Private studies at MacPhail College of Music – Minneapolis.
 * Private trumpet lessons with James Mckay and Daniel Tetzlaf-Minneapolis Symphony.
 * Private trumpet lessons with Arnold Jacobs-Chicago Symphony.
 * Private arranging/composition lessons with William Russo-Chicago.
 * Private trumpet lessons with Carmine Caruso – New York City.

Discography
''Glenn Miller Orchestra Directed By Buddy De Franco: Recorded live, Royal Festival Hall, London, England.''