Fred Wesley autobiography "Hit Me, Fred"

timing your bandmembers recitations of the setlist with a stopwatch = classic!

yeah, how is this? I've been debating picking it up/reading it, but didn't know if fred could sustain my interest book-length or not.

I'm almost to the end - it focuses exclusively on his music career, which was probably a wise choice. And he's got a good memory and lots of great anecdotes, the style is very conversational and he doesn't shy away *at all* from various controversial topics, he deals with everything pretty bluntly. The chapters on James Brown made me laugh out loud. The chapters where he's toiling in more relative obscurity (ie, not with JB, P-Funk, or Count Basie) reinforce, once again in case no one's figured this out, just how difficult it is to be a working musician, and how much shit you gotta eat just to do something you love.

I met Fred about seven years ago, when he was almost done with the book, and we've spoken on the phone a few times since then. I think it's a good book, and it is a somewhat sobering account of what it takes to be a working musician. I find the attitude interesting--on the one hand he has nothing but respect and even awe for how powerful a person James Brown is, but on the other he's a little bitter about how things turned out, and has the musician's disdain for Brown's lack of musical acumen. I don't know if Duke ever put this out in pb, but it's well worth tracking down, certainly the best thing I've read about playing with Brown anywhere (and good on Clinton, too). And, anyone who doesn't believe how important the jazz past was to JB's music will be disabused of that notion by the book.

(it's out in paperback - that's why I got a copy). and yes, seconded about this being the best firsthand account of playing w/JB I've ever seen. Certainly Brown's tepid "autobiographies" pale in comparison.