‘No Retrograde Inversions!’: Randy Brecker in Conversation

Now 80, the legendary trumpeter talks about his practice regimen, classic sessions with Steely Dan, Paul Simon and other icons, and that time he bonded — briefly and weirdly — with Miles Davis over wah-wah pedals. 

The trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer Randy Brecker is a challenging interview. Not because he’s unkind, or unwilling; in fact, you couldn’t ask for a more generous and affable presence. He’s a challenge because his career covers nearly 60 years, an enormous range of bands and music, and seemingly countless classic sessions. You could Zoom with the seven-time Grammy winner for a week straight and still leave unforgettable stories on the cutting-room floor. 

Alongside his work as one of the preeminent jazz trumpeters, Randy’s clarion sound turns up in Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al,” essential LPs by Steely Dan and Donald Fagen, Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me,” Jaco Pastorius’ groundbreaking Columbia debut, Frank Zappa’s Zappa in New York, Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, and albums by James Taylor, Carly Simon, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Aerosmith, George Benson — the list goes on (and on). 

To scroll through his credits is to take a crash course in postwar jazz, rock, R&B and pop, and it’s hard to think of one musician who’s participated in as many all-time-great recordings. Actually, there is one: his late younger brother, Michael Brecker, a saxophonist of monumental influence. Beginning in the 1970s, Randy and Michael were a force in the music industry known as the Brecker Brothers, dominating the New York session scene and personalizing fusion with a seamless blend of funkiness and virtuosity.

The Breckers, who grew up in the Philadelphia area, were core members of a jazz generation that grew up immersed in swinging music while also absorbing the pop-cultural explosions of the 1960s. Randy’s breakthrough professional experience included both the mega-selling jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat & Tears and the hard-bop greats Art Blakey and Horace Silver. As the ’60s became the ’70s, he joined the pioneering fusion band Dreams, also featuring Michael, guitarist John Abercrombie and drummer Billy Cobham, which paved the way for the Brecker Brothers band in the mid-’70s. 

In the following decades, Randy has remained prolific both onstage and in studio work — which has moved from Manhattan and L.A. to the home studio Brecker shares with his spouse and key collaborator, saxophonist Ada Rovatti, on Long Island. Rovatti has helped Randy honor Michael by stepping into the saxophonist’s role and carrying the brothers’ music forward, in her own voice. “The whole reason I chose her was the fact that she didn’t really play like Mike,” Brecker says, “and we have another kind of connection. … We’ve managed to keep the thing going and keep it in the family, so to speak.” When discussing recent projects, he points to Rovatti’s latest album, The Hidden World of Piloo, which he played on; a new leader record for the SRG Jazz label, due out next year; and a swinging straight-ahead session with pianist David Kikoski’s trio. The present is bustling. 

But on an hourlong call with the Woodwind & Brasswind Journal, Brecker, who recently turned 80, is content to reflect, offering deep insight and plenty of laughs. The life of a studio musician, he says, is like “flying on a plane, where your emotion vacillates between boredom and terror, depending on what you see in front of you.”

Still, he seems to have taken his studio career in stride. “It didn’t matter to me what the style was. As long as everything was professionally done, and everybody was playing in tune and with musicality, I was a happy camper.”

Here, Brecker chats about those whirlwind years, his practice routine, his brother’s legacy and more. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

When you think back to the heyday of the studio scene, what made the Brecker Brothers the go-to guys? 

When I played with Mike, we had a special thing going, as far as a certain kind of vibrato and pickup notes, little notes we would stick into the arrangement that somehow only we could do. We would add something to the written part. [Alto saxophonist] David Sanborn was part of that, and [baritone saxophonist] Ronnie Cuber, and the trombone player Barry Rogers. We got a lot of calls from people who wanted our particular sound, ’cause it was a little different than if they called somebody else. 

What was your day-to-day like? Did you ever get parts beforehand or were you just showing up to some New York studio and they’d have the charts on a stand for you?

In that world you don’t get parts beforehand, because you don’t get the call usually until the night before the session. Radio Registry would call and say, “I have a 10 to 1 and a 2 to 5 tomorrow for so-and-so.” And you’d show up and hope for the best.

Did you develop any strategies for sight-reading that helped you make sense of charts on the fly?

Well, the charts — and I can’t tell you how much I miss this — they were copied by humans and they were copied well, even though maybe the copyists had a little too much to drink sometimes. [laughs] But we were all friends, and they were written right — which they’re not anymore. You’ve gotta decipher them; there’s too many B sharps and C flats. It’s all computer-ese, written correctly, but it’s a big pain in the neck.

How’d you get to be a great reader? 

Just by doing it. I wasn’t a great reader until I got to New York and started really having to read. When I got to Indiana University, I was an OK reader, but maybe not quite up to snuff. So for the first semester I was put in the second band, which was kind of the reading band, and that really helped a lot. You just have to do it every day. 

What would your warm-up before a session look like?

Not much, ’cause they were at 10 in the morning. We would play low C chromatically to low G, and maybe some long tones and some lip slurs. There wasn’t much warming up at all because they had to get the job done, and it was hard for me to get there that early anyway.

I got used to not really having to warm-up. I got to warm up for maybe 10 minutes doing that, but it wasn’t a longer 20-minute routine. I’d do that at home the night before, so my chops were supple. But for the most part, [with] the brass players, you’d hear low C, low G real softly, or playing a G flat softly, the lowest note on the trumpet, and just holding it and letting the air take over. You’d show up maybe 15 minutes early and do that. 

Looking at your credits, you and your brother must’ve just lived in the studios all through the ’70s and ’80s. What happened to that scene?

It started to fade in the mid-’80s when MIDI came along and digital technology. I remember I was called by a jingle guy I’d worked for a lot, and I showed up at the session and I was the only one there. He asked me to play a chromatic scale and then some high notes, some low notes, some different attacks. He gave me certain directions. I said, “What are we doing here?” And he said, “It’s a new experimental movie I’m doing, so I just need these kinds of sounds.” 

Turns out he was sampling me. When the sampling thing came in, that cut the work down quite a bit, because instead of four trumpets there’d be one trumpet and three fake trumpets. Trumpets were hard to make facsimiles of, so we had a little longer life than some of the other instruments. The strings, forget it. And the more technology came in, [the more] people started doing sessions at home — which is what we do now. We’ve done maybe 1,000 sessions in our basement studio for people. 

Of all the rock and pop stars you played for during sessions, who was really hands-on and knowledgeable about what they wanted from a horn section?

Everyone was different, and quite often the artist wasn’t even there; it was the arranger. Paul Simon was very specific and took his time, and we tried different things. He was very meticulous about finding what he wanted. Sometimes he didn’t know how to put it into words, so it would be just me and him fitting in little parts here and there, and that’s how he worked.

There’s a classic story of Bruce Springsteen and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” where he called me, Mike, Sanborn and trombonist Wayne Andre. We showed up and there was no arrangement. So he had no idea what he wanted … and you would never think, in a professional situation, you’d show up and there’s no music. So it was our job to try to jam something up, which we were really good at. But this piece was just out of our wheelhouse; it was a little too rock ’n’ roll. Strange as it sounds, we weren’t that familiar with Bruce’s music or with real rock ’n’ roll; we were more fusion, funk cats. 

We got about halfway through and there was hustle and bustle in the control room and somebody clicked on the talkback [intercom] and said, “No, that’s not it. That sounds terrible.” It was Little Steven Van Zandt.

So he helped us through. We started all over. That [kind of classic rock ’n’ soul] was his métier, so to speak. So he’d hum some lines and we wrote ’em down and we got the thing done. I saw an interview later where he felt bad ’cause he didn’t treat us with much respect, I must say. He presents his side of the story, because that became a well-known [anecdote] in the business. The word got around.

I also got to do “Meeting Across the River,” just trumpet and Bruce, although it was an overdub. But that became pretty popular and I had a trumpet solo through the whole thing. 

Let’s talk about Steely Dan. I imagine they were very much in the mix as far as direction.

They knew what they wanted to the nth degree, and they got what they wanted. To them, if you did something 40 times, it would make it better. If I had a four-bar solo, I’d start with not my best stuff, because I knew I was going to have to do it over and over. They did all the tunes like that. They would spend a week or more on a tune — a week on a horn part until they heard what they wanted.

Technology had come in, and drum machines, but they didn’t really want to use drum machines; they wanted drummers to sound like a machine. They would cut the drum tracks up to make it sound like a machine, and if it didn’t work, they’d call somebody else. It was kind of crazy, but they were all great records.

We didn’t have any creative input. [Producer] Gary Katz, Walter [Becker] and Donald [Fagen] — the three of them knew what they wanted. They’d probably argue among themselves. I remember I was playing a four-bar solo on “Babylon Sisters,” I think it was, and after about the 30th take, Walter gets on the talkback and says, “We don’t want any retrograde inversions!” I knew I was screwed, ’cause I didn’t know what a retrograde inversion even was. I just kept going, playing whatever I did. 

A couple of the records you played on became very influential to the alternative music that developed later on. I’m thinking of Lou Reed’s Berlin and Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard/A True Star. 

I get asked about those a lot, and I remember absolutely nothing about the Lou Reed record, which means they had good charts. They took a break and we had lunch with Lou Reed. We just read the parts and split; there was no drama.

With Todd Rundgren, “Hello It’s Me” is the one I remember, because it was unusual in that everyone was in the studio singing or playing at the same time. We hadn’t played the thing before. Mike and I and Barry Rogers were jamming up parts as we went, and it came out great. 

Your “Some Skunk Funk” has become a tune for ambitious band programs to attempt. If you were watching a performance as a guest clinician, what would you look for?  

Well, that’s a hard tune. You have to either play it correctly or not [at all]. I’d listen for specificity and cleanliness in the parts and the way things have to fit together. Of course, everyone has to have good time and good pitch — and have a good time with it. I’ve heard some really great versions, particularly out of Japan with larger groups, young orchestras. It’s amazing.

It’s been almost 20 years since Michael passed. How do you think he changed the language of jazz and the saxophone? You’re still very much on the scene, hearing a lot of sax players. What’s his legacy? 

He was just unique, man. There’s still nobody like him. It’s 20 years later and there’s nobody who comes close to doing what he did. He really combined the styles of Coltrane and King Curtis and Junior Walker and all the soul guys and just made a thing of his own. He had amazing chops, amazing soul, and his sound was easy to work with. And he could just about play anything. Every once in a while I go on YouTube just to remind myself how great he was at playing anything. 

What’s your practice regimen look like now? When you put the horn in your mouth every day, what are you doing?

I do spend a certain amount of time doing typical warm-ups. I do the [Bill] Adam Routine, and when I do it, it really does help a lot. I do it in the early afternoon, get it out of the way. I always have the mouthpiece out so my lips are in shape, buzzing the mouthpiece, lightly, not overdoing anything. And then I like doing my classical studies, just to keep the sound. I studied with Sigmund Hering. He has a lot of good intermediate etudes. When I’m in a little creative mood, I might jazz up the classical etudes, and when I’m reading a Kenny Dorham solo, I try to make it sound like a classical piece, just to do something different. 

I just try to keep it fun and not do the same thing every day. I collect [music] that I can play along with, and not necessarily “play-along” records. I spend a couple hours with that because it’s a certain kind of chops you need to play two or three sets a night in a jazz context — a certain kind of endurance that you don’t get by playing classical music, where you get to rest. Particularly now, when the tunes are harder. 

I’ve gotten to the point where I can play for a couple hours without getting tired, but it’s a slow process. I’ll try to see how many days I have until the next gig and start slow, play softly, play a couple ballads first, just to get my chops warmed up.

Dreams led to the Brecker Brothers. How did the band firm up under the moniker of you and Michael? 

A lot of records came out of [Dreams], under different leaders, because everybody was writing, and I started writing tunes like “Some Skunk Funk,” etc. Strangely enough, Billy Cobham was the first one to record it [for the 1975 LP A Funky Thide of Sings]. I wrote it for him [and performed on the record]. But the classic one is by [the Brecker Brothers].

I just got into writing ’cause I was so busy in the studios. I didn’t necessarily come home and practice the trumpet if I’d been working all day. I had people I wanted to write for and I had certain ideas of what I wanted it to sound like. And that [music] eventually made its way into the Brecker Brothers band, although Clive Davis named the band. I wanted [the Brecker Brothers’ debut LP] to be a solo record. 

I had written nine tunes. We went into the studio with a gentleman named Steve Backer, who had just signed a production deal with Clive Davis, who agreed to record us without us even having to do a demo. He had signed us as Dreams to Columbia, so he knew all of us. I said, “Well, this is my solo record. I wrote all the music.” He said the caveat is you have to call the band the Brecker Brothers. I duly protested. I said it was going to look funny because Sanborn’s in the frontline. But they wouldn’t give up. So Clive Davis named the Brecker Brothers. … What can I say? The guy is a genius. 

He insisted we do a single, and we didn’t have one. He said, “You have to do a single or I can’t release this. It’s all great music, but we have to find a way to sell this.” So we all jammed up a single called “Sneakin’ Up Behind You” in about four hours. That was right up our alley, because we could all do what we wanted and the force was with us. And it came out great. Clive loved it, and that’s what actually sold the record. 

You were on a great live record this year as the featured guest with pianist David Kikoski’s trio. Did you learn anything from playing with Horace Silver that you continue to carry into swinging, straight-ahead settings? 

Oh yeah. Mostly I learned how to be a bandleader, to see how he treated the musicians, giving them some freedom on certain tunes. But on certain [other] tunes he wanted you to play funky, and if you played too many notes, he’d stop. He was really a stickler for certain things.

But I still use him as my mentor when I’m leading a band and trying to draw in the crowd. I tell a couple jokes. I like telling stories, how the tune came about, and people seem to really like that.

All images are courtesy of the artist.