‘Tonight’s Sal Marquez Trumpets Jazz Reunion

So Sal Marquez could laugh now, just shake his head over all those times his jazz-playing friends came visiting from New York. The trumpeter had settled himself here back in 1969, after his final, amiable firing from the Buddy Rich band. And he’d always be asking such illustrious pals as drummer Jeff (Tain) Watts and pianist Kenny Kirkland when they would be moving to Los Angeles too.

The answer would always be something like: “Yeah, man. It’s nice here, but I really love it in New York.”

Now they were all here--in fact, just down the hall--as Marquez relaxed backstage on “The Tonight Show” set at NBC’s Burbank studios. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis had recruited them all for his eight-piece ensemble, part of the show’s new regime, and Marquez was clearly enjoying the irony of hosting these immigrants from the East.

Just a couple of months earlier, Marquez had suddenly found himself on the first post-Johnny Carson edition of “Tonight,” being introduced to a national audience as that “Jay Leno-looking” fellow by the new host himself. (“I don’t really think I look like him,” Marquez said later. “Do you?”) Things had definitely changed for the Texas native with the silvery cornet, after years on the road, years in local clubs and countless sessions as a respected studio sideman.

“It’s just a mental adjustment, because it’s not going to stop us from growing, as writers and as players,” Marquez said of his new high-profile gig. “Right now I think I’m practicing and playing more than ever. It’s a good thing because it keeps us on our toes.”

Some of that playing is displayed on Marquez’s new album, “One for Dewey,” a tribute to the late trumpeter Miles Davis. The GRP Records release is Marquez’s first as a leader, and features a band that includes Watts, Kirkland and bassist David Carpenter, among others. If that weren’t enough, all three regularly join Marquez for his weekly Sunday-night show at the Vine Street Bar & Grill in Hollywood. Former John Coltrane sideman Art Davis often sits in on bass.

Said Marquez: “Man, I know no time off when it comes to blowin’. I don’t want to hear about time off. Time on, that’s what I like.”

“Music and life are very related,” added Watts, explaining his recurring work with Marquez and the others. “And if people are cool and honest with themselves and honest with you, it makes the music sound better.”

GRP was impressed enough with his playing on Dave Grusin’s film soundtrack to “The Fabulous Baker Boys” that the label gave Marquez the go-ahead to make a mainstream jazz recording earlier this year. This was shortly after Miles Davis’ death.

So for Marquez, who had met Davis casually on a few occasions, the theme for his debut album was obvious. He focused on standards long associated with the jazz innovator, along with new compositions played in Davis’ early straight-ahead style.

“I loved Miles so much, he taught me so much--just through his music, listening to him, through all those years,” Marquez said. “All the guys that played on this album are major fans of Miles Davis. I don’t know any jazz musician who isn’t.

“Kenny, Tain, Carpenter and Doug Webb--all of them gave me input on it. I have to give credit where it’s due. My name goes down as producer because I called the guys. They all gave their share, and jazz is a kind of thing where you give, everyone gives.”

The cornet player’s first major professional job was with Woody Herman’s band in the late ‘60s. He ultimately left that act for a tumultuous, 10-month stint with Rich’s band that was deeply influential on Marquez. He had been fired five times and quit once by the time he left permanently after recording “Buddy and Soul: Live at the Whisky.”

His problems, he said, came mainly from continuing disagreements with that band’s other lead trumpeter, along with his own occasional late arrivals at gigs, attributed to “faulty timing. In those times it was so loose, during the hippie era. There was a lot of psychedelics and grass, and sometimes you’d get spaced out and forget to come back during the intermission. We were a little late.”

Rich, the veteran drummer and leader, Marquez said, could be a tough critic of his own band but wouldn’t put up with outside attacks. Marquez said he remembered witnessing a would-be Mafioso/club owner threaten the band’s guitarist with a trip to the bottom of the river after he’d flirted with a waitress. An enraged Rich roared back: “ You’re going to be found at the bottom of the river! I’ll have you in so many lead weights you’ll never come up!”

“He was a great person,” Marquez said. “He never opened up to too many people, including many of the jazz greats that he was in contact with. They all had their egos. But when the band was cooking and sounding great, he was in another world. He was very happy.”

After settling into the Los Angeles music scene, Marquez played in the local jazz clubs before winning gigs in a dynamic range of settings--from the Beach Boys to Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention to former Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger to the Crusaders. Along the way, he has played organ behind such folk blues masters as Big Joe Turner and Big Mama Thornton.

“It’s hard to find an instrumentalist that can play other things and play jazz really well,” Marsalis noted.

“I love all kinds of music,” Marquez said. “There’s good music in every facet of the business, country included, although Buddy wouldn’t agree to that. I think that’s where it stopped for him.”

Growing up in Texas, Marquez had been surrounded by country music, along with Mexican folk music and his parents’ classical records. Before finding the cornet, young Marquez studied the piano and violin. He didn’t stick to either one for very long. “I got a lot of teasing during that period. Texas being a very sports-conscious place, and my father was a coach, and I was also into playing sports--the violin didn’t fit that image well for me. I wish I hadn’t been that shallow then. I was just a kid.”

That all changed for him after “a big pep talk that I had with my dad. He said there’s two ways to go, there’s two kinds of people. There are people who start something and finish it, and people that are quitters. And I never liked the word quitter . And that really stuck with me.”

As part of “The Tonight Show” band, Marquez finds himself in the company of some celebrated jazz players. Like Kirkland and Watts, “Tonight Show” bassist Bob Hurst and guitarist Kevin Eubanks are also veterans of earlier groups led by Marsalis and his famed trumpeter brother, Wynton. Other band members include percussionist Vicki Randle and trombonist Matt Finders.

One uncommon experience these jazz players share is time spent in a variety of pop and rock settings, from Marquez’s time with Zappa to Marsalis and Kirkland’s work with Sting in the 1980s.

“I think it’s really unique,” Marquez said. “But it also shows that these guys, like Branford and Kenny and Tain and Kevin Eubanks, all these guys are very open-minded to music. It’s a phenomenon that Branford assembled this band like that, maybe not even knowing a lot of the stuff that I’ve done.”

He added that the band’s collective experience represents “a lot of wisdom, a lot of knowledge, a lot of heart, a lot of soul. We’re finding that right now, we’re in the baby stages of ‘The Tonight Show’ band, and the potential is immense.”