Meet the Collective: Wendell Brunious
“I was born to play the trumpet in New Orleans,” says Preservation Hall trumpeter and bandleader Wendell Brunious. By his count, he knows over 2000 songs by heart. Some make up the classic New Orleans jazz and brass band repertoires; some were picked up from decades of recording and performing with artists like Lionel Hampton and Harry Connick, Jr.; and some of them originated from the house in which he grew up, in the close-knit community of New Orleans’ 7th Ward.
As one of the eight trumpeters in his household, Wendell was raised under the musical tutelage of many family members: especially his father, John Picket “Picky” Brunious, Sr., the Juilliard-educated New Orleans pianist and trumpeter, gifted composer, and arranger for artists such as Billy Eckstein and Cab Calloway. The elder Mr. Brunious transcribed, among other famous tunes, the original “Bourbon Street Parade” alongside drummer Paul Barbarin in 1955.
Wendell’s mother, Nazimova “Chinee” Santiago, was the sister of Lester and Burnell Santiago, two of the top pianists in early New Orleans music. She was also the niece of famed New Orleans guitarist and banjoist Willie Santiago, who at one time worked with the legendary Buddy Bolden, and was one of the first known musicians to ever be recorded on guitar.
With that kind of family history, it was only natural that Wendell grew up learning music, making his first recording at age 9 and picking up the trumpet at 11.
"I heard my daddy and my brother play. John used to carry his mouthpiece around in his back pocket. I wanted to be like John, so I used to carry a mouthpiece in my back pocket before I even played the trumpet.”
The kids of the family all learned to play trumpet: the house was noisy, to say the least. Before long, Wendell was performing on the streets of New Orleans with the Olympia Brass Band, under the guidance and direction of his cousin, bandleader and saxophonist Harold Dejan. He played at Paul Barbarin’s funeral, and performed alongside his father with a band called Chief John and the Mahogany Hall Stompers during the 1960s.
He crossed paths with the famed banjoist Danny Barker while in college at Southern University, and apprenticed alongside many great New Orleans musicians, including guitarist Justin Adams, with whom he launched the first jazz brunch at Commander's Palace restaurant in the mid-1970s.
One day when he was only 23, Wendell was done playing an early set at a Bourbon Street club, and decided to stop by Preservation Hall.
“My car was parked over that way and I wanted to hear Kid Thomas. He was on break, eating a sandwich, then his whole band came back and he just stayed there. And I said, ‘Do you all need a trumpet player?’ And took my horn out, ‘cause that’s just the way you do things in New Orleans. And the older guys were like, ‘We don’t let people sit in here, you know.’ But I was young and brazen and said, ‘Well, I’m playing.’”
Allan Jaffe was impressed. “He’d seen me play other styles and said, ‘I didn’t know you were interested in that kind of music,’” recalled Wendell in a 1993 interview with the LA Times. “I said, ‘I was born into this kind of music.’”
Wendell and his older brother John both went on to lead future Preservation Hall bands, at home at the Hall and on tour around the world. John succeeded the great Percy Humphrey as bandleader just as the 28-year-old Wendell took over for 91-year-old Kid Thomas Valentine. He was the youngest musician to ever lead a Preservation Hall band.
A young Wendell Brunious sits in on a set at Preservation Hall with Kid Thomas Valentine
Wendell believes what’s considered the “Brunious sound” all began with his father’s influence.
“When my father first started to develop as a trumpet player was in an era before amplification, so you had to play loud enough to hear yourself and to be heard in the band. I kind of think that’s where what some people call the Brunious sound kind of started. That ‘sound’ is being able to interpret ballads when you are also trying to hear the actual words coming out of the end of the trumpet. What was important was the tone, playing in tune, and being able to play nice ballads—not just fast stuff. My daddy used to say this: ‘If you don’t know the melody, you don’t know the song. ‘Bourbon Street Parade,’ ‘Paul Barbarin’s Second Line,’ ‘Hold that Tiger’ and a million other songs have the same form, but what segregates the tunes is the melody.”
Second only to his father, Wendell cites Louis Armstrong as his greatest influence.
“He was the greatest cat that ever lived. Louis had to overcome adversities that you and I could never understand. From a dirt-floor shack in Storyville to the most-recognized jazz musician that ever lived. That was quite a jump.”
In addition to the seven albums under his own name and countless features on other recordings, over the years, Wendell has worked with a long list of esteemed artists, including the Tuxedo Brass Band, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Wynton Marsalis, Lionel Hampton, Clark Terry, Bob Haggard, Harry Connick, Jr., Sammy Rimington, Gladys Knight & and the Pips, Louis Nelson and more.