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Creating the Next Generation of Jazz Musicians
Bradford Hayes
Bradford
Hayes is known for playing the alto sax, but he is
also known, at least to a large and growing group of
people in Newark, as a teacher. For the past 26
years, he has been a schoolteacher, and for the past
16 years he has been a music teacher and bandmaster
at Luis Munoz Marin Middle School in Newark.
He has actually encouraged those studying music in
college to major in music education rather than
music performance. The children in our schools need
responsible adults to teach them about life, and
musicians can teach music to children in the same
manner, Hayes says. “You may not always get the gig,
but you can always teach the youngsters who need
you,” he said. About 85 percent of Hayes’ students
have gone on to Arts High School in Newark, which
has produced jazz greats such as Wayne Shorter,
Woody Shaw, and Sarah Vaughan.
Hayes will be performing in two venues this week. On
Thursday, August 7, he appears at Millyard Park on
South Clinton Avenue in Trenton as part of the
Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission’s
summer Concerts in the Park series. On Monday,
August 11, he will appear at the Princeton Public
Library.
At his performances this week, Hayes will be playing
music from his latest record, “The Jazz Life.” He
will be sharing the stage with Michael Cochrane on
piano, Takashi Otsuka on bass, and Greg Searvance on
drums.
Hayes, 49, has performed all over the United States,
including shows in Carnegie Hall, the Beacon
Theater, Birdland, Tavern on the Green and S.O.B’s
in New York. He has also played gigs in Paris,
Tokyo, Veracruz, Mexico, Ghana, and Canada. Hayes
has appeared, either live or on record, as a sideman
with the late, iconic Nigerian drummer Babatunde
Olatunji, with whom he was associated for 15 years,
as well as artists such as Yusef Lateef, Ted Curson,
Joe Lee Wilson, Jimmy Heath, Al Grey, Cecil Payne,
Rufus Reid, Ray Bryant, Winard Harper, Ben Riley,
Dr. Lonnie Smith, Cecil Brooks III, Jerry Butler,
and the Dells.
He has been a traveler for some time. A native of
Petersburg, VA, Hayes was raised primarily by his
aunt and uncle, Katherine and Odell Reese, after his
parents, Morris and Ethel Hayes, broke up when he
was a young child. “My mother and father without any
doubt loved me very much and I always knew this, but
when they couldn’t get along I became a pawn in that
chess game of divorce,” he says. He first moved to
his maternal grandparents’ home and then to that of
another aunt and uncle before moving in with the
Reeses.
Odell and Katherine Reese, Hayes says, were “gifts
from God. They raised me as if I were their own.”
The family lived on a farm in Dinwiddie County,
where “we had chickens, hogs, and all of the fresh
vegetables one could ever dream of.” Hayes’ aunt and
uncle were strict disciplinarians. “Believe me, I
needed it,” he says. “Without them having been in my
life, I would be nothing. I owe them everything; I
owe God for putting them on Earth for me.”
Hayes now lives in Hillside, Union County, with his
wife, Carolyn, his daughter Bianca, 12, and twin
sons Bradford Jr. and Morris Odell, 7. Morris Odell,
of course, is named for his father and his uncle.
Before ending up in Dinwiddie County, VA, Hayes
spent his early elementary school years in
Anchorage, Alaska, where his uncle, Tommy Jackson,
was an Army drill sergeant stationed at Fort
Richardson. After returning to Virginia as a
third-grader, Hayes began becoming interested in
music. At the age of 11, he began playing the
saxophone. It soon became a passion. Hayes credits
his music teachers in junior high, high school, and
college for continuing to foster this passion.
“I am the first musician in my immediate family,” he
says. “I was hooked on the saxophone at the age of
11, and I did learn the basics of the instrument
very quickly.” His elementary school music teacher
at Rohoic Elementary, Mr. Crummett, was Hayes’ first
influence. “He was very patient and made sure that
we knew the basics and learned how to read music.”
Then, at Dinwiddie County Junior High and High
School, his teacher was Robert Harvey. “Mr. Harvey
is the main reason I am so passionate about teaching
today,” says Hayes. “He was really big on learning
how to read music.” Growing up in rural Virginia,
however, Hayes never got a real chance to listen to
or play jazz. He listened primarily to what he could
hear on the radio in the 1970s: Earth Wind & Fire,
and R&B and pop bands such as Newark’s own Kool and
the Gang, as well as Cameo, the Commodores, the
Doobie Brothers, and Chicago. It was after he heard
the Crusaders, with Wilton Felder and Grover
Washington Jr., the man who created smooth jazz,
that Hayes began really wanting to play the music as
part of his life. “It just drew me in more and
more,” he says.
Football was also a passion. After graduating from
high school, Hayes went to North Carolina A&T State
University, a historically black school in
Greensboro, where he was a member of the football
squad. The male athletes there were encouraged by
teachers and others to major in physical education.
Hayes, as a youth, had wanted to become an NFL
player, but after high school, he decided that music
was a better option and refused to major in phys ed,
he says. “Being the difficult one, I just said no.”
At A&T, as in junior high and high school, Hayes was
fortunate to encounter some high-quality mentors. “I
didn’t know who Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Duke
Ellington or any of these cats were until I went to
North Carolina A&T State University,” he says. He
credits two professors, Ted McDaniels and William C.
Smiley, with teaching him what real jazz was.
“Even then I was embedded in the R&B world, and I
had to mature into what a saxophonist should be
really focusing on. I would say I started getting
serious about this at around 20 years old, and then
I still had to be de-programmed and then
re-programmed,” Hayes says.
In 1983, Hayes graduated from North Carolina A&T
with a bachelor’s degree in music education. He
believes he has had a fulfilling life as a teacher
and a performer. “Teaching is something that I never
thought that I would be doing 25 years later, but as
I said I am the first musician in the family, and I
was raised to be responsible for myself. Education
was my way of repaying all the blessings given to
me. Every year my objective has been to give my
students the best possible opportunity go to a good
high school, giving them a chance to go on to
college and have the best possible life that they
can,” he says.