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At only 12 years old, Bernard Wright impressed jazz fusion drummer Lenny White with his musical prowess. Even then, Wright had an unparalleled ear for funk and jazz, which led him to join White's band to tour around the country as a keyboardist and singer.
Musical prodigy was one of the common traits among the two players. Coming up in the 1960s in the Jamaica neighborhood in Queens, New York, Wright and White emerged just as Bobby and John Kennedy and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were assassinated. Music, as White told The Last Miles, was changing and shaping politics, while politics were also shaping music.
In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Wright settled into the scene in Queens. Several famous musicians were living there, including James Brown, drummer Roy Haynes and saxophonist Lester Young. While unrest gripped the nation, young musicians like White and Wright were being influenced by music, which was being influenced by economical, social and political issues of the times. They were practicing in basements and jamming at places where artists came together to create.
At the time, young musicians began joining composer and poet Weldon Irvine’s band. Irvine, also known as “Master Wel," was a mentor to a lot of up-and-comers in Queens who wanted to play jazz and progressive music. Wright had been part of Irvine’s band, along with jazz luminaries Billy Cobham, Marcus Miller and Donald Blackman. When White met Wright, he knew he needed the youngster in the band he was creating with Miller.
“He was a genius,” White said of Wright in his The Last Miles interview. “I had to go speak to his grandmother for him to be able to go on the road! She trusted me enough to do that.”
Nearly 50 years later, Wright had carved out a legendary career. He smashed jazz charts with his debut album ’Nard in 1981 and gained national recognition a few years later with 1985’s single “Who Do You Love” from his third album, Mr. White, which climbed theBillboard R&B charts. Ten years later, popular artists such as Dr. Dre, LL Cool J and Snoop Dogg were sampling his music for their own chart-topping hits.
A godson of R&B singer Roberta Flack,...