At 77, jazz musician releases debut album
Jim Waller puts lifetime of music into ‘Bucket List’
Miles usually napped as the 21-piece big band loudly ran through its paces just a few feet away inside the recording studio at the University of the Incarnate Word.
The 11-month-old German shepherd pup —named for jazz trumpeter Miles Davis — belongs to musician Jim Waller. And according to those in the room, he was never fazed by the brassy jazz, samba, bop, funk, blues and big-band sounds destined for Waller’s first album, “Bucket List.”
“He lay there and went to sleep with all this music going on,” said Waller, an associate professor at Incarnate Word and director of the university’s Cardinal Jazz Band.
Miles aside, “Bucket List” isn’t music to sleep to — it jumps with originals and standards.
The debut album of the Jim Waller Big Band, it’s the culmination of a dream for Waller, 77, a respected horn man, educator and long-ago member of the legendary jazz-rock band Los Blues, which was led by saxophonist Frank Rodarte and the late singer and guitarist Randy Garibay.
“It was so easy to come up with the title,” he said. “I’ve been writing charts for years. It was on my bucket list to get them recorded with great musicians in a great studio with a great engineer.”
For Waller, that meant getting top musicians involved, like alto saxophonist Bill King of the King William Collective; trombonist Jaime
Parker, the director of Dimensions in Blue with the United States Air Force Band of the West; and legendary drummer Will Kennedy of the Yellow Jackets.
When he wasn’t conducting, Waller contributed tenor and soprano saxophone solos and also played organ.
Parker calls Waller “a total Renaissance man.”
“This is a guy who has done almost everything there is to do as a musician except for one thing: releasing an album,” he said. “It was incredible to watch it happen,” Parker added, noting the camaraderie and high level of musicianship in the studio. “It’s a beautiful work of art.” He’s ready for a volume two.
A serious studio
As for the studio, Waller only had to look to his backyard. He made the album at the recording studio he oversees inside the Luella
Bennack Music Center at Incarnate Word.
Conceived and designed by Addison-based Russ Berger Design Group, specialists in acoustical and architectural studio and auditorium design, and completed four years ago using part of an existing building on campus, the multimillion-dollar music center includes a 500-seat concert hall, choir rooms, classrooms, practice spaces and computer lab. The concert hall and choir room are wired to the new studio.
Waller had advocated for such a music space for years.
The recording studio is equipped with an analog console, a 24-track analog SONY/MCI JH-24 2-inch tape machine and Protools digital system.
“The studio is as good as any you’ll find in the world,” Russ Berger said. “It’s very unusual. There are only a handful in the country like it, and it shows the serious commitment to music and music recording.”
The 1,400-square-foot studio is used for teaching purposes and outside recording sessions. Pianist Aaron Prado recorded his “And Now …” album there.
Recording engineer and musician Skip Burrows, who engineered Waller’s album, was brought into the project to integrate the studio’s intricate, sophisticated electronics and technical design to make it, in his words, “effortless to use.” He also created a natural reverb chamber out of a stairwell.
But he said he had the most fun behind the Solid
State Logic console during the “Bucket List” sessions. Burrows placed microphones, checked meters, operated the tape machines and listened to the live performances, all while following along reading the complicated music charts and rating each take with a star system.
“It was sheer sensory overload,” he said.
“Bucket List,” which is streaming now on all digital music platforms and soon will be released on vinyl, includes Waller’s first stab at a big-band chart, “Waltz for Laura.”
He scored it in the mid-1970s and named it for his oldest daughter. The noirish horn-driven jazz, mysterious and stinging, would have fit right in in the classic 1950 film “Young Man with a Horn” starring Kirk Douglas.
There’s also “Blues for Los Blues,” a homage to his days in Vegas in the late 1960s with the jazz-rock band, which had grown out of the homegrown Dell-kings. Los Blues latenight residency at the lounge at the Sahara Hotel drew the era’s biggest stars and is the stuff of legend.
“That group was one of the best musical experiences of my life,” Waller said. “It was just heartbreaking to see it break up. That’s the idea for the song. That we couldn’t stay together.”
Waller joined Los Blues
in 1967. His own band at the time, which included singer and trumpeter Jimmy Mcfarland, had a residency at the Flamingo. Both quit that gig after seeing Los Blues and talked themselves into the act.
It turned into a 300week engagement at the Casbar Theater at the Sahara, where they rubbed elbows onstage with Don Rickles, Duke Ellington, the Four Freshman, Norm Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr. In the audience, the likes of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.
To this day, Waller calls Randy Garibay one of the greatest singers ever. Watching Louie Leos play trumpet and electric bass at the same time (and sometimes drums, too) was mind blowing, he added.
It was the era of early Blood Sweat & Tears and Chicago. Los Blues recorded one album for United Artists, “Volume One.” It included two of Waller’s compositions, “Vegas Funk” and “The Squirrel.”
Almost 50 years later, “Bucket List” is similarly joyous and majestic, recorded old-school on analog tape. And it’s proof that San Antonio really is a jazz town.
“Oh, without a doubt,” Waller said. “There were six big bands that performed regularly” — before “this frickin’ COVID.”
A standout on the album is vocalist Jacqueline Sotelo, a former student of
Waller’s. The music composition major graduated in 2009. She then earned a master’s degree at the University of North Texas in jazz vocal performance.
“She’s as good as anybody,” said Waller, who let Sotelo cut loose on songs such as “Georgia on My Mind,” “God Bless the Child” and “Goody Goody.”
Waller wanted a mix of instrumentals and vocal tracks to give the project more appeal. His musical arrangements are ripe with ear candy.
“It’s those little things that make it interesting to audiences, even if they don’t understand ‘a big fat nine-chord with trombones on the bottom and trumpets on the top,’ ” he said, dropping into musician speak. “I could go on for hours.”
Waller moved to San Antonio in the late 1970s, driving a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, to reunite with Garibay in Road Apple. The band, which also included Garibay’s brother Ernie and Richard Garza, played at the Flyer’s Club at the old Sheraton Inn on Austin Highway.
The city became his home. After Road Apple disbanded, he opened a recording studio, continued playing music and, in the mid-’90s, started teaching at Incarnate Word.
He met his future wife, Suzell Ann Reyes, at the Sheraton Inn on the first day he arrived in San Antonio.
“I met her after being here a couple of hours,” he said.
“Bucket List” is dedicated to Suzell (who died almost four years ago) and Waller’s daughters. The album kicks off with “Samba for Suzell,” a number composed about a year into their marriage and rearranged for the record. She got to hear it before she died.
“She knew this (album) is something that I wanted,” he said. “And she was definitely in my heart the whole time.”