Biography
One of the great jazz trumpeters of the post-1970 period, Oscar Brashear has been vastly underrated and often overlooked for two main reasons: he has not (as of 1999) led his own record date and he has been based in Los Angeles for three decades. In reality, Brashear, whose style is influenced by Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw and particularly Freddie Hubbard, has held his own with much better-known players and deserves to be famous. Brashear started playing piano when he was seven and trumpet by the time he was 11. After attending Wright College and Roosevelt University, he had stints with the orchestras of Woody Herman (1967) and Count Basie (1968). After freelancing around Chicago, he moved to Los Angeles in 1970. Since then he has been busy in the studios and on jazz dates, teaming up with (among many others) Bobby Hutcherson, Hampton Hawes, Joe Henderson, Horace Silver (1975), J.J. Johnson (1979), Jimmy Smith, the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, Harold Land (off and on since the early 1970’s), the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and Billy Childs (with whom he has often played duets). But when will he finally get his own record date? ~ Scott Yanow