-
Jimmy Bruno is a very intelligent person. IIRC I read that he achieved a perfect 1600 SAT score - no easy feat. He has also consistently approached jazz guitar as his "job" and has said that he understands how people can have great passion for playing jazz guitar (or just guitar in general) the way he is passionate about photography, but that playing guitar was, for him, a way to make a living and support himself and his family.
I am glad that he found his way back to playing after his health crisis. At that time, he said that he would never play again. He probably feels like his playing is not up to the level it was when he was younger (i.e., superhuman). His playing NOW is better than probably 80% of the people in this group (including myself).
But after the BS of the business and the grind and the travel, being carjacked, the health crisis, losing his wonderful wife, everything else that goes along with 71 years of living... as a very intelligent person, he's probably tired and bored. I, for one, am VERY thankful and relieved that he is looking at exploring activities to occupy him in his retirement. That is a good sign. That is healthy.
I've spoken with JB several times. He was always extremely generous, patient, accommodating, respectful and encouraging. Years ago, before he had his online school, he listened to a recording I sent him of me playing a solo piece, and he complimented it. I can olny wish Mr. Bruno every happiness in this next, well-deserved phase of his life.
-
02-19-2025 03:58 PM
-
I've heard that too. When he was 16 or 17, he considered becoming a doctor (at the urging of his father, who did not want him to become a musician). But he never went to college. He'd been a student at St Joseph's Prep (an excellent private high school in Philly), but he dropped out after his junior year because of the high tuition. I don't know if he transfered to a pubic high school to graduate, so it's not clear when, where or why he took SATs. If he dropped out after his junior year, he'd have to have taken them as a junior - and scoring 1600 as a junior was both world class performance and mighty rare!
Originally Posted by Fusionshred
He has an SJP bio page that says he was class of '71 - but it also says that he didn't graduate. So I assume it was an honorary tribute to his achievements there and he would have been in the class of '71 if he'd stayed and graduated. He started gigging heavily after he left SJP and describes what happened next in a quote on his St Joe's bio page.
“The money was so good and I was young,” says Bruno. “I got a job playing down the shore in Wildwood, the Lucky Club, making $175 a week in cash. When you are young, you think you know everything”
This seems compatible with Fusionshred's description of his attitude towards the business: "[P]laying guitar was, for him, a way to make a living and support himself and his family". But if he was really that smart, got perfect scores on his SATs, and wasn't totally immersed in being a professional guitarist, you'd think he'd have seen medicine as a better way to achieve these goals.
The older I get, the less I undersand anybody or anything
-
I feel like most of you are in for the shock of your life when you realize that's how 99% of the swing and early bebop guys felt about music too. A tortured artist making a masterpiece by midnight is just marketing. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
-
I respecfully have to disagree with your 99 percent figure.That seems excessively high.Most musicians i have known look forward to a good gig to express themselves whether they are pro's or just weekend warriors.You're always going to find people who wish they had a different job than the one that makes them a good living.It's part of human nature. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
-
Yeah, but it's a job. Maybe more than 1% see themselves as artists first and don't care as much about remuneration. Or perhaps describing the 99% as seeing music as a profession would be more accurate. They're doing the work and they deserve to be paid fairly for it- just like a doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc. If you've seen the Ron Carter documentary, he expresses some of the same thoughts. But the music industry sees musicians in a different light- a resource to exploit for profit. Originally Posted by nyc chaz
-
Originally Posted by nyc chaz
Yeah, you aren't talking about the same guys I am. I'm talking about people who were gigging in the 1940's-1960. You know, when you could make a living off music.
-
Yes, nowadays with very few regular well paid gigs available, I've seen Jazz Guitar become mainly a hobby for amateurs, with teaching being the main source of income for most "professional" Jazz guitarists. Here in the UK at least. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Sad really, because it must be very frustrating for young students leaving college with an expensive degree in Jazz, then finding that there are very few career opportunities in Jazz music
.
-
There was plenty of work after those years if you were a talented musician who had a good ear and could read music.There was a thriving studio scene in the 60's and beyond into the 80's..When computerized music came into vogue that began the trend of less work for musicians along with the rise of the DJ instead of hiring bands for an event.Your original point i thought was that 99 percent of musicians today are not inspired to make music.Sorry but most of the ones i have known to this day still look forward to picking up their axe.If that is not the case then why are guys like us even on forums like this if we don't have the passion to create and play. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
-
Pretty sure Allan was exaggerating with the 99% thing, but also he wasn’t talking about players now. Obviously who knows about the percentage and it’s the distinction is a rhetorical construct anyway (which makes it kind of an odd thing to argue about), but of course it would be impossible to become Coleman Hawkins or Benny Goodman without music being a calling. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Still it makes sense that when there was more money in the work, and you could gig several times a week in a small market as a modest talent, that more people would choose it as a job than as a passion.
-
My advice to young musicians for the past 20 years has been find a good day job and do music in your spare time.Being a full time musician is a 24/7 endless slog even in the best of times.With the rise of AI it's only going to get worse for whatever your field is.None of this though should stop you from being inspired to make music. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
Yes, nowadays with very few regular well paid gigs available, I've seen Jazz Guitar become mainly a hobby for amateurs, with teaching being the main source of income for most "professional" Jazz guitarists. Here in the UK at least.
Sad really, because it must be very frustrating for young students leaving college with an expensive degree in Jazz, then finding that there are very few career opportunities in Jazz music.
-
...and here's the voice of the crusty old contrarian. Times change, as must those who hope to achieve success. Just as automation has changed the nature of design, manufacturing, and selling stuff, technology and the ready availability of digital music have changed the music business. Sadly, there are relatively few people who understand the need for fundamental change in the way we do things and the way in which we educate our young to develop and realize that change. But those who do have a world of opportunity before them. The days of running from weddings to Walmarts and stage to studio are gone. Local gigs for full bands (even trios) are few and far between. But you can now teach more students in less time over the internet than you ever could in your home or theirs. Music is still the backbone of marketing and advertising. Restaurant and bar owners are still receptive to paying for live music, but they want fewer players with more sequenced backing and they want increased business for their investment in us. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
Yes, nowadays with very few regular well paid gigs available, I've seen Jazz Guitar become mainly a hobby for amateurs, with teaching being the main source of income for most "professional" Jazz guitarists. Here in the UK at least. Sad really, because it must be very frustrating for young students leaving college with an expensive degree in Jazz, then finding that there are very few career opportunities in Jazz music.
We decry robotics. But we haven't made education in designing, making, and using them a fundamental part of our educational system. We complain that computers are replacing our workforce. But we haven't made education for designing, advancing, programming, using, and leveraging them into more productivity part of our mainstream education. In short, most of the workforce and would-be workforce puts its energy into slowing or halting progress, when they should be learning to understand, improve, and use the things they fear. Worried about losing your job in a coal mine? Pass laws that restrict advances in energy and give tax benefits to those who perpetuate coal as an energy source. Why in the world would you want to create, improve, and deliver clean energy? Gee whiz - you'd actually have to go back to school and learn something. Of course, you'd also have to have the foresight and imagination to find new ways of doing it and using technology to make it cheaper as well as safer.
Simple prowess at creating music is no longer enough to make a living. But there will always be a demand for music and those who make it. When I was a kid, local recording studios were busy churning out jingles, commercials, and demo records for working musicians. That business is gone now, and most of those little studios have disappeared. But there's still a need for jingles, commercials, and music based marketing products of all kinds. Today it requires knowledge of tings that didn't exist when I was making $50 to record a demo 45. You have to be able to design a business plan around delivery channels (social media, blast email, text messaging, streaming services etc) and maximize your clients' revenue returns on investment. You also get to use your musical skills to produce, create, and tailor musical content to the needs of your clients. There are a few groups doing this pretty well, like Push Button Audio. It takes vision, guts, and hard work - but that's not unique to the music business. Everyone who's successful (with very few exceptions) has worked extremely hard realizing a dream they fashioned into a career.
Those students with expensive college degrees in music should have been taught psychology, basic business knowledge and skills, marketing, accounting, data analysis, etc. They should have been introduced to the spectrum of technology that supports and affects the creation, sale, and delivery of music products. They should have been given practical business cases to solve, like starting with a premise ("You want to open a small cafe with live music and a small menu in your hometown"), gathering the data needed to identify the right size / location / structure etc for the desired revenue, predicting the probability of success based on hard data.
We keep doing what we've always done while mourning its passing. Don't curse the darkness - find a better wayto light it up.
-
But very little of that work was jazz. A lot of the best and best known jazz guitarists in history put in far more hours working in other genres. Look at all the studio greats who backed everything from rock tunes to Canada Dry commercials. Many of our heroes spent most of their time in network radio and TV studios, not the Village Vanguard and Small’s. Mickey Baker and Phil Upchurch wallowed in rock despite being great jazz guitarists. Originally Posted by nyc chaz
It wasn’t as rosy as some in this thread seem to think.
-
Very true,i was just saying there were ways to make money and yes it wasn't jazz.It's like i said earlier in this thread,even in the best of times, being a full time musician was tough.The problems with most local jazz gigs that are available today is you are being paid 1970's wages which doesn't go very far in 2025. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
-
I'm saying, when Coleman Hawkins wrapped Body and Soul, he didn't think "I have created a masterpiece that will define a jazz epoch." He likely thought "Cool, double scale for being the leader and I still have time to get to tonights gig." Originally Posted by nyc chaz
-
This is true for anyone getting a degree in any of the arts. Making a living as an artist has always been a difficult thing; supply tends to exceed demand. And, to be frank, many people's estimate of their artistic ability exceeds how other people would rate them. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
Yes, nowadays with very few regular well paid gigs available, I've seen Jazz Guitar become mainly a hobby for amateurs, with teaching being the main source of income for most "professional" Jazz guitarists. Here in the UK at least.
Sad really, because it must be very frustrating for young students leaving college with an expensive degree in Jazz, then finding that there are very few career opportunities in Jazz music.
If you want to be a gigging musician, play bass not guitar. Jazz guitarists are practically a dime a dozen, jazz bassists are gold. And a good bassist is worth their weight in gold; I was just listening to a Julian Lage gig with Jorge Roeder on YouTube and marveling at how Jorge frames and anchors what Julian does. Back in 2016, I had an opportunity to see Julian with Jorge and Kenny Wolleson touring behind the Arclight album; after the gig, I had a long conversation with Jorge which was one of the most interesting and enlightening musical conversations I have ever had. The guy is brilliant and thoughtful.
-
A locally well-known "West Bank" Minneapolis musician told an interviewer "in 1968 I got $300 for a trio gig. In 2000, I get $300 for a trio gig." In 1968, $100 a week for a musician was probably enough to live on. Fast forward to 2025 and you can't even afford to be homeless on $100 a week. Originally Posted by nyc chaz
-
Living in a household in the 60's whose income wasn't much more than that,I can say you would be surprised how far it went.These guys that use these inflation calculators on things today to say" see it's not more expensive to live today" is a bunch of nonsense. Originally Posted by Cunamara
-
I think literally every serious music college or university includes some of that in their courses today. Berklee introduced compulsory music technology classes 25 years ago when i was there, you had to learn notation programs, Daws, digital arranging etc. They did have an entire music business major even back then.Those students with expensive college degrees in music should have been taught psychology, basic business knowledge and skills, marketing, accounting, data analysis, etc. They should have been introduced to the spectrum of technology that supports and affects the creation, sale, and delivery of music products.
-
I'll bet the musician was paid $300 from the 1968 trio gig and now the band splits $300. Times are tough, if I didn't love to music, I wouldn't be doing this. Originally Posted by Cunamara
If I wanted to get paid I would start a Taylor Swift or Top 40 Country act, even that is fleeting and honestly, its best to just have a job if you want money and moonlight as a musician.
-
I guess I'm lucky inasmuch as I love playing and learning and listening and transcribing and just edging forwards irrespective of whether or not there are any gigs. I've jammed with a couple of different players this week and those jams are just as much fun as gigs for me.
I've always known I don't have the ears/ fingers / creativity to be a professional and so I just enjoy playing for playing's sake. But I know plenty of people at my level who are the opposite and only get interested when there are gigs coming up.
Derek
-
This reminds me of an old joke: Originally Posted by Cunamara
A guitarist asks his bass player for a bass lesson thinking it might be good to double on another instrument. They have the lesson on a Tuesday afternoon and by Friday the bassist has not heard back from the guitarist so he called him. "Are we good for another lesson next Tuesday?" asked the bassist. The guitarist replied "Can't do that. Next Tuseday I have a bass gig".
-
True enough! But most Berklee students I knew saw that as a necessary evil and never really embraced any of it. They were focused on becoming great musicians and pursuing careers in performance and its associated components (e.g,. arranging, recording etc). Even today, I don't think enough embrace those subjects as enhancers of their creativity and as critical factors for success in a music related business. They still see it as Jimmy Bruno says he saw being a musician when he was 19 - a way to make a living in the present, not a way to stay on the crest of the wave for an entire career. If you don't acknowledge and embrace continuous change and prepare to adapt to it, your time in the spotlight may be very short. JB was / is good enough to prevail, but even he isn't good enough to reverse the downward trends in opportunity and income for whose whose primary interest is in performing in traditional venues. Originally Posted by Alter
I went to college in Boston 60 years ago. The bass player in my jazz quartet was a Berklee student who majored in bass and tuba. Ron carried both through the Back Bay area every day in all kinds of weather and worked his rear end off becoming both a great player and a real expert in most aspects of the music business. Through Ron and ever since then, I've known and worked with many graduates and former students over the ensuing years. I know a few who were there years ago who did embrace the whole package and used what they learned to forge careers supporting and promoting others while continuing to perform themselves. But we're not seeing many new ideas in the music industry beyond the technical advances in storage and delivery media and mechanisms. So it's clear to me that not enough music students are being stimulated to get out of the box, find new niches and fill them like Push Button Audio has done. This is a failure of the music education system and its leadership.
Robots weld well, so why become a welder? Why not become one who designs better welding methods and robots to carry them out? You still need to know everything about welding and you still need to be able to do it yourself. But the future and the money are in advancing the quality of welding whle reducing its cost &/or increasing its value. Develop new ways of integrating welding into production methods and faciities. Learn construction and maintenance of welding robots. Build better ones. Become a manufacturer or reseller of robots. Don't just learn what you have to to keep your job.
Business school graduates frequently work with classmates and friends to develop new businesses from day 1 after graduation (or even before). They're motivated to do it and engaged in the processes by their education and their faculty. We don't see many music school graduates starting new music related businesses despite all that education in music tech, music business etc. The retail brick and mortar musical instrument business is dying, and the web based vendors are all nearing bankruptcy. Instruments bought sight unseen over the web usually arrive poorly set up (if at all) with simple problems like loose parts. Why haven't a few entrepreneurial guitarists set up a service to receive the guitar you want from GC, SW etc and do what dealers used to do - go through it, identify any valid reasons to return it, fix the small stuff like loose fittings, set it up well, and detail it? I'd bet there are enough players out there who would value such a service to make this a viable idea. But it would need some market research and a carefully developed business plan to know how and where to start, what to charge, and how to manage unreasonable expectations of buyers. There are many such opportunities for new products and services for musicians and for consumers of music. Who is better suited to be the source of those ideas and solutions than musicians? This is how we can earn good livings while remaining active musicians. It's not gigging 7 nights a week, but those days are over.
Sure - Berklee and many other similar colleges teach a lot of this. But it's not presented as a critical part of the essential tool kit for musicians today, and it's not pushed to them as the way to define and meet future music business needs. In truth, it's all of that and more.
-
This thread is 15 years old.
It's so old Jimmy was actually posting at the start.
From some of the comments it's no wonder he and other prominent players don't stick around for long.
How many of us got a gig w Buddy Rich @ 19?
I think we can all answer that question.
-
But not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur--let alone a multi-skillset engineer/manufacturer/entrepreneur/business manager--even if they have the necessary intellectual chops. Nor do the talents and skills that go into becoming a competent musician necessarily overlap with those that produce successful inventors or business owners. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
Sideways moves are, of course, possible--I came to freelance writing when I lost my teaching career, but as a good as I was at that, I have neither the skills nor the desire to, say, start my own magazine or even my own blog. And unfortunately, it's a lousy way to make a middle-class living. Fortunately, my wife's academic career has continued (so we have a house and health insurance), and she writes fiction as an equally economically unrewarding* side activity. Just as our best local jazz players all have day jobs. Just as one of the best writers I know worked for decades as a bookkeeper while producing her novels and stories.
My observation has been that one does music--or any art--because one loves it, sometimes because one can't not do it. And there are indeed practical-world skills necessary to being an economically successful artist--as one of my musician friends pointed out, somebody has to book the gig, make sure everybody shows up, collect the money, and make sure somebody is sober enough to drive home at the end of the night.
"Don't just learn what you have to to keep your job" is excellent general advice, but there are limits to how flexible and adaptable most of us are. If there's a lesson that ought be part of every arts curriculum, it's "Don't expect to make a living at this."
* The short fiction market makes the jazz market look like the stock market in the Roaring Twenties.
-
Another writer here, and I wouldn't disagree. Furthermore - in novels especially - quantity over quality has become the norm. And further to that, if you're a consumer of fiction there's an increasing chance that you'll buy something that isn't even written by a human. Originally Posted by RLetson
Derek
Reply With Quote
I found this Ibanez rarity
Today, 03:05 PM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos