Wally Besser
| Wally Besser | |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Wally |
| Born |
January 16, 1936 Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States |
| Died | April 2017 Jupiter, Florida |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter |
| Instruments | trumpet, flugelhorn, valve trombone, keyboard, vibes |
| Years active | 1957–2017 |
Wally Besser (born January 16, 1936) is a trumpet and flugelhorn player with a large career playing with best orchestras as the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Sammy Kaye Orchestra, or Larry Elgart. He spent twenty years with Fotis Gonis Express doing the top Greek work in New York and around the country, as well as Canada and Venezuela.
Besser was born on January 16, 1936, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He attended Douglas elementary school until he was seven years old and then his parents bought a large old house in Excelsior, Minnesota on Lake Minnetonka.
The family had a very large garden complete with a chicken coop, which kept his mom and children busy and helped supply them with food. His father was a left-handed piano player and singer in the style of Fats Waller. His father continued to perform until he built a small grocery store at which time he put aside the music business and ran the store, together with his wife and children.
Besser took piano lessons as a child but they did not take. Finally when he could not compete as an athlete (for health reasons), he took up the trumpet in his junior year in high school.
After graduation from Minnetonka High School, he went on to study privately at MacPhail College of Music. After three semesters he was offered a job in a Polka band and he spent the summer with them in western Minnesota. Besser quit the band in the fall when his dad got back into the music business, in order to get him a decent job. Besser went to work in a striptease club, where they taught him “everything he knows”, so he says.
He spent a couple of years with the strippers until he had enough money saved to move to Chicago, in 1957, to continue his studies. He studied trumpet with Arnold Jacobs and arranging with William Russo, while doing gigs with local bands. Besser left Chicago with a hotel Band and after a couple of months, when the band broke up, he moved to Los Angeles and spent a few uneventful months there. One day he got a letter from the military telling him to report for a physical. He went back to Minneapolis and failed his physical due to Asthma. He was now free to pursue his dream and travel the world.
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Wikipedia