Feature News:

Niche Productions Presents the Legendary Fred Wesley

"We speak of love and happiness: for me, happiness is Fred Wesley playing his horn." James Brown

Saturday August 8 – The Hi-Fi – Melbourne
Sunday August 9 – The Basement – Sydney
Tickets on sale Friday July 3

Following concerts by Tony Allen and Roy Ayers, Niche Productions presents for the first time ever in Australia, the legendary Trombonist Fred Wesley! Fresh from the Luxembourg Jazz Festival and with his six piece band, be prepared for a House Party like no other!

Born in Columbus, Georgia, and raised in Mobile, Alabama, Fred Wesley began his professional career as a teenage trombonist with Ike and Tina Turner. He later was music director, arranger, trombonist and a primary composer for James Brown from 1968-1975, then arranged for and played with Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy’s Rubber Band.

With Brown and as leader of his backing band The JBs, Wesley “was the world's most famous sideman, orchestrating the sinuous grooves and contributing the bold, surgically precise solos that defined the language of funk.” In teaming with George Clinton and Bootsy Collins, he played a key role in taking funk to the next level.

Seminal hits he helped create include Brown’s ‘Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)’, ‘The Big Payback’, ‘Doing it to Death (Funky Good Time)’, ‘Pass the Peas’ and ‘Papa Don’t Take No Mess’. Others include Parliament’s ‘P-Funk’ and ‘Flashlight’, as well as Bootsy Collins’ ‘Stretching Out’, and ‘I’d Rather Be With You’ and of course Wesley’s own Disco classic ‘House Party’. 

Author of the critically acclaimed memoir, ‘Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Side Man’ (Duke University Press 2002), Wesley is recognized as one of music’s most-sampled artists, behind Brown and Clinton. Artists who have sampled his work include Janet Jackson (‘That’s The Way Love Goes’) and the rapper Nas (‘Nastradamus’).

A veteran of the renowned Count Basie Orchestra, Wesley also has played with and arranged for a wide variety of other artists including Ray Charles, Pancho Sanchez, New York Voices, Slide Hampton, Van Morrison, Usher, the SOS Band and Cameo.

Do not miss this opportunity to see a living legend performing some of the most powerful music ever committed to tape in these intimate spaces.