Gerald Brashear

Who is Gerald Brashear?

Gerald Brashear was a prominent Seattle jazz performer from the 1940s to the mid-1970s. He played the conga drums and saxophone and was an inventive scat singer. Brashear married jazz singer Wanda Brown after the death of Wanda’s first husband, drummer Vernon Brown. As well as performing with his wife, Brashear played with Ray Charles in his early days in Seattle, as well as Della Reese, Cecil Young, and Wyatt Ruther. His brother, Oscar, was a well-known jazz piano player on the Seattle scene, and sometimes performed in concert with Ernestine Anderson.

In Paul de Barros’ Jackson Street After Hours Ernestine Anderson is quoted: “Gerald Brashear’s conga-playing was no small part of the act. Brashear had taught himself to play the style of Dizzy’s Cuban drummer, Chano Pozo. Buddy Catlett says Brashear ’played like a Cuban’, he was that good.”

“Gerald had a dry sense of humor. The two of them together were just craziness on the loose. Cecil was always playing crank jokes on people. A prankster. We used to wonder when he slept - he’d always be doing something, no matter what time of day or night it was. He reminded me of an overgrown kid.... He never grew up, in that respect.