Interview: Jerry Hey, Pop Music’s Go-Go Man for Horn and String Arrangements

In 1978, Jerry Hey was playing trumpet for Hawaiian collective Seawind, a slick, talented jazz fusion band on CTI Records with only two albums to its name. Across the Pacific, the horn section’s reputation was growing all over L.A., leading to further studio sessions – including a career-changing opportunity to work with famed producer Quincy Jones, who tapped Hey to play and chart horn lines for The Brothers Johnson’s Blam!, which hit Number One on the Billboard R&B albums chart that year.

Not only did the future six-time Grammy winner become Jones’ “first call” horn arranger on all his subsequent projects (George Benson’s Give Me the Night; Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad), but Hey became the go-to trumpeter and horn arranger in the industry, contributing to some of the biggest records of the subsequent decades including Chaka Khan’s “I Know You, I Live You,” Al Jarreau’s “Boogie Down,” Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove,” Toto’s “Rosanna,” Teena Marie’s “Behind the Groove,” Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” and more.

Today, the Illinois native is still one of the most dependable musicians in the business, having worked on recent records from Mary J. Blige, Wilco, Fall Out Boy, Katy Perry and Maroon 5. Matthew Allen recently spoke with Hey about some of his projects and process.

What was the music that first grabbed you while growing up Illinois?

My parents were both musicians. My mom played piano, my dad played trombone, and my older brothers – who are ten and eight years older – one played trombone and the other played tuba. So, there was always music around the house. My dad was a jazz trombone player, in the style of Jack T. Garden. There was a lot of that influence around the house. First music that I really heard that kind of turned my head… My dad had gone into Chicago and heard Clifford Brown live. And he said it was one of the most amazing things he’d ever heard and bought Clifford Brown’s first record, which was a 10-inch record. Brought it home when I was eight, maybe. That was the first thing that I really heard that I was, “Oh! Wow!” Then my older brothers were starting to get into jazz and were listening to Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Rosolino, a lot of people. For my 11th birthday, my brothers gave me a Cannonball Adderley record, [John Coltrane’s] Giant Steps and Clark Terry and Bob Brookmeyer’s [Tonight]. It started off early, and I’m listening to these guys and I’m like, “Wow! I’ll never be able to do that!”

When did you realize that you wanted to play trumpet professionally?

In high school, the band director’s son tried to get me into lessons for him, but he wasn’t taking anybody. So he suggested another guy who was playing in Chicago Symphony. I was 16 and he was 21. Charles Guyer was his name. So I started taking lessons from him. He started talking about, “You have to come to Chicago and go to Northwestern University and get into the Lyric Opera and work your way around Chicago and just sort of get into that.” That was the first inkling of it. Then I went to Indiana University, met a few guys who could play every style and sounded great in every style. This is really what I want to do. It really wasn’t until Indiana – even though I went as a music education major – that I decided to try on become full-time professional trumpet player.

How did this lead you to Seawind?

When I went to Indiana University, one of the trumpet players that I met could play everything – jazz, lead, orchestra, everything – Larry Hall. He’s still my best friend to this very day and lives in Los Angeles. We’ve done a lot of work together. A friend of his, a saxophonist, went to Hawaii on a whim and found out there was work over there. He called Larry up and said, “You wanna move to Hawaii?” and Larry said, “Sure.” A couple months later, I was in a lesson with my trumpet teacher and Larry happened to call, looking for someone else, and I was there. He said, “It’s great over here. We have this gig coming up. Would you be interested in coming?” So I left school in the middle of my junior year to go to Hawaii. Larry and I and a few other players from Indiana all went over to Hawaii. So, now we’re in Hawaii playing these shows, and the first show we played ran 12 weeks. Then there was some time off between shows, so we had a small jazz group with the drummer, who was in the service over there, and bass player, whose parents were in the service, and that was the rhythm section for Seawind and that's how Seawind formed.

How did you get onto CTI Records?

When we were playing in Hawaii – as then we were called OX – musicians would go through either Japan to play or come to Hawaii on vacation and they would come to hear us. It got to Lee Ritenour and Harvey Mason Sr. They came to see us and Harvey picked up on it and said, “You need to come to L.A. and make a record.” He kind of took charge and knew some guys at CTI. He’s the one that kind of hooked us up to get to CTI. It was a good fit for us on our first record. He was very good.

Did you begin arranging horn lines when you joined Seawind, or did that start in school?

In Seawind, we started off doing Top 40 stuff, like Tower of Power, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, and we needed some horn parts. So, “OK, I’ll take them off the record.” I started doing that. Then, when original songs were written, we needed horn parts, so I said, “OK, I write one part.” It just sort of was out of necessity. It wasn’t really something that I pursued. Then, I met Quincy [Jones] when Seawind moved to L.A. and we played a club called the Baked Potato. We’d been there three months and all of a sudden the phone rings and it’s literally Quincy saying, “I’m doing a record. I heard you guys really have a good horn section. I want you to write a chart and come in and play.” He was the one who forced me to write on the Brothers Johnson’s Blam! record, and then Off the Wall and all of these things.

How do you go about arranging horns for records?

In 99 percent of everything that I’ve ever done, people just send me, back then a cassette, then a DAT and now an MP3, and they basically don’t say anything. They have me do what I think is best for each record. As I’m listening for the first time and taking off the form of the record, if anything comes to mind, I’ll write it down, just jot it down on the bottom of the page as I’m listening to it. I have perfect pitch, so I can take off tunes quickly. That makes it easy for me to get into the song and hear all the parts, everything that the rhythm section is. I listened to it a lot. Probably the best thing that I do is listen to what people have sent me and try to understand what they’ve sent me and get all the parts, and try to make the horns fit like they were supposed to be there in the first place.

Do you normally construct various lines and then choose the best one?

Early on, I would always have some options. The basic chart would be written and we’d all have it in front of us. At the end of the page, I would have an optional chorus figure, maybe two. If I didn’t like this one, maybe we can try that one, or maybe an overdub line that we’d put on another track, a little bit covering my bases beforehand just in case something wasn’t working. I did write options.

I Am was the first Earth, Wind & Fire album you played on. Did you also do any arrangements on that?

“In the Stone” is mine. I think I did five [songs] on that record, including “After the Love Has Gone.” It was through David Foster, who did a bunch of songs on that. I’d worked with David before that. In fact, he’s the one who recommended me to Quincy to do the horns for Blam! He played on it. So, he got me on the Earth, Wind & Fire I Am record, and played on a couple other ones. From I Am, I played on every record by Earth, Wind & Fire to this day, and arranged.

Are there any similarities between Quincy and Maurice White?

I was at his memorial. Maurice was a really special guy, amazing in the studio. So low-key and, “Everything’s going to be fine.” He was one of the greats that I worked with. Quincy’s big thing, besides picking songs, getting great artists and being a great producer, he calls the right musicians for the right job, then lets you do your job. And then he has the total vision of the overall production. He gets the big picture along the process early on. It’s amazing how little you think he’s affecting whatever you’re doing and in the end, how much it sounds like Quincy Jones. It’s really crazy.

Songwriter Rod Temperton was a reoccurring presence throughout your career. What was your collaborative process like?

Rod and I, to this day, are really close. Seawind was on tour and we flew back one day from Boston to do Off the Wall horns. Rod had written songs (title track, “Rock with You,” “Burn This Disco Out”), but wasn’t there, and they’re my horn parts with no influence from Rod. Fortunately, he liked them. [laughs] When we got to the Thriller record, we worked a bunch: George Benson, Patti Austin, a whole bunch of stuff with Rod. Got to meet him, hang out with him, work on some of his horn parts on [Rufus and Chaka Khan’s] Masterjam album. As far as a songwriter, he’s the hardest working guy I have ever met. He can lock himself in a room and write a song and come out a couple weeks later. He just banged away on a keyboard – he’s not really a great keyboard player – and worked on the lyrics until they were perfect, then he’d come out. Some of the songs, like “Baby Come to Me,” every note on that record is Rod. Guitar parts, all the background vocals, lead vocals, bass part, synth parts, everything.

He’s so prolific. It’s hard not to think of Rod when I think about that era. Songs like “Rock With You,” “Stomp,“ “Love X Love...”

I love “Love X Love.” I called up Quincy and said it’s gonna be number one, and he said, “Yeah, I think so.” He still, to this day, thinks that the record company blew that one. Rod’s songs are all works of art.

When did you start doing string arrangements? That’s a totally different animal from horns.

Yes, it is totally different. As I said, Seawind was on tour during the Off the Wall record. Quincy had called and asked me to write strings and horns for Off the Wall, and I said, “We’re on the road and we’re gonna have to fly back to do horns. I can’t really do strings, and I’m not really the right guy for it anyway.” He kind of went along with that. Then Rufus came along for Masterjam, and he said “You’re gonna write strings on this.” I said, “No, I’m not.” He said, “Yes, you are.” Literally, that was it; I didn’t have any choice. So, I started doing R&B strings on a lot of Quincy’s records. I wasn't really into strings at that point. I started listening to other people’s writing. I had been involved with Foster’s writing of strings, especially on I Am. I thought, “OK, I get that.” I started thinking about what string parts I really like and don’t like, especially for more pop music. I just came from Quincy saying, “Yeah, you’re gonna do it.” Did that, did “Billie Jean” and from there, did a lot of strings for people in the 1980s, like Whitney Houston. It’s not something I was really going after, but I got to the point where I thought it was pretty good.

You’ve brought up Masterjam, your first of many collaborations with Chaka Khan. How’d you approach working her?

She is an incredibly powerful singer, maybe as powerful as anybody. She’s got so many sides to her, from the “Night in Tunisia” stuff, to “Through the Fire,” to whatever. It was my job to keep up with that. Her band, JR [Robinson], Tony Maiden, Bobby Watson, was a great band, with Rod writing tunes, Quincy, Bruce. Again, you go in and give it your best. We’ve done a lot of great stuff together. The Stompin’ at the Savoy Live record was three nights, and the first night they brought the big remote truck parked outside. The first night everybody was really nervous and the producer Russ Titelman brought the band out to the truck to listen. It sounded so stiff and nothing. He said, “You guys need to loosen up.” The next night we go out, and now it’s not together. So, he says we got one more night, we gotta get this together. So, the record is that third night! Yeah, pretty crazy, and Chaka is killing it on that. That is one night, and that goes to show you what kind of singer she really is.

You did so many classic records during that time, from MJ to Toto. How do you look back on that time period?

There was so much going on, and so many great projects, great players. We did so much stuff. “Rosanna,” we knew it was going to good. All of this stuff, we just go in as horn section, as a team, and we go in and play the stuff to best of our ability, and then on to the next one. [There was] so much work back then.

Yes, of course we gave Quincy and Foster and Earth, Wind & Fire and Al Jarreau an extra thought and spent a little more time on them because we knew it was gonna be really good, and something we wanted to make right. Let’s put it this way: we never played down to an artist for a session. We played everything that we always did as well as we could play it and I wrote it as well as I could write it. If you always trying to do your best, that’s all you can do.

Which do you like more, arranging or playing?

I started out as a player. If that’s all I could do, I’d be more than happy with that. But the writing has gotten me to be able to write and play on so many great projects that without the writing… Yeah, I was a good player, but there’s a lot of good players. It got my foot in the door as a writer to work with Quincy. He could’ve called anybody and their brother to play it, but he liked the writing, so, it kind of goes hand-in-hand. But I started out as a player and I’ll always be a player.