Blue Lightning Jazz Band - January 26, 2023

Rich Willey on trumpet and tuba
Bill Reichenbach on trombone and tuba
Walt Kross on clarinet
Russ Wilson on tenor banjo, drums and vocals

The Blue Lightning Jazz Band is based in Asheville, NC.
Please email [email protected] for booking information.
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Fun-loving trumpeter and tuba player Rich Willey leads the Blue Lightning Jazz Band, well-armed with over a half-century of professional experience. Born and raised in Florida, he spent three years as a U.S. Army Bandsman before going to North Texas State University. He moved to Philadelphia, playing in jazz small groups and big bands as a bass trumpet and valve trombonist. He later moved to New York, playing and recording with the Mel Tormé Big Band among many others. Rich went back to school in 1996 and got a degree in music education from the University of South Florida, then a masters in Jazz Performance/Trumpet at the Manhattan School of Music. Since then he has toured with Maynard Ferguson’s Big Bop Nouveau and The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and has learned from the best in the business. When not playing music, Rich wrestles alligators and designs solar-powered snowplows.

Master trombone and tuba player Bill Reichenbach, from Takoma Park MD, is a graduate of Eastman School of Music. After touring with the Buddy Rich Big Band, he moved to Los Angeles in 1975 and was a featured soloist with the Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band and the Don Menza Big Band and Sextet. Bill recorded and toured with Jaco Pastorius and the Word of Mouth Big Band and also toured with Elvis Presley. Active in the L.A. studios since 1975, Bill has played on over 900 motion pictures and more than 1000 records. Bill has also been an arranger and composer for TV, records, films and commercials and has recently “retired” to Fletcher NC where he is about to kick everybody’s ass playing trombone and tuba with The Blue Lightning Jazz Band. Bill appears on bass trombone on Rich’s 2019 CD, Rich Willey’s Boptism Big Band: Down & Dirty, and for fun likes to spend his afternoons tightrope walking over the Grand Canyon and Tallulah Gorge.

Multi-reedman Walt Kross of Trenton NJ studied at Indiana University School of Music before touring with Motown singer Eddie Kendricks. After moving to Atlantic City NJ Walt played for the top acts in the casino orchestras for twelve years before spending ten years on the road playing with the Glenn Miller Orchestra followed by sixteen years playing on riverboats up and down the Mississippi River. Walt “retired” in Hendersonville a decade ago and has been a steady member of The Asheville Jazz Orchestra and Russ Wilson’s Famous Orchestra, putting his sixty plus years of professional playing experience to good use. Walt’s hobbies include bullfighting and hang gliding. He also moonlights as a diesel mechanic.

Russ Wilson is a popular local bandleader and a native of Hendersonville NC. His singing and drumming are impeccable (he plays tenor banjo pretty well, too) and he has toured the country as a favorite artist for only the very best swing dance societies. His forty-something year professional playing background includes jazz, rock, country, gospel, blues, R&B and symphonic music, but he is the most at home playing and singing the music of the early twentieth century, the perfect vocalist and tenor banjo player for The Blue Lightning Jazz Band. Russ, who considers himself an “amateur historian,” has amassed a collection of over 5000 records (33s, 45s, 78s), 8000 orchestrations dating from the turn of the century to the 1960s, and also owns an impressive collection of early twentieth century phonographs. Russ recently returned from his fourteenth successful climb to the summit of Mount Everest and is in training to run the Boston Marathon.
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Rich uses Clary Woodmutes made by Tom Clary.