The San Diego Jazz Community Mourns the Passing of Bruce Cameron

Bruce Cameron. Photo by Michael Oletta.

A discussion about music (and jazz in particular) in San Diego over the last five decades would be insubstantial if it failed to reference the contributions of trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, and bandleader Bruce Cameron. The horn player and bandleader was a presence on San Diego-area stages for decades.

Cameron succumbed to cancer at his La Mesa home at the age of 80, surrounded by family on July 1, according to a life tribute provided by niece Amanda Suter.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cameron co-helmed one of the most popular local live acts in San Diego: The Bruce Cameron-Hollis Gentry Jazz Ensemble. In fact, during the 1984 World Series, when the Padres hosted their first-ever fall classic game, it was Cameron and Gentry (on sax) who played the National Anthem before that game.

And in addition to his long career in jazz, Cameron had a second life as a leading figure of the local model railroading community, still volunteering at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park up until his passing.

Bruce Cameron was born March 8, 1945, in Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y., and raised in the Hudson River Valley of New York state.

Cameron began playing bugle when he was in the Boy Scouts, according to liner notes written by Orange County Register journalist Steve Eddy that accompany Cameron’s early 1990s CD release, A Blue Cornet.

The Bruce Cameron Ensemble, Photo by Michael Oletta.

Learning to play the valveless bugle serves as excellent preparation for developing the embouchure and the forceful flow of breath required to graduate to more sophisticated brass instruments.

As a teenager, Cameron performed with a Dixieland band during the Ted Mack Amateur Hour radio program, Eddy writes, a detail also confirmed by the family tribute.

Eddy cites Cameron as saying he entered a record store when he was 11 and bought a Mile Davis album because he liked the cover. That led him to appreciate other trumpeters such as Chet Baker, Billy Butterfield, and Doc Severinson.

Moreover, Cameron said in an interview five years ago that, while growing up in the Hudson Valley, one of his neighbors was the celebrated tenor sax player Stan Getz, among other notable musicians. “I was so lucky to grow up there,” Cameron said. “Stan Getz was playing some of our senior proms!”

According to family, Cameron was active in high school band, drama, and track. Cameron said Getz’s son, Steve, was on the track team, while Cameron was its coach.

He majored in music at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, then attended graduate school, majoring in social work at the University of Hawaii, while performing on the side with the band of Hawaiian pop star Don Ho.

Cameron & Gary Lefebvre. Photo by Michael Oletta.

Like many San Diego-area musicians, Cameron landed here by way of the Navy. After enlisting in the Navy around 1967 to avoid being drafted, he became a member of the Navy Show Band, performing for troops throughout the Pacific region.

Given this background, Cameron was already a polished brass technician when he was stationed in San Diego, where he played for officers’ clubs.

After leaving the Navy in 1972, Cameron worked as a social worker for San Diego County, performed with the San Diego Chargers’ game-day band, and worked with the Fox Theater pit orchestra. Meanwhile, he met and gigged with numerous local bands and met dozens of musicians.

Internationally renowned electric bass player Nathan East, who grew up in San Diego, recalled hearing Cameron performing around town in the 1970s. “It was definitely in the days of (saxophonist) Hollis (Gentry III) and (keyboardist) Carl (Evans Jr.), and (drummer) Ronnie Stewart and us doing those gigs around San Diego,” East recalled in a recent interview.

“I got a call from (Cameron) to do some gigs. I had seen him play. He was fairly popular. I think (guitarist) Steve O’Connor and (pianist) Butch Lacy; there was always a gig they were teaming up on.”

That led to an invitation from Cameron for East to accompany him on his first LP, With All My Love, to which East contributed some popping bass and two songs, including the title ballad sung by Cameron’s band vocalist, Charlotte Steele.

East penned the album’s opener, “Sunrise,” an up-tempo number fusing elements of rock, samba and swing. “He was going for that fusion stuff like Chuck Mangione,” said San Diego percussionist Tommy Aros, referring to the recently passed flugelhorn player and bandleader who became one of the most popular jazz artists of the ’70s and ’80s.

Aros, who would later spend 20 years with Mexican pop singer Luis Miguel, said Cameron would call him to fill in when some other band members couldn’t make it.

“We got along good,” Aros said. “We did a bunch of gigs together… He was kind of like the king of the hill in San Diego (in that era).”

Evans, a bandmate of East and Gentry at Crawford High School, anchors the keyboards on the album and provides some propulsive flourishes reminiscent of McCoy Tyner, one of his favorites. He also wrote the other vocal ballad sung by Steele, “Love Is on the Way.”

Cameron is at the top of his game on that record, playing with fire, demonstrating great range and hitting high notes flawlessly on the fast numbers, while displaying his burnished flugelhorn tone on the ballads.

The album, released on Discovery Records, received praise from Billboard, the family tribute states. It also set the stage for the formation of an ensemble co-led by Cameron and Gentry that eventually would include Evans on keys, congero Russ Caldwell, drummer Carlos Vasquez, bassist Mark Hunter, and guitarist Steve Laury.

Gentry, Evans, and East had been jazz orchestra bandmates at Crawford High School, which had a legendary music program in the late ’60s through the ’70s. The trio became the nucleus of a funk fusion band called Power, which attracted the attention of experienced jazz luminaries such as Cannonball Adderly, and also pop-soul balladeer Barry White.

The Cameron-Gentry coalition gravitated further away from the mainstream straight-ahead jazz idioms that had dominated previous eras, though it still remained highly regarded among musicians. The ensemble became immensely popular playing venues such as The Triton on El Cajon Boulevard in the state college area, the Old Pacific Beach Cafe, and the Coyote Bar and Grill in Carlsbad.

Trumpeter James Zollar, a Mission Bay High grad, who forged an international reputation after relocating to New York, was occasionally invited up on the bandstand by Cameron as guest soloist. “Bruce was older than me,” Zollar said in a text message when informed of Cameron’s death. “I felt he had a lot more together than I did at the time. For some reason, I associate Bruce with Blue Mitchell.

“I didn’t know Bruce that well, but I remember going to see him play was a serious happening. I loved his flugelhorn sound. Seemed like a great band leader and [had] a great presentation.”

Cameron in his later years.

Zollar’s comparison to Mitchell is apt, as Eddy states in his Blue Cornet notes that Cameron did “some serious sitting in with the likes of (guitarist) Kenny Burrell and Blue Mitchell (the latter sessions while working a day job as a social worker).”

Mitchell, who earned repute as a sideman for pianists Horace Silver and saxophonist Harold Land (another former San Diegan) as well as his own bands, was known for his beautiful tone and soulful storytelling solos.

Bassist Gunnar Biggs, another Crawford High grad, who continues to have a big presence on the San Diego jazz scene, recalled Cameron had a confident, cool demeanor on stage, including his penchant for playing a solo while clenching a cigarette between fingers on his right hand while manipulating the valves.

“There was a certain amount of cool about it. He looked cool and acted cool,” Biggs said. “He was always in control… He was a good leader and a good front man. It was a pleasure to play with him. I never had trouble saying ‘yes’ to a gig.”

Biggs said Cameron called upon him to play mostly one-off dates.

“I enjoyed his playing,” Biggs said. “He was lyrical. He wasn’t a ‘look at my licks’ kind of player. He was there for the music. He called great tunes, tunes that a lot of other people didn’t play… They featured the band in a good way.”

Biggs said of the partnership with Gentry, a close friend from their high-school days, “He and Bruce were a good foil for each other when they were on. They were a good blend.”

That opinion was echoed by local jazz guitarist and producer Peter Sprague, who wrote a note saying, “I just remember him as a sweet and soft-spoken musician with a great tone on his horn and playing with some of the greats including Nathan East and Hollis Gentry. What a sound that was, the blend of those two guys!”

Biggs also enjoyed playing with the group when Vasquez and Caldwell were in the rhythm section: “I was really honing some Latin skills with that band.”

The Carlsbad resident said he really got to know Cameron socially when the latter hosted him and other friends and musicians over to his house to play ping pong. “It was kind of a nice hang,” Biggs said. “It was fun.”

That illuminates another facet of Cameron’s personality—his interest in pursuits outside of music. He was a model train enthusiast who once co-owned a toy store. He volunteered at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park and helped construct a layout for the museum.

“I always enjoyed working with people who had something going on off the bandstand,” Biggs said.

During a visit with staff and fellow volunteers at the San Diego Railroad Museum a few weeks ago, the overriding theme was that Cameron was highly regarded among model railroaders.

Charise Crawford, manager of the Museum’s gift shop, choked up several times remembering Cameron. “I’d be the first person Bruce would see each morning when he arrived. Every morning, he always had a little joke and always reminded me to listen to his music, which I always did!”

Bill Brauer is a member of the San Diego Model Railroad Association, which operates the HO and O scale layouts at the Museum, the same club Cameron was in. “Bruce was with Reed’s Hobby Store in La Mesa when I frst met him in the late 1980s, and he stayed with them for many years. He did a lot of stuff on the HO side of the house” at the museum, Brauer said.

Cameron excelled at taking brand-new model railroad cars and painting them in such a way that they looked old and weathered, which could be needed for a specific exhibit.

Mike Pulling is another SDMRA member who volunteers at the Museum. “I probably met him here!” Pulling said, but added he had no idea how long he’d known Cameron.

He said that during the last few years, Cameron had worked a full volunteer schedule at the Museum—which is three six-hour days—and had been particularly involved in the club’s narrow-gauge HO layout.

In an unpublished interview with San Diego Troubadour (which will be published in October), Cameron shared that he got into model railroading when word got around that he could do very detailed painting, and he soon picked up side work painting brass locomotives from area modelers.

Cameron also loved cycling and continued to take long bicycle jaunts until the months before his death when his health began to waver. He was sometimes joined by percussionist Aros, another avid cyclist, and other musicians into the sport.

From a musical standpoint, the mid-1980s were a turning point in the relationships among Cameron, Gentry and Evans in the Bruce Cameron-Hollis Gentry Jazz Ensemble. Along with Cameron’s own compositions, Gentry’s and Evans’ bouncy tunes and silky instrumental ballads began to take more prominence in the group’s book than covers of standard jazz material.

That was in keeping with the burgeoning popularity of funk infused with rock and Latin polyrhythms. In that respect, the Cameron-Gentry group paved the way for the Lites-Out jazz sound promulgated by San Diego’s KIFM and its disc jockey Art Good. Lites-Out jazz was the forerunner of the “smooth jazz” genre that took this region and eventually the country by storm.

Cameron departed, and the remaining members renamed the outfit Fattburger, after which Gentry departed and Aros was brought in on congas and percussion. Fattburger went on to national acclaim in the following decade playing festivals and shows around the country.

Cameron moved onto other projects, including the production of A Blue Cornet, on which he was joined by Brazilian-born pianist Alfredo Cardim, and fellow San Diegans Glen Fisher on bass and Ron Ogden on drums.

As the title implies, Cameron plays cornet on all 11 numbers, all of which are ballads in the vein of those played by his childhood heroes, Davis and Baker. The melodies include such chestnuts as “Body and Soul,” “When I Fall in Love,” “Here’s That Rainy Day,” “Round Midnight,” and even “The Christmas Song.”

Unlike Davis and Baker, who largely spurned playing with vibrato, Cameron embraces the technique with aplomb to superb lyrical effect.

Eddy summed up his take on the album, which was nominated for a Grammy award: “With the jazz scene so full of bombast, A Blue Cornet is clearly intended to bring on total relaxation and maybe a tear or two. In that regard, it succeeds mightily.”

Cameron continued to maintain visibility on music stands around the region in subsequent years, including his regular participation in a weekly jam session, sponsored by KSDS, Jazz 88.3 FM, at the Spaghetteria restaurant in Little Italy.

East said he remembered Cameron fondly for “giving a young guy a shot playing in the band. He knew what he liked and what he wanted, and seemed to surround himself with all the great cats.”

Cameron is survived by his wife, Betty, to whom he was married for 38 years; sister Laurie Cameron and brother-in-law Tim Heisel; nephews Sean and Andy Siffert; sisters-in-law Lindy Pelletier and Jimee Suter and her husband Mike Suter; nieces Hannah Pelletier and Amanda Suter; and cousins Jane and John Haggstrom and their spouses, Brad and Melissa.

Cameron was preceded in death by parents Louise and Griggs Cameron, brother Bradner, and cousin Annie Haggstrom. Donations can be made in his name to the San Diego Model Railroad Museum.