WICN Artist of the Month, February 2025: David “Fathead” Newman

Close friendships between jazz musicians don’t always translate to a combination that creates a chemistry and bond, professionally and personally. Yet in the case of David “Fathead” Newman and R&B giant and bandleader Ray Charles, their friendship connected them to a decade-long musical relationship from which the most seminal work of Charles’s career was recorded. Both musicians began as sidemen, in saxophone and piano respectively, (Newman with the Buster Smith, who mentored Charlie Parker, and was currently backing T-Bone Walker, and Charles was with the Lowell Fusion band). In 1952, after being arrested, (without any probable cause) while driving with Charles in the car, the two musicians cemented their friendship in jail that night. The foundation laid by their seeming misfortune of arrest developed for Newman a vehicle of opportunity as Charles, by 1959, would become a pop star with chart-topping recordings and sold performances.

https://youtu.be/dwQVYbVIp5o 

Born on February 24, 1933, in Corsicana, Texas, Newman’s family moved to Dallas when he was a kid, where he graduated from Lincoln High School and earned a scholarship to Jarvis Christian College, where he focused on theology and music. After his sophomore year, however, Newman left school to make music his full-time occupation. At this point, Newman began working with Buster Smith’s band; Smith was a mentor to Charlie “Bird” Parker, who played a pivotal role in Newman’s early development.

In Charles, Newman found a musician who “was focused and dedicated to perfection.” Newman had embraced the current direction in jazz, which was bebop, but soon found a direction in style and tone that followed Charles’ love of soulful ballads and driving R&B.

As stated in an interview with Newman, “Ray gave us a lesson in music appreciation. Before I encountered Ray, my only real love was jazz and bebop.  With Ray, I learned how to respect and admire and love all other forms of music.”

The commercial success of the Ray Charles band with its signature soulful R&B sound allowed Newman, as a frontman for the band, to gain more personal exposure as an individual talent, both while touring and in recording sessions. Atlantic Records’ producer Jerry Wexler, who worked with Charles, called Newman Charles’s “alter ego on tenor” (Wexler, Jerry, Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American Music (Knopf, 1993).

Ray Charles reconfirmed the compliment saying that Newman “could make his sax sing the song like no one else.”

(Charles, Ray, and David Ritz, Brother Ray: Ray Charles’ Own Story (Dial Press, 1978).

In 1959, Newman released his debut album, Fathead: Ray Charles Presents David Fathead Newman, thanks to the support of Charles: “Ray played piano on the album, and it took off like a rocket. One of the songs on the disc, ‘Hard Times,’ was used as a theme song by more by several DJs across the nation. It also became Newman’s signature song.”

Returning to New York City in 1966 and signing with Atlantic Records, and riding on considerable commercial success and critical acclaim for Fathead, Newman began a series of recording sessions that would cement his professional reputation beyond that of a stellar sideman. He went on to record 40 albums as a bandleader. Between club and concert dates and his own recording, he worked with some of the biggest names in the music industry of the era, including Aretha Franklin, B. B. King, Nat ‘King’ Cole, and Donny Hathaway. Recording standouts include The Sound of the Wide Open Spaces (Riverside, 1960) with his fellow Texan James Clay on saxophone, Fathead Comes On (Atlantic, 1962), and Double Barrelled Soul (Atlantic, 1968), with jazz organist Jack McDuff. He also performed with King Curtis’ Kingpins. As a studio musician for Atlantic Records, he worked with Aretha Franklin on her hit Respect), Hank Crawford, Aaron Neville, B. B. King, Joe Cocker, and others.

 

In the 1970s, a considerable mutually productive musical relationship was formed with jazz band leader and flutist Herbie Mann. They became co-band leaders, and Mann had wanted Newman so badly for his band reformation that he paid Newman twice the salary paid by Ray Charles.

In 1972, Mann scored wider appeal with sizzling performances at George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festival and later with his sextet at Yankee Stadium. As stated by a jazz critic, “The secret weapon in the band remained saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman, whose bold tenor sax work added to the earthy charm of the Ray Charles band from 1954 to 1966.”

 

In the 1990s, Newman would continue fruitful new directions with jazz master drummer and bandleader Art Blakey, as well as teaming up with New Orleans’ blues and jazz-inspired pianist and bandleader Dr. John.

In 2004, with the film biopic Ray receiving critical success, particularly due to Jamie Foxx’s performance as Ray Charles, Newman would find renewed audience interest in Charles’s recordings as well as his own. The following year, he recorded a special tribute to Ray Charles with the album I Remember Brother Ray (High Note, 2005), “which became the Number 1 Most Played Jazz Album nationwide.”

Charles’s lifelong friendship with Newman was an anchor for both men during difficult periods in their lives, and also an ongoing inspiration musically. This appreciation is clearly expressed in this sentiment from Charles, “He (Newman) has one of the kindest, sweetest dispositions of anyone I’d ever known. They called him ‘Fathead’ but I called him ‘Brains’ because of his keen intelligence. He had it all covered – down and dirty blues and high-flying bop. And he put it together with a smoothness that had me wishing I could blow sax half as good as him.”

David “Fathead” Newman died of pancreatic cancer in 2009.

Here’s Newman, in his own words, describing the creative process of music: “This music is a gift, it’s an incredible gift. What happens is the music doesn’t really come from me or from us; this music comes through us.  So, I want to explore what I can do in all the different areas of music.  I don’t necessarily want to stick to a certain form insofar as the music goes.  I want to expand my mind and expand the music as it comes through me and as I feel it.”