August 23, 2022 was a dark day for jazz music. Deaths usually come in threes, but Fate decided to go one step further. The word came down that we lost producer and Impulse/CTI visionary Creed Taylor, DJ/journalist Michael Bourne, guitarist Monnette Sudler and trumpeter jaimie branch. (The latter preferred no capitals in her name.)
While all of these are tragedies, branch's death hit me the hardest. (She died on Monday, August 22.) Not simply because she was just 39 years old but because I started following her from the moment I heard her 2017 debut Fly or Die. I felt something of an investment in her music. It was clear this was a trumpet player to watch. When other people joined me in listing Fly or Die as the debut album of '17, I was happy that other people noticed her too.
She had chops and a vision that started with forward-thinking AACM-inspired ideas of freedom and continued on with a fearlessness that included funk, blues and electronics. And when I say "fearlessness," it was clear that branch was going to do her thing her way, regardless of what you thought. Her typical outfit consisted of a ball cap, often worn sideways or backwards, baggy pants and an oversized jersey, which may or may not have had the name of some sports team on it.
The picture above comes from a 2018 show at City of Asylum/Alphabet City. The drummer was Stoli L. Sozzelberg. Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm was also onstage with them that night. But the outfit was secondary to what branch played. This is the kind of cliché you typically try to avoid, but she seemed to draw on the whole history of the trumpet. If she wanted to play a ballad, she could melt your heart. If she wanted to blast you against the wall with fury, she could do that too. If she wanted to get you think about the state of the world around you, she could do that too.
That can be heard on last year's Fly of Die Live album, which included "Prayer for Amerikkka Pr. 1 & 2," a song she later said was not inspired by the 45th president so much as it was about the way people were being treated at our borders. branch was not content to just spew bile either. That same album included a repetitive number called "Love Song" which consisted largely of the line, "It's a love song for assholes and clowns." She knew that hate wasn't going to solve anything. Love was needed. The recording came from a January 2020 concert in Zurich, Switzerland, just before the world shut down. and it wouldn't be released until the following spring. branch didn't know how true her words were, and how important such a sentiment is.
It was barely a month ago that branch came to Pittsburgh with Anteloper, the project she helms with drummer Jason Nazary. The event took place in a former warehouse turned into a raw (to put it mildly) DIY space. There was bad ventilation and a men's room where you had to pour a bucket of water down the toilet to flush it. Fine for the younger set, but for anyone who needs to sit and rest their weary bones mid performance, good luck. It mattered not a whit to Nazary or branch. The duo played with the same intensity that they displayed with I saw them at the comparatively posh environs of New York's SOB's a few years prior
Standing in front of a table lined with samplers and other electronics, her trumpet always within arms reach, branch began the set with a call to arms ("Trans rights are human rights," and a pro-choice mandate) before creating long heavy loops in tandem with Nazary, who often whacked his traps with one hand while turning knobs with the other. What slayed me was the way a vocal whoop that branch looped early on would continue and get remixed into the sound and could still be felt several minutes later, even as things evolved around it.
I turned fanboy a bit earlier in the evening, talking to branch and buying the latest Anteloper album. Despite the wildness of the evening and the ever-present loud volume, she was gracious and thankful for the effusive words, very down to earth and approachable. Despite playing in a more primitive space, she was well-scrubbed and enthusiastic. A musician of her caliber should be playing places like Le Poisson Rouge all the time, but she seemed happy to be playing music for people that appreciated and understood what she was doing.
That's why her death hurts so much. She was on her way to bigger things, still very approachable along the way and now she's gone. Maybe it's inappropriate to lump her together with Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, Lee Morgan, Booker Little and Roy Hargrove - all trumpet players that were snatched from us too soon. But jaimie was THAT good.
After seeing Anteloper at SOB's, I put a post on some social media site as I ran off to the next show: "I love you, jaimie branch." (Though I probably didn't use lower case.)
I still do.
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