Offering guidance to a budding star

When Steve Haines’s student Julian Kennedy and his compadres in harmony made this spectacular showing on America’s Got Talent, the director of the Miles Davis Jazz Studies program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro immediately reached out to Fred. 

Earlier this month, Fred, a former adjunct professor in the program, made the drive to Greensboro from his home in South Carolina to offer some advice to the young piano and voice major and his mom about the music business. Trombone student Leroy Pridgen IV was able to get in on the action, too.

“I told him what to do, and what to not ever do,” quipped Fred, drawing on his own adventures and misadventures. He also gave him a copy of his memoir, Hit Me Fred: Recollections of a Sideman.

(l-r) Fred, Julian Kennedy, Leroy Pridgen IV, Steve Haines