Vocal artist, bandleader, broadcaster and cabaret performer Eddie Bruce has done just about everything there is to do in the entertainment business since he first broke in as a youngster over five decades ago, except to record with a really swinging jazz band.
But with “For Dreamers and Their Dreams,” a CD that has just been released on streaming platforms all over the world, and recorded with the popular Jersey Shore-based Ed Vezinho/Jim Ward Big Band, Eddie Bruce is now able to say that he’s truly done it all.
The veteran entertainer is no stranger to the Atlantic City area, having spent most of his summers near the Boardwalk since childhood. In that he came to show business at an early age, a natural stop for any young performer at the shore was “Tony Grant’s Stars of Tomorrow,” a long-running talent show on the Steel Pier chronicled in these pages not long ago.
On the July 4 weekend of 1966, when Bruce was about 13, he headlined the Grant show. He vividly recalls that the comic, Don Adams of “Get Smart” television fame, was the headliner in the Steel Pier’s Music Hall.
Cut to 1984 when Bruce’s iconic dance ensemble – a group that performed for decades at just about every important corporate and charitable gala in the region and beyond – began an unprecedented run of performing for high rollers on New Year’s Eve in Atlantic City. His band performed annually at Bally’s from 1984 to 2001, and then at Caesars from 2003 to 2012. That’s a lot of “Auld Lang Synes.”
Though his dance band kept him busy through the years with hundreds of black-tie affairs, weddings, bar mitzvahs and everything else – to say nothing of his stint as host of television’s original “Dancin’ on Air”– Bruce always worked as a cabaret performer when not working with the dance group.
His tributes to Frank Sinatra, the Best of Broadway, Anthony Newley and Tony Bennett, were always well attended – he had two successful appearances with the Newley and Bennett celebrations at the Gateway Playhouse in Somers Point – and in the time since he’s moved away from the wedding world, he’s concentrated on his cabaret performances, which have been quite successful.
Most notable is his celebration of Tony Bennett, which has garnered substantial critical acclaim wherever it’s played. Indeed, just a month or so ago, Eddie Bruce opened the newly reconstituted Philly Pops’ new season at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center with his tribute to Bennett and Frank Sinatra. More than 2,000 people were in the audience and Eddie, as they say in show biz parlance, “knocked them dead.”
With all that success, the idea – okay, the dream – of recording with a big band was always percolating.
The Ed Vezinho/Jim Ward Big Band has been a swinging part of the Jersey Shore musical landscape for some years. Now billed as “Stockton University’s big band in residence,” according to Stockton’s Associate Professor of Music, Chris DiSanto, the band has actually been around since 1984.
Vezhino is an educator, composer, reedman and a superb arranger who effectively combines the influences of a number of legendary jazz orchestrators to fashion a sound that is completely his own. Listening to his charts, you’d swear he’s listened to every big band, from Fletcher Henderson to Stan Kenton and beyond.
Co-leader and trumpeter Jim Ward has been working in the Atlantic City area since graduating from the University of Miami, and he’s worked with everyone from Frank Sinatra and Kenny Rogers, to Aretha Franklin and Harry Connick Jr. He is a superior soloist and all-around trumpeter who is also a charter member of Eddie Bruce’s dance band.
Bruce described how he first hooked up with the Vezhino/Ward big band. “I have known Ed Vezinho and Jim Ward for many years,” he said. “Jim played trumpet with me for years in my dance band and during that time, I got to know the outstanding big band that he and Ed co-led – a group that built quite a reputation up and down the Jersey Shore. Every so often, Ed would invite me to sing with their big band, and those opportunities were always a thrill, since singing with a full big band is always a treat.”
I was in the house for several of these confabs at Josie Kelly’s in Somers Point and other nearby locations, and I was invited to play a number or two on the traps, so I can confirm that Eddie Bruce and the Vezinho/Ward band rocked the house.
“Ed’s arrangements are expansive, with harmonies that are rich and complex, wrapping themselves around my voice in intricate layers,” Bruce explained. “Each arrangement is a tapestry – horns, rhythm section and melody all woven together.”
The 14 tracks on the CD represent the culmination of Eddie Bruce’s vocal artistry. There’s a maturity and wisdom evident in this recording, i.e., there’s no straining, there’s nothing artificial, no licks, no clichés and there’s nothing to prove. Songs like “How High the Moon” and “Save Your Love for Me,” reflect his first influences – Ella Fitzgerald and Nancy Wilson – also display his swinging jazz sense, which has never really been fully appreciated. Generally, the beauty of his singing is that he can negotiate up-tempo flagwavers like “Once in a Lifetime,” to the gorgeous “Some Other Time” flawlessly. It’s one thing to have technique to spare – which he does – but knowing how and when to apply those chops is another thing.
I was present for several post-production meetings on “For Dreamers and Their Dreams,” and I was pleased to see that each and every musician on the date took this recording as seriously as their leader did. More importantly, they all approached it with the same attitude: the sheer joy of swinging.
Knowing Eddie Bruce as I have for these many years, he may not agree that he’s done “everything there is to do in show business,” because with this masterful and joyous artist, you just never know what idea he’ll come up with tomorrow.
