CityView Magazine

CityViewNC.com | 35 CityViewNC .com | 35 E arlier in Willie Bradley's life, addictions to alcohol and cocaine mounted up to become the bane of his existence. "I could do good for a while," he repeated twice, "and then stop." He's a former music instructor for 14 years in the Cumberland County and Fort Bragg school systems and current independent professional musician whose credits include touring as a sideman with bebop great Dizzy Gillespie. A contemporary so jazz trumpeter, Bradley has chart credentials on his resume. For the week of Sept. 26, 2020, Bradley's recording "It's On Now" reached No. 1 on the Billboard Smooth Jazz chart. e song, from his upcoming fourth album, "It's My Time," also features soul jazz flautist and vocalist Ragan Whiteside. Sadly, drugs and spirits are familiar elements in the creative music industry and have been for ages – from Charlie Parker and Billie Holliday during the early heyday of jazz on up to Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse in the rock and pop fields, respectively. Temptations run amuck. Among others, a jazz-heroin connection was graphically chronicled in the Nelson Algren 1949 novel, "e Man With the Golden Arm." In an interview from a Haymount home, he said, he never graduated to heroin. But Bradley was introduced to cocaine while playing for the Tampa Bay area-based pop Top 40 band Ooh-La-La that toured nationally as an opening act for Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine during the 1980s. e habit would consume much of his life, as his 5-foot-5 frame shrank from roughly 158 to 109 pounds. Bradley already was drinking heavily at the time. By the latter days of his drug dependence, along 2008, he said he was getting high on crack cocaine. "My habit was then out of control," Bradley recalled. "at's when things really started to catch up to me." On the road, playing some of the finer hotels of the day during the '80s, he had his own room and a bar tab. "It wasn't hard. You're partying all night and sleeping all day," he said. Bradley now talks about his " journey" with his demons during live stage performances worldwide. "at's what the Lord has called me to do," he said. Bradley's custom-made Harrelson jazz trumpet was designed to his specifications, with an extra-large bell and mouthpiece, so that he can perform with more ease during his 90-minute sets.

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