Nelson Hatt - Amazing Friend

I met Nelson Hatt in 1964 at Rice University. He and I were both trumpet players in the Marching Owl Band. To say that we were both trumpet players is like saying that a Ferrari and a Yugo are both cars. Nelson was astounding and continued to be astounding for as long as I knew him.

Our friendship was multifaceted. He arranged for me to replace him at the Houston Speech and Hearing Center as a part-time electronics technician when he departed for grad school at the University of Pittsburgh. That same summer he got me into a Houston Mexican band, Eloy Perez y su Latinos. I was a saggingly poor replacement for a virtuoso trumpet player.

If you were to take this photograph today from the same position and framing, you would see the Rothko Chapel. The Menil’s boought up almost the whold street and build the Chapel and the Menil Collection on the land behind Nelson.

As a surprise to both of us, we were together during our pre-induction physicals in 1969, and yet neither of us ended up serving — another story.

Nelson left the University of Pittsburgh to pursue his true calling as a professional trumpet player. He first played in touring bands — Glen Gray, Woody Herman, Glenn Miller (clearly not the original). I hooked up with him in the early 70s in New York City where he was playing the Roseland Ballroom and I was there for a technical conference. Each night we toured the jazz spots in “the city,” including the Vanguard and a club in Harlem where he introduced me to Clark Terry.

He finally settled in the LA area as a “studio cat.” He used to carry a brass instrument case containing a Bb and C trumpet, a flugelhorn, a Bb cornet, and a piccolo trumpet. He explained that for each different instrument he played on a call he received full scale.

I visited him in Burbank during another business trip around ’82 or ’83. He had married the love of his life and was at the top of the call list for brass players in the studios. He played movies, commercials, and other gigs too numerous to mention.

One of my objectives was to have him help me buy a better trumpet for my daughter, who was in the high school band and had outgrown her student-grade horn.

During our discussion he brought out a case with a Yamaha YTR-737 in silver. It was beautiful. He played it for me and again I was astounded by his artistry. He told me he was in a profession where he could not make a single mistake — lots of pressure, sight reading, key shifting… wow. He wanted to give my daughter the Yamaha, but I knew he was against the wall financially, so I forced money on him.

My daughter was delighted with the horn and played the Yamaha throughout high school and into college.

She married, taught math, became a mother, and continued with life — but not playing. The Yamaha had become baggage.

In this same period, Nelson’s wife was diagnosed with a rare and lethal variety of cancer. They were devastated, to say the least. Nelson found a research study for this particular strain at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and got her enrolled. (This is the Reader’s Digest version of this story.)

Then he did the most amazing sales job EVER. He convinced his wife that he was tired of his studio life and wanted to move to Houston and become a high school band director.

She bought it and they relocated. She went through the brutal research study as he taught trumpet and played in local gig bands. Unfortunately, she succumbed to the terrible disease.

Nelson returned to Burbank. Having been off the call list for a couple of years, he had to start at the bottom.

He was good friends with Doc Severinsen, who famously said, “Miss practice one day and I know it, two days and the band knows it, three days and the audience knows it.” Nelson’s playing had suffered during his time in Houston, but his natural talent remained.

He was working his way back up the call list when a burst aortic aneurysm took his life — way too early. I still miss my friend.

So the trumpet traveled from Nacogdoches, Texas, to Colorado Springs, to Richmond, to Colorado Springs again, and finally to their storage area in my daughter’s house in the Springs. It was from there that she gave it back to me.

I had decided that I would try to become a player again and worked at it languorously for a year or so. I never liked the hard work the trumpet demands, and I only got to an OK level — never beyond. Maybe also a lack of natural talent. So now you have this awesome Yamaha. Play and enjoy, and I will think of you and Nelson as brothers in music.