By Dee Dee McNeil
In every major American city, there are jazz communities. Those communities embrace and venerate their local musicians. Within that circle of music makers, there are always a few outstanding talents that audiences, along with other musicians, gravitate towards. Nedra Wheeler is the perfect example of this adoration.
I first met Nedra when she was just an excited, wide-eyed, high school student. The instrument was as big as she was, but she carried it around with pride and passion. When she played it, the stunned world paid attention. Some paid homage. Many recognized immediately, this was a young, flowering talent, blossoming right before our eyes.
According to Nedra, it all began in her 5th grade music class. She is a native of Los Angeles and was attending 36th Street School, located near Van Ness and Florence.
“My 5th grade music teacher was interesting, because she played the autoharp. Yeah, and she would sing to us and play. We were little kids back then, sitting on the floor with our legs crossed. We would get our music instruction that way. At the end of our lesson, the teacher would pick a child to put the autoharp away. You know how kids raise their hands and shout out, I want to put the autoharp away. Let me do it! One day it was my turn. I got to put the autoharp into the instrument closet. That’s where I saw it. A big wooden bass carefully propped against the wall, in the corner of the closet,” Nedra waited a beat, remembering that experience.
“I just stood there in awe staring at it. I was supposed to be putting up the autoharp, but I was hypnotized by the sight of that bass. Then I heard the teacher say, Nedra! Did you put the harp away? I snapped out of that dream, but I never forgot the experience. That’s the day I felt spiritually drawn to the bass instrument,” she recalled her first memorable attraction to the double bass.
As we chatted, I realized she had already been subliminally introduced to the bass through her musical father. He was a singer, songwriter and music ran deep in their family. His father (Nedra’s paternal grandfather) played the bass in church.
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but all the music my father was playing around the house, had really great driving bass lines. I think those tunes were subconsciously nurturing me. I used to play the bass along with Johnnie Taylor’s record “Who’s Makin’ Love to Your Old Lady, While You’re out Making Love,” Nedra Wheeler sang the line to me and we laughed.
I remembered that Stax ‘hit’ record release on Johnnie Taylor back in 1968. At that time, the Stax ‘house band’ was Booker T. and the M.G.’s, with Isaac Hayes on keyboard accompanying Johnny Taylor.
“My father played with these ‘Cover’ bands. He and his friend Hildreth Walker, who was a laser Scientist and played guitar. My daddy’s band was called the Art Wheeler Band. He was also a member of an R&B singing group called The Marathons. My Godfather produced their popular records. His name is H. B. Barnum. He was Aretha Franklin’s Musical Director for years. The Marathons got some airplay with a song called, Peanut Butter.”
“When I was a baby, in the crib, crying, my mother would call my dad. His advice to make me stop crying was to put the radio on so I could hear music. On one occasion, as a child in bed with my mom, daddy brought back maracas from Mexico. He handed them to me and I started keeping up with the tempo of the music that was playing. Daddy thought that was amazing that as a small child, I could keep the beat.
“Then my mother had the jazz side covered. She had this jazz record collection. Gertrude was part of the Record Club that used to mail us all the new jazz album releases. So, we would get Doris Day Records, Nat King Cole records, Coltrane, Grant Green, Tootie’s brothers (The Heath Brothers), The Milt Jackson group (MJQ), and lots more mailed right to our house,” Nedra recalledthe bygone days of the Columbia Record Club.
In Junior High School, a teacher by the name of Joe Taylor recognized Nedra’s musical talents. By that time, she could play guitar, piano and organ, but she had fallen completely in love with the bass.
“A new teacher who came to our Jr. High School was Joe Taylor. He took Miss Brown’s class. That man was pivotal and important in my life! He was important because he made the instrument available for me to be able to practice. That was number one. Joe Taylor also exposed my sister and I, cause my sister played Viola, Harp, and Percussion, to large ensembles. He made it possible for us to be in the Compton Youth Orchestra,” she told me.
One challenge Ms. Wheeler had with her early music education was that she was determined to read music. She found the classes available were not always focused on teaching her to read musical notes. By playing in church, she had already mastered improvising and playing ‘by ear,’ just by listening to what was being played around her. Nedra discovered, when she added the bass rhythm, with notes that complimented the other instruments, it brought everything together in perfect harmony.
Jazz aficionado, La Rue Brown Watson introduced me to the teenaged Nedra Wheeler. She was already so good on her instrument that we asked her to join us during presentations I hosted in libraries across Los Angeles County called, “Jazz and You.” We taught pre-school children, their parents and grandparents the three elements of jazz for over a decade. Other participants were icons like Al “Tootie” Heath, Poncho Sanchez, Kenny Burrell and more. I noticed that Nedra Wheeler was great with the children. When describing her instrument, she compared her bass to a pizza crust. Nedra told them she was the bottom of the music, the part that held all the other instruments together, like putting the cheese, olives and meat on a pizza. The bass was the crust.
I enjoyed working with the young, female bassist. In the 1980s, Dwight Dickerson and I were playing jazz all over the city. I was happy to use Nedra as our bassist whenever we could. Some newspaper wrote us up one afternoon when we were performing and took this photo.
In fact, when we landed a contract to perform in Indonesia, Nedra was my first call. I invited her to come along with Dwight Dickerson, myself and Donald Dean Sr. to entertain in Jakarta.
“Dee Dee, I’m in college now. I can’t tour. I have to get my degree,” she explained to me in her very conscientious way.
That’s what I remember the most about Nedra. She was always in search of higher knowledge and determined to be the best she could be. Maybe that’s why so many amazing musicians have called on her talents. For example, she got a call from Stevie Wonder. I asked her how that happened.
“It was just out of nowhere. I got a phone call from his ‘rep’ that said this is a call from Stevie Wonder. He wants you to be at Universal Amphitheater at this time and on this day. I’m like, are you serious? I was working in advertising in Torrance. I was taking the bus. I couldn’t imagine that call being the real thing. Then I found out my friend Kevin Brandon had recommended me.
“I brought three dresses with me, my electric bass and my upright, cause they didn’t say which one they needed. I wanted to be prepared. I played in the orchestra. It was just profound. All the great Los Angeles musicians who play in orchestras were there. All the studio session and recording musicians were there, like Lisa Terry and Robin Ross, Ron Clark, Munyungo Jackson, all great musicians from our community were in that orchestra. Of course, Stevie had his own regular bass and drum folks,” Nedra told me.
The thing about Nedra Wheeler is that she’s diversified when it comes to playing various genres of music. Nedra is quite comfortable pulling out her electric bass and playing funk, R&B or gospel. She’s just as comfortable playing her double bass, working with legendary musicians like Alice Coltrane.
“It was 1986 when I recorded on Mrs. Coltrane’s record. First of all, I think of her as Ravi’s mom. Her son Ravi and I were classmates at Cal Arts. Ravi and Gerry Gibbs were friends. Gerry is the son of Terry Gibbs, the jazz vibraphonist, and he’s a mean drummer. We recorded at the Village Recorder, right over there on Olympic. It’s a well-known recording studio. It was Ravi, Gerry, Mrs. Coltrane and me. Her son, Oran was supposed to do it, but we ended up having a different opportunity to play together later on. He plays guitar.
“I’ve played several times with Mrs. Coltrane and her family. We played at the Red Sea Festival. Through her, I got to meet the bass player, Trevor Ware. She had us both playing with Rashid Ali. We played another event together when Elvin Jones was the drummer. That was a concert at the Ebell Theater. Another opportunity to play with Mr. Jones happened at The World Stage. …I also played there with Cedar Walton and Billy Higgins,” Nedra rambled along, casually naming the legendary musicians she has worked with over the years.
“You know, I happened to be at college looking for gigs and reading the want ads in the back of the local paper, LA Weekly or one of those papers. I was looking for music jobs. I noticed someone was looking for a female bass player and so I called the number. I called that number relentlessly, every day, all day. I left a message every time. It got to the point when they answered, that I would just say, Oh Hi – It’s Nedra. They’d say, Oh – Nedra.
“Finally, I got a call back from, the artist’s manager. He told me, OK, can you come down to Cherokee Studios in Hollywood. That was in 1985. I ended up working for Destiny Productions. That was during the time of LIVE AID.”
This writer flashed back to that Live Aid production. It was a benefit concert and fundraiser held Saturday, July 13, 1985. It was organized to raise funds for relief of the 1983-1985 famine in Ethiopia.
“I told my sister, her name’s Genia, I said Genia I have a recording session with some guy named Bob Dylan. I don’t want to go by myself. Can you come with me. She said, oh – ok. I said, meet me at the studio. So, she comes. When she pulls up, I go out to meet her. Another person pops out the car. I said Genia, who is that? She says oh that’s my neighbor. I said, your neighbor? She said, I don’t know! She just said she was going. Well, I stood there thinking, you’re my sister. How am I going to explain her?
“We go right into the studio. Bob comes in. I introduced myself. He asked me if I had played before a lot of people. I said yeah. He said, A LOT OF PEOPLE? I said does TV count. He said no, television doesn’t count. Cause by that time I was doing those on-camera shows for the hit television series ‘FAME.’
“Anyway, that’s how it happened that I played with Bob Dylan. It was exciting. He had his cigarette stuck in his guitar and was playing in a little, separate room. It was so smokey in there, I was just thinking, God, too much smoke! Luckily, the drummer and I were in another playing room. I thought, Lord, I’m so glad I’m not in there with all that smoke. I played electric bass on that session. We did about three songs. He just started playing. I asked him if there were charts. He said, naw – we don’t have any charts,” Nedra changed her voice to a drawl, trying to mimic Dylan’s tone and I laughed. She continued.
“So, I said to myself, Ok. I’m going to play like I’m in church. People were scurrying around during that whole taping, in and out the studio, bringing in new equipment, going outside, getting more equipment. People walking in and out, running around dragging in cables. It was quite exciting to me. The lovely thing is, I got a royalty check consistently just from doing that one session,” she smiled.
There have been plenty of exciting moments in Nedra’s career, where gigs seemingly fell out the sky at her feet. Like the time she accompanied the great folk artist and trailblazer, Tracy Chapman, of “Fast Car” fame. That came after college.
“Tracy sent me cassette tapes. So, I transcribed everything and I practiced it. Then I get to the rehearsal and she’s playing in a different key. I realized that the tape had sped up on my recorder. I had written all these root transcriptions that didn’t work. So, I was back to what I did when I learned to play at church. I listened to what she was playing, then did what I heard her do. I would add my sensitivity to accompany her voice. I did it on electric bass cause she wanted it on electric. Afterward, she said she would get back to me because she was going on tour to Europe,” Nedra shared the Chapman experience with me.
Like many musicians, Nedra was hustling work, but it was sporadic.
“I needed a job like yesterday. Anyway, Tracy Chapman’s people said they would call me back. Well, that took forever and a day. And I’m waiting, waiting. Unexpectedly, I got a call to teach at Southwest College. They needed a teacher immediately. So, I went, cause it was employment. I took that job and taught that first day. The moment I was driving off of the property, my phone rang. A voice said, Hi, Tracy wants you to do the European tour. But now, I had a teaching job.
“I told them, If you guys want to do anything on a weekend, I’m good Thursday through Monday, I can go anywhere. So that’s how I played with her at the Roxy. It was a wonderful gig, on the weekend. There was a nice write-up on it too. I have the clipping and they mention me in the article.”
In December of 1990, another blessing arrived like a holiday gift. Drummer Fritz Wise recommended her for a gig with the HB Barnum Orchestra at the famed Palladium. To her pleasant surprise, she was backing up the mother of jazz, Ella Fitzgerald.
“We were playing for the boxer, Sugar Ray Leonard’s event. Ms. Fitzgerald called out her iconic song, “A Tisket A Tasket” to the orchestra. Then, let us know to play it in the key of A- flat.”
That experience was so impressive to the young bassist, Nedra even remembered the key Ms. Fitzgerald sang in.
Nedra Wheeler is always looking for new and fresh ways to feature her big, rich bass sound. When her friend and gold-record-winning pianist, Patrice Rushen suggested she put together a bass choir, Nedra embraced the idea. She formed the Nedra Wheeler Bass Choir.
They began playing around town, with arrangements by the late, great James Leary. On one of their concerts, at the Watts Tower Jazz Festival, she used Hakeem Holloway, William Johnson, herself, James Leary and Roberto Miranda. On Occasion, she also worked with the great John Clayton as part of her ensemble. Here’s a snippet of their rehearsal.
“Before I went on tour with the Harper Brothers, before I met them, Gerry Gibbs had called me earlier that year around February or March. It was about 3am in the morning, saying, Nedra, I wrote this great song called Nedra Wheeler. Then, he played it for me over the phone. I said wow, that’s a burner. But it’s 3am Gerry! I’m actually sleep right now. I’m actually half asleep, with the phone next to my ear. But thank you so much. That’s so thoughtful of you to write a song with my whole name as the title.”
“Then he says, you know, there’s this band. It’s the Harper Brothers. You really need to be playing in that group. I’m like, ok. He says, yeah – cuz they’re looking for a bass player. We hung up. Soon after, I actually went on a boat cruise with Gerry in the fall. It had to be in October. It was a gig with him and his dad. That was funny too. We wound up in the middle of a huge storm, with the ship bouncing up and down. It was crazy. But, down the road, just like Gerry predicted, I did tour and play with The Harper Brothers on their world tour. I also made an appearance on their record ‘Artistry’ with saxophonist Javon Jackson.”
Nedra Wheeler is a bassist with a Master of Fine Arts degree from California Institute of the Arts. Somewhere in between her teaching assignments, world tours, recording sessions and television appearances on the “FAME” series, Nedra managed to record the film soundtrack for the “Malcom X” and “Menace to Society” movies. She is often seen performing as the band leader of her own ensembles. Additionally, she’s part of a documentary called “Chickpeas” a film of her concert tour with pianist Milcho Leviev during a tour in Bulgaria.
“I did a tour with Milcho Leviev, Tootie Heath and Karen Briggs. Karen Briggs, the violinist, had invited me to be in their group. It was called “KaTooMi” They made a group name by combining their own names together. ‘Ka’ for Karen, ‘Too’ for Tootie and ‘Mi’ for Milcho. It became KATOOMI. We used to play at this place called The Comeback Inn out by the beach.
“So, I went to Bulgaria, Milcho’s homeland, with Tootie and Karen. We played in the capital, which would be Sofia. We played in his hometown called Plovdiv, and then we went to Barna which is on the coast of the Black Sea. It was great being on the road with all three of them. The tour was fabulous. Milcho arranged “Rhapsody in Blue” and I think we did one of Karen’s compositions. We performed some Duke Ellington tunes to a full house at the Palace of Culture. That was an amazing night.”
Milcho Leviev was a highly acclaimed composer, arranger, pianist, performer and educator of classical and jazz music. In 1995, he received the Honorary Gold Medal of the Academie Internationale des Arts in Paris. He was also awarded an honorary Doctor Honoris Causa by the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in Plovdiv, his native city.
“Then there was a church that they took us to when we arrived. It was amazing and historic. It’s called St. Alexander Neveski Bulgaria Church.”
The photograph Nedra showed me of that beautiful church made me curious. I researched it. Google said it’s a Bulgarian Orthodox Cathedral in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. It was built in the Neo-Byzantine style and serves as the cathedral church of the Patriarch of Bulgaria. It’s one of the largest Christian church buildings, by volume, in the world; a huge tourist attraction. It can hold 5000 worshipers and is among the ten largest Eastern Orthodox Church buildings worldwide.
“Ken Borges (a 24-hour KLON jazz station disc jockey) had interviewed me before I went on tour,” Nedra told me.
“When I got back to the States months later, Ken said, you know Nedra, that tour you did in Bulgaria?
“I said Yeah. Well, your plane was barely in the air when CNN was saying there was unrest in Bulgaria. I thought, oh my GOD, Nedra’s going there. No worries. Thankfully, all went well in Bulgaria.
“My current adventure is with the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, under the direction of. Mr. Chuck Dickerson. It’s special to be under his baton and his guidance. We have several upcoming performances. One is at Rolling Hills United Methodist Church, Saturday, December 20, 2025, at 7pm.
“Meanwhile, I stay busy teaching. I have roughly 65 students at The Watts Towers. I teach the youth after school. On the weekends, I teach the adults. Then I have my online Music Appreciation Class, which I just finished up. It gets very difficult. For example, at the end of October, I had to give a final. Then, I had to grade all the discussions and also grade all of the concert reports. I must schedule time to read my student’s materials. Plus, I go to work every day at the Towers, Tuesday through Saturday,” the busy lady shared her schedule.
Former mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, Nedra Wheeler, Curren Price Jr, Councilman of the 9th District & Rosie Lee Hooks
Nedra Wheeler keeps it moving. Her desire to be the best that she can be, and her determination to teach and inspire others has made Nedra a pillar of strength and creativity in the community and beyond. The world is her oyster, and Nedra is the black pearl glistening in the palm of South Central Los Angeles. This talented woman stands proudly as the bass of her community.
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