By Tony Jones
Memphis-bred jazz trumpeter Freddie Jones has been the Dallas Cowboys’ National Anthem player for the past decade. The Cowboys have a huge fan base in the black community here, so the fun fact should add some cool fuel to the Cowboys-Steelers debate that’s always going on around here, escalated once again with the start of the 2023 NFL season.
Due to broadcast stipulations, Jones’s every appearance is not televised, but die hard Cowboys fans have probably seen him and his signature navy blue trumpet several times. Youtube has a great rendition here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUAPspNL4II&t=11s
Disclosure, Jones is the author’s elder brother and seeing him onscreen definitively honored our parents, and certainly made up all the torturous hours of practice we all had to endure while he learned to play the darn thing.
And there’s a great funny story I can share with you. Remember Sly and the Family Stone’s big hit “Sing A Simple Song” from their eponymous “Stand” album? The first time I heard it was the dozens of time Freddie and his band Featherstone rehearsed it in the basement, so when the song hit the radio I went rushing off to school proclaiming “we” had a hit record. I think I was in 6th grade at Longview Jr. High. He and Linda Faye were at Southside, so I didn’t get to see them much and subsequently, didn’t have the time to fact check before I put my foot in my mouth all over school one morning. Of course I was spit roasted at the lunch table that day.
Like many of the city’s musicians, elder brother ruefully had to leave Memphis after Stax was shut down. Featherstone had become a headline band on the city’s hot combo scene but were a long way from any chance at their own hit records, so he eventually made it to Dallas, got married, developed into a music teacher and a respected jazz musician and band leader.
The gig with the Cowboys came at the behest of the local musician’s union and he’s held the spot ever since. “I didn’t think I would get the gig first of all. I was in there laughing, thinking, wow, I’m the only brother here,” he humorously told a sports reporter on CBS’s Dallas affiliate.
Decades on stage steeled him for that crucial first time. “I’m playing to a lot of people and I’m trying not to be aware of that, I’m trying to be aware of playing the music. I have to at the stadium two hours before the sound check and then just go and relax until the start of the game. That keeps me on top of my own game because I can pay more attention to the music.”
The Cowboys spotlight has created other great gigs, including his sixth time at the classic car hallmark Mecum Auctions, (in Dallas this weekend Sept. 20-23).
The biggest benefit of it all has been helping him to create the Trumpets4Kids.com non-profit to share his gift with future generations. Part of the requirement for kids that receive a free trumpet is a minimum of one hour per day playing those painful scales that plagued, yet gifted our household with diligence is and it’s been a joy for him. Once, “We took a group of kids and were allowed to take them on the field. Me, the kids and my handler for the team at that time. We’re the only ones that have been allowed to do that.”
And yes, he’s met Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. “I had met him before I got hired. He had come to a club I was playing in Dallas, Terrilli’s Restaurant. The guy I replaced was playing at Greenville Nightclub right next door. Tommy Loy. It’s really hip to be walking in his shoes.”
