Like father, like son: following in the footsteps of fame

Ebony, Feb, 1993 by Laura B. Randolph

He will never forget the night. Not ever. After weeks of campaigning, weeks of pounding the pavement to take his case to the people, election night had finally arrived. At his campaign headquarters in downtown Richmond, all eyes were glued to the TV as the news anchors recited the latest voter tallies and, with them, their predictions of the night's winners and losers.

Only the recurrent ringing of a telephone--L. Douglas Wilder calling for an up-to-the-second update--shattered the soft hum of conversation: How was he doing? Wilder wanted to know. How much of the vote was in? How much longer before a victor would be declared?

By 7 o'clock Wilder had his answer. The polls were closed and the wait was finally, mercifully, over. It was official. Wilder was the people's choice. He'd done it. He'd won.

Not the governorship of Virginia. That election was history--literally. The victory Gov. Wilder was savoring this time was, in some ways, far sweeter than his own. For this victory was his son's. His namesake's. This victory belonged to L. Douglas Wilder Jr. who, in May 1992, became a member of the Virginia legislature--the very place where, more than two decades earlier, his father had begun his own historic political career.

"I was with my father the night he was elected governor by less than one-half of 1 percent," recalls 30-year-old L. Douglas Wilder Jr., who, like his father, is also an attorney. "You talk about a nail biter. My nerves were shot. My father, however, was the calmest person in the room. But here's the irony. The night of my election, he told me he was more nervous than he had ever been. That has always stood out in my mind."

What surely stood out in the governor's mind a week later, as he watched his son take the oath of office, was that mysterious yet undeniable truth that other notable fathers have also come to see in offspring who excel in the same calling: the son also rises.

It was, for example, noted educator and jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis who sparked, shaped and nurtured the musical interest and talent of his internationally famous son, Wynton.

"When I was just a kid, he used to take me to all the gigs with him," the 30-year-old jazz trumpeter says of his father, who not only heads the department of jazz studies at the University of New Orleans, but also recently released his own album, Heart of Gold, on Columbia Records. "I used to love hanging out with him."

Shockingly, however, he says he hated the music. "It was just too complex for me," says Wynton, who used to keep the books for his father's band. "I liked what was on the radio and that's not what they were playing."

That the most celebrated jazz trumpeter of this generation would find anything about music in general and jazz in particular perplexing is almost incomprehensible. And though Wynton credits his father with showing him how to understand the intricacies of the music he once found so complex ("My Dad has always been a person who stressed how to look deeper into the meaning of things through scholarship"), the elder Marsalis is intensely modest about his role in developing the mammoth musical talent of four of his six sons: Wynton, whose eight Grammys speak for themselves; Branford, who recently made history by becoming the leader of the Tonight Show band; Delfeayo, who composed and produced several cuts on Heart of Gold; and 16-year-old Jason, whose drumming is showcased on his father's

"All I did was make sure they had the best so they could be the best," says the patriarch of the first family of jazz. "They did the rest."

Not exactly, says Wynton. The truth, he says, is that while he is accorded the honors and the glory, his father is still guiding his way. Just recently for example, he was writing a ballet for the New York City Ballet. He wanted to compose a song using elements of three others from the early 1900s but, because he didn't know the melodies, he couldn't make the song come together.

"I called my father and he just wrote out all of the songs," says Wynton, the amazement still ringing in his voice. "He's like a library of information I can always call on."

Count on, too, say these celebrated sons. "If there is one thing I know in this world, it's that my father will always be there for me no matter what," says recording star Gerald Levert of his father, Eddie Levert, who has been the lead singer of the legendary O'Jays for more than three decades. "Unlike a lot of other people, I know my father doesn't want anything from me or for me except to be the best."

By Gerald's own admission, however, that knowledge was a long time coming. "I've been singing since the age of 11," explains Gerald, lead singer of the R&B trio, Levert, whose three gold albums and six No. 1 hits introduced the 26-year-old singer to stardom almost from the day in 1985 he formed the group with his younger brother, Sean, and grade school buddy Marc Gordon.

"I used to beg my father to take my tapes to the record companies and get me a deal. His answer was always the same: not until you learn the whole business--writing, producing, and management."