Trumpeter Ghandi Burgess was one of Bermuda’s best-loved and most gifted jazz musicians.
A child prodigy who played the saxophone, flute and trombone as well as his first love, the trumpet, he performed with top entertainers such as Ben E. King, Nina Simone, Arthur Prysock and Lionel Hampton when they played at the island’s top hotels and nightclubs and also backed star acts like the Temptations, the Platters, Mel Tormé and Frankie Avalon.
Born and raised in St. David’s, he was the youngest of six children born to Edward, a ship’s pilot who died when Burgess was four, and Alice Burgess.
He was adopted by Alice’s second husband, Mark Williams, an influential bandleader, music teacher, founder member of the Bermuda Amateur Symphony and a military man who served in France during the First World War.
He began tutoring Burgess when he was eight and, recognising his outstanding talent, sent him to study with a British Army officer, Corporal Edwards, a bandleader who was stationed at Prospect, Devonshire.
Burgess was just 11 when he first played professionally, as first position trumpeter with Al Davis’ Orchestra at Belmont Manor. A top musician who played tenor sax, Davis had also taken Burgess under his wing.
When he was 13, he left Bermuda on the Monarch of Bermuda in 1939 to study teaching and performing at the prestigious New York School of Music. While in the United States, he was one of the weekly winners on the then hugely popular Major Bowes Amateur Hour radio talent contest.
Back in Bermuda with a music diploma, he began his professional career. He became a regular fixture on the island’s live music circuit, with regular gigs at the Inverurie Hotel, Belmont, Angel’s Grotto and Elbow Beach Hotel, often playing three venues in one night.
Among the bands he played with over the years were Mark Williams’ Royal Bermudians, Al Davis’, calypsonian Kingsley Swan’s, the Abbey Albert Orchestra— Forty Thieves’ house band—the Bermuda Clouds of Joy and the Somers Isles Jazz Band.
Burgess was famously offered but turned down recording contracts by top US labels such as Columbia Records, Decca and Blue Note, because he did not want to leave his family.
He also earned a Special Mention in the “outstanding jazz trumpeter” category in leading American jazz magazine Downbeat.
Of all the name acts with whom he performed, Burgess spoke most memorably of an hour-long jam session with saxophonist Dexter Gordon. And he counted singer Arthur Prysock as a friend.
He prided himself on being able to jam with the best musicians in the world, and always come out on top, never allowing another soloist to “cut in” on his territory. He was blessed with what he called “large ears” that enabled him to pick up any tune, often after just one hearing, and a distinctive tone that was as expressive as any vocalist.
The nickname “Ghandi” came from his elder brother who always wore white suits when he went out socializing, and because he was brown skinned with straight black hair, people called him “Ghandi”, after Mahatma Gandhi. He often took Burgess along, who was referred to as “Little Ghandi”, and when he started playing music, the “Little” was dropped and “Ghandi” stuck.
In his early career, he was also known as “Puffy” because, as he once admitted: “…I was big around as I was tall. I was a very sinful person all my life and my sin was that I was a glutton. I love food and I have an insatiable appetite…”
Burgess was also passionate about helping young people and took a number of musicians under his wing, including Wendell “Shine” Hayward, Milton Marsh Jr., Lloyd Williams and Max Maybury.
He helped establish a music department at the old Devonshire Academy where he directed several musicals, including a successful production of The Wiz, but later criticised the school for not giving enough support to the students. He frequently played free concerts for seniors and the mentally handicapped and also ran other music schools in Hamilton and Flatts.
As president of the Island’s musicians union, the Bermuda Federation of Musicians and Variety Artistes, he played a key role in securing agreements to allow Bermudians to work in the entertainment industry overseas.
He was the first Bermudian to be appointed musical director of a cruise ship when he was named to the position on the Eastern Steamship Line’s New Bahama Star out of Miami.
During the golden age for live music in Bermuda (from the early 1950s to late 1970s), when top name acts appeared regularly at the island’s venues, Burgess was musical director at Terry Brannon’s Forty Thieves Night Club on Front Street for nine years and later spent 12 years as Musical Director at the Southampton Princess Hotel.
He famously lived full-time at the hotel in a lavish $350-a-day suite at the Southampton Princess with free food, maid and laundry service as perks. “I lived better than the guests,” he told The Royal Gazette in a 1999 interview, later saying that working in the hotel’s Empire Room had been “the greatest job in the world”.
Offstage, Burgess was an accomplished, big-hitting cricket player and a keen golfer. He was also an outspoken advocate for independence and social justice and twice stood unsuccessfully as parliamentary candidate for the then opposition Progressive Labour Party.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, Burgess was actively involved in the movement to end racial segregation and, with other musicians, would often play for free at rallies in between speeches by leaders such as Dr. E. F. Gordon and Dr. Eustace Cann.
Revered by his fellow musicians—Dr. Drummond Wolf, conductor of the Bermuda Philharmonic Orchestra wrote a trumpet concerto in his honour—he was honoured in May 1993 with All That Jazz, a tribute concert in Victoria Park by the island’s top musicians. Burgess played with the Heritage All-Stars at the event, during which he received a special citation from the Corporation of Hamilton, recognising his contribution to Bermuda music.
In 1986, he received the Queen’s Certificate and Badge of Honour. He was honoured by the Bermuda Arts Council with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, and in 2008 was the first musician inducted into the Bermuda Music Hall of Fame.
Burgess was married twice and had 14 children. He had 11 children with his first wife, the former Grace Stovell, and a further three with second wife, the former, Shirley Peets, from whom he also inherited a stepdaughter.
He died at age 84 after a long illness.
