Famous musician George Bruns

Famous musician George Bruns rose to the top;

George Bruns began playing piano at age six, taught by a man who had studied under the

famous French composer Claude Debussy.

We may not know who taught George to play the tuba as a pre-teen, but he was talented

enough then that he was invited to play with the Sandy High School band while he was just a seventh

grader at Sandy Grade School.

George was gifted with absolute pitch (AP), also called perfect pitch, a rare sensorimotor ability

that enables a person to recognize and reproduce a note without accompaniment. Wikipedia

estimated AP occurrence to be 1 in 10,000 people, but is perhaps closer to 4% among music

students. George had it, and he loved to practice.

Sometimes he would walk not far from his family’s house to a beautiful spot and dream of

someday building his own house there.

He learned to play any of the brass instruments and was a state champion in the euphonium in

high school. Other students looked up to him, and he sparked their interest in the new music that

emerged in the 1930s. It was a form of jazz called “swing music” which lasted about 25 years before

rock music became popular.

About five years younger, Phil Jonsrud often visited George and his two younger brothers at

the Bruns home. George, his friend Hugh Guthrie, and other friends would huddle around an old

Atwater Kent radio, listening to Duke Ellington, Glen Gray, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and other

dance bands playing at the time.

“We really fell for it like the kids did later for rock. I idolized George for his musical ability,”

Jonsrud stated.

The Bruns family had lived in the Sandy area ever since George’s grandparents joined the

early wave of pioneers to travel the Barlow Road over the pass in 1868. His father, Ed Bruns, was the

first mayor of the town of Sandy.

The fathers of George and Phil partnered in a sawmill during the Depression days of the

1930s. George worked there several summers handling heavy lumber and running the “pony saw,”

which he said was hard on his fingers. But he never complained and would practice on the piano for

several hours every evening at the Bruns' home. They never minded the noise.

He went to Oregon State in Corvallis to study engineering and soon became very involved in

playing in bands and doing gigs. He started out with the Jim Dierickx Band playing string bass at

Rockaway Beach in the summer of 1934.

One time in about the mid-1930s, several friends went into Portland to attend a radio show

where Kenny Allen and his Blue Flame Revue (sponsored by the gas company) were broadcasting

from the Multnomah Hotel. George played string bass with this band but they featured him on a

number where he took a chorus on piano, then switched to tuba, trombone, trumpet, and alto

saxophone.

George later played with the Sterling Young, Paul Pendarvis, Harry Owens, Jack T eagarden,

and T ennessee Ernie Ford bands.

Most of the big-time musicians knew George. He was a friend of Monte Ballou, a famous

Portland Dixieland musician. They both played in the old Castle Jazz Band in Portland. Doc

Severinson from Arlington, Oregon, who became a well-known band leader on the Johnny Carson TVshow, started out as a teenager with a band George had in Portland in the early days.

He directed the musical background for a Frank Sinatra show in Vancouver one time, which

was impressive because Sinatra was known to be very particular.

Bruns was the musical director for KEX radio for a time but decided to move to California in

1949 where there were more opportunities for him.

Walt Disney learned of his skill and personally hired him in 1952 because he wanted to adapt

the musical sound of Pyotr Ilyich T chaikovsky for a new film in the works. Bruns was well-practiced in

arranging, adapting, and T chaikovsky’s work, and was a good fit for the assignment.

Eventually, Bruns advanced to be Musical Director for Walt Disney Productions, where he

enjoyed a long career. When one thinks of the almost constant background music in the movies, it is

an important job.

He arranged music for more than 200 pictures, documentaries, shows for television, cartoons,

and more than 100 commercials. His work for Disney films included titles like One Hundred and One

Dalmatians, Aristocats, Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan, Sword in the Stone, Jungle Book, Robin

Hood, The Love Bug, The Absent-Minded Professor, Babes in T oyland, Herbie Rides Again, multiple

films of Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan, Westward Ho the Wagons, The Story of Donald Duck, Son of

Flubber, and many others.

He is perhaps most remembered for the hit tune “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” which swept

the country after being introduced on ABC’s television series “Disneyland” on October 27, 1954.

Some sources reported that ten million copies were sold.

In his later years he “moonlighted” playing his favorite trombone with some Dixieland groups in

Los Angeles.

George Bruns was one of the first people to be included in the Sandy High Hall of Fame

started by Charles Frasier to honor students with achievements of national significance. His brother

Robert “Bob” Bruns was later added for his contributions as an electrical engineer, college professor,

and author, and for his involvement in the planning of the astronauts’ successful trip to the moon.

George finally was able to realize his longtime dream of building a house for his family here.

He longed for a simpler life where he could write another kind of music. During the first three years of

building, Bruns commuted from work to Sandy for construction on the house while the family

remained in California. Later, he moved his wife Dorothy, son Ozzie, and daughters Gigi and Gussie

to Oregon and enrolled the children in school in Sandy. He commuted by airplane to work in

California before retirement.

He had helped with multiple parts of the six-year house construction including framing, laying

floors, putting in tile, building cabinets, and other work. A music room was included where he could

write music and practice.

Inspired by the foothills, misty fog, colors, and crags of the mountain he could see, Bruns felt

compelled to describe them in music. He began to write a symphony suite.

For several years Bruns also enjoyed helping the community and playing trombone with a

Dixieland group at the Sandy Mountain Festivals but, plagued with diabetes, died much too soon in

1983.

Information gathered from historian Phil Jonsrud’s books, copyright Sandy Historical Society, Inc., Wikipedia, and from Steve Finegan’s

feature in The Oregonian, November 16, 1976, C1.