Born on the southern fringe of the Caribbean in the tiny nation of Guyana, Muller was eight when he moved to Brooklyn to live with his grandmother in 1964. There, in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, he found a place he describes as magical. “The first night I arrived, I couldn’t sleep, I was so excited. In those days in Bed-Stuy, guys walked around the streets singing doo-wop. Listening to three-, four- part harmony outside my window, it was just like the movies.” Possessing a hungry intellect and a near-photographic memory, he excelled in school but found himself irresistibly drawn to the vibrant local music scene. “Every West Indian mother’s dream is for their kid to be a doctor or scientist, and for me that meant going to Brooklyn Tech. But all my friends were going to [Thomas] Jefferson High School, which is where the music scene was. I had to lie and tell my grandmother that I wasn’t accepted at Tech just so I could get over to Jefferson where the action was!” Here at the famed Brooklyn institute that counted global stars Danny Kaye, Hal David, and Peter Nero as alumni, Muller devoured musical theory with the encouragement of his teachers, who often fed his voracious appetite with extracurricular musical assignments. Since junior high, Muller had been gigging on the local West Indian dance scene with a group of older men in a group called the Panharmonics. Muller remembers them as being somewhat unusual, because they not only had the traditional steel-drum setup, but members also doubled on instruments like the electric bass and, in Muller’s case, flute, enabling them to play hip versions of popular tunes of the day. At many of the gigs, the Panharmonics would be paired with a horn-led band, and it was then that Muller first became fascinated with the power of good brass arrangements, an obsession he would develop into a formidable expertise. “I used to stand there and
fantasize about having a band like that,” he recalls, and it wasn’t long before he did. At Jefferson, he was also playing with a group of friends in an outfit called the Dynamic Souls who had originally assembled after school, let into their junior high building to practice after hours by a sympathetic custodian. Relationships with many of Muller’s future collaborators were solidified at this time, and the group of schoolmates began formulating the sound that would comprise Brass Construction. “The original members were Larry Payton and Wade Williamson [drums and bass], and I played piano.” Muller was a fan of Mongo Santamaria’s big, brassy, soulful charts and tried to emulate those arrangements with his band. His obvious talent caught the eye of more than a few, including the organizers of the state Miss Black America Pageant, and the young man was hired as the music director for the show. “It was great training, since I would have to come up with arrangements on the spot when girls would say they wanted to sing this or that show tune,” he remembers. Around this time, Muller was scouted by none other than Detroit powerhouse Motown. “A lot of people don’t know that Brass Construction had an affiliation with Motown,” he reveals. “They wanted to sign us to the Rare Earth label; we actually auditioned with some Motown songs.” Muller eventually decided against the opportunity. “I even had the contract signed but just never sent it back. They wanted us to change up our sound. They had someone who was going to be the front guy; it was just becoming something totally different.” As Muller’s reputation in Brooklyn grew, the long-distance relationship with Detroit probably didn’t seem as appealing as the things percolating in his own backyard. “I had started working with Jeff Lane, who was much older than me, a sort of
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