‘All he wanted to do was play’: Beloved bassist Reggie Dennis dies at 52
Reggie Dennis’ mother knew he had a gift for music from a young age.
When Reggie was a toddler, Theresa Dennis had to keep her son from flipping through the vinyl records she kept in the house: Earth, Wind & Fire, Rick James, Funkadelic.
And when she finally put them on, 5-year-old Reggie could pick out pieces of the songs that Theresa had never noticed herself.
“He would hear all of the instruments and recognize them,” she said. “He would hear things that I didn’t hear, that ordinary people didn’t hear.”
Reggie Dennis was many things over the course of his life in Charlotte: an artist, a mentor, a bandmate, a friend.
But first and foremost, Dennis was a lover of music. It was the thread running through the course of his life, what he lived and breathed.
“It was his life’s ambition,” said Letron Brantley, leader and saxophone player for Jazz Revolution, the band for which Dennis played bass guitar. “All he wanted to do was play.”
Reginald “Reggie” Lee Dennis died Feb. 3, 2022 at his home in Charlotte. He was 52. He is survived by his mother as well as several friends and family members.
‘He could make friends with anybody’
Theresa Dennis bought her son his first guitar from a J.C. Penney catalog when he was about 8 or 9.
He took quickly to the instrument, though not as easily to lessons. Too impatient for scales or simple exercises, Dennis was primarily self-taught and played by ear.
He eventually learned to read sheet music from classes at Central Piedmont Community College and bought his first bass guitar from a pawn shop. As a teen, he worked as a roadie for local jazz legend Johnny Holloway, who became a mentor.
Dennis met Brantley in 2008, after Brantley had started Jazz Revolution and was looking for a bassist. He was impressed by Dennis’ talent and humility.
“Musicians, they can be pretty arrogant,” Brantley said. “He was very humble, but also very good.”
Dennis joined the band, a Charlotte-based ensemble that performed jazz and soul music in the city and throughout the South. He had a unique way of playing — using only two fingers on the neck of his bass instead of four — that spoke to his level of talent, Brantley said.
But it was his easygoing spirit, coupled with his technical brilliance, that helped him become a fixture of Charlotte’s tight-knit music community, Brantley said.
“He could make friends with anybody,” Brantley said. He was always the type to encourage younger musicians and support other artists, he said.
His impact reached further than even he knew. Both Brantley and Theresa Dennis said they were taken aback by the outpouring of messages they received following Dennis’ death: musicians they hadn’t even known Reggie had met.
“I knew he knew a lot of people. I didn’t know how much,” Brantley said.
A ‘walking encyclopedia’
Dennis was a reliable bandmate who always knew how to ease the tension or get a laugh in rehearsal, Brantley said. But he was also an excellent friend: reliable, thoughtful and never the type to hold a grudge. Dennis was the type to text you out of the blue, hoping to make you smile.
Every Sunday he visited his mother after church to watch television and have dinner. His specialty was turkey meatloaf – though his cooking wasn’t quite as good as his bass playing — and he always arrived with a bottle of Mountain Dew in hand.
He also worked for a local drug store chain for 25 years, his mother said.
But mostly, he lived and breathed music. He fascinated people with his ability to recall the tiniest details about a song, style or artist, Brantley said.
“He was just a walking encyclopedia of musical knowledge,” he said. You could hum a tune and he could name the band, track name and the year it was recorded,” he said.
Dennis didn’t drive, so Brantley would sometimes give him a ride to gigs. In the car, they’d obsess over mid-century jazz, pulling up YouTube videos of particular artists as they talked.
Dennis didn’t limit himself to one genre, Brantley said. He had a knack for embracing different musical styles, though if he had to describe Dennis’ playing in a few words it’d be “just funky.”
He was, to put it simply, a natural. “A lot of people referred to him as a musical genius,” his mother said.
But for Dennis, it was never about impressing others.
“Music was his love,” Theresa Dennis said. “He built a life around doing what he loved.”
A public celebration of life for Reggie Dennis will be held Saturday, Feb. 19, at 11 a.m. at Long & Son Mortuary Chapel on Beatties Ford Road.
