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Topic: Clark Terry, Master of Jazz Trumpet, Dies at 94Posted By: snobb
Subject: Clark Terry, Master of Jazz Trumpet, Dies at 94
Date Posted: 23 Feb 2015 at 3:52am
Clark Terry, Master of Jazz Trumpet, Dies at 94
http://clarkterry.com/" rel="nofollow - Clark Terry ,
one of the most popular and influential jazz trumpeters of his
generation and an enthusiastic advocate of jazz education, died on
Saturday in Pine Bluff, Ark. He was 94.
His death was announced by his wife, Gwen.
Mr.
Terry was acclaimed for his impeccable musicianship, loved for his
playful spirit and respected for his adaptability. Although his sound on
both trumpet and the rounder-toned fluegelhorn (which he helped
popularize as a jazz instrument) was highly personal and easily
identifiable, he managed to fit it snugly into a wide range of musical
contexts.
He
was one of the few musicians to have worked with the orchestras of both
Duke Ellington and Count Basie. He was for many years a constant
presence in New York’s recording studios — accompanying singers, sitting
in big-band trumpet sections, providing music for radio and television
commercials. He recorded with Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and other
leading jazz artists as well as his own groups.
He
was also one of the first black musicians to hold a staff position at a
television network and was for many years a mainstay of the “Tonight
Show” band, as well as one of the most high-profile proponents of
teaching jazz at the college level.
His
fellow musicians respected him as an inventive improviser with a
graceful and ebullient style, traces of which can be heard in the
playing of Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis and others. But many listeners
knew him best for the vocal numbers with which he peppered his
performances, a distinctively joyous brand of scat singing in which
noises as well as nonsense syllables took the place of words. It was an
off-the-cuff recording of one such song, released in 1964 under the name
“Mumbles,” that became his signature song.
The
high spirits of “Mumbles” were characteristic of Mr. Terry’s approach:
More than most jazz musicians of his generation, he was unafraid to fool
around. His sense of humor manifested itself in his onstage demeanor as
well as in his penchant for growls, slurs and speechlike effects.
Musicians
and critics saw beyond the clowning and recognized Mr. Terry’s
seriousness of purpose. Stanley Crouch wrote in The Village Voice in
1983 that Mr. Terry “stands as tall in the evolution of his horn as
anyone who has emerged since 1940.”
The
seventh of 11 children, Clark Terry was born into a poor St. Louis
family on Dec. 14, 1920. His mother, the former Mary Scott, died when he
was 6, and within a few years he was working odd jobs to help support
his family. He became interested in music when he heard the husband of
one of his sisters play tuba, and when he was 10 he built himself a
makeshift trumpet by attaching a funnel to a garden hose. Neighbors
later pitched in to buy him a trumpet from a pawnshop.
His
father, Clark Virgil Terry, a gas-company worker, discouraged his
interest in music, fearing that there was no future in it, but he
persisted. He played valve trombone and trumpet in his high school
orchestra and secured his first professional engagement, which paid 75
cents a night, with the help of his tuba-playing brother-in-law.
His
career got off to a bumpy start. After working with local bands like
Dollar Bill and His Small Change, he joined a traveling carnival and
found himself stranded in Hattiesburg, Miss., when it ran out of money.
In
1942 he joined the Navy and was assigned to the band at the Great Lakes
Training Station near Chicago. When the war ended, he returned to St.
Louis and joined a big band led by George Hudson.
“George
put the full weight of the band on me,” he told the jazz historian
Stanley Dance in 1961. “I played all the lead and all the trumpet solos,
rehearsed the band, suggested numbers, routines and everything.”
The
regimen paid off: When the Hudson band played at the Apollo Theater in
Harlem, Mr. Terry’s work was heard by some of the most important people
in jazz, and he soon had offers. He worked briefly with the bands of the
saxophonist Charlie Barnet and the blues singer and saxophonist Eddie
Vinson, among others, before joining Count Basie in 1948. Times were
getting tough for big bands in the postwar years, and Basie reduced his
group from 18 pieces to a septet in 1950, but he https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzuwUHjM7ys" rel="nofollow - retained Mr. Terry . The next year, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgDKyo7iCyA" rel="nofollow - Duke Ellington called.
It
was the opportunity he had been waiting for. Working with Basie, he
would say many times, was a valuable experience, but it was like going
to prep school; his ultimate goal was to enroll in “the University of
Ellingtonia.”
Nonetheless,
after close to a decade with the Ellington band, he decided it was time
to move on. “I wanted to be more of a soloist,” he said, “but it was a
seniority thing. There were about 10 guys ahead of me.”
In
late 1959 he joined a big band being formed by Quincy Jones, who not
that many years earlier, as a youngster, had taken a few trumpet lessons
from him. The original plan was for the band to appear in a stage
musical called “Free and Easy,” with music by Harold Arlen. But the show
folded during a tryout in Paris, and Mr. Terry accepted an offer to
join NBC-TV’s in-house corps of musicians.
The first black musician to land such a job at NBC, he soon became familiar to late-night viewers as a member of the band on “ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AvImcsbt1U" rel="nofollow - The Tonight Show ,”
led for most of his time there by Doc Severinsen. He also led a popular
quintet with the valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and worked as a
sideman with the saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and others.
When
Johnny Carson began his popular “Stump the Band” feature on “The
Tonight Show,” in which members of the studio audience tried to come up
with song titles that no one in the band recognized, Mr. Terry would
often claim to know the song in question and then bluff his way through a
bluesy half-sung, half-mumbled number of his own spontaneous invention.
He
recorded one such joking vocal in 1964, as part of an album he cut with
the pianist Oscar Peterson’s trio. As he recalled it, the song,
released as “ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJuFDvH8wGs" rel="nofollow - Mumbles ,”
was recorded only because the session had gone so smoothly that the
musicians had extra studio time on their hands. Much to his surprise he
found himself with a hit.
When
“The Tonight Show” moved to the West Coast in 1972, Mr. Terry stayed in
New York. Jazz was at something of a low ebb commercially, but he
managed to stay busy both in and out of the studios and even found work
for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7XtoV9Lv7g" rel="nofollow - a 17-piece band
he had formed in 1967. Between 1978 and 1981 he took the band to Asia,
Africa, South America and Europe under the auspices of the State
Department. Most of his concert and nightclub work, though, was as the
leader of a quartet or quintet.
Mr.
Terry also became active in jazz education, appearing at high school
and college clinics, writing jazz instruction books and running a summer
jazz camp. He was an adviser to the International Association of Jazz
Educators and chairman of the academic council of the Thelonious Monk
Institute of Jazz. For many years he was also an adjunct professor at
William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J., to which he donated his
archive of instruments, sheet music, correspondence and memorabilia in
2004.
In addition to his wife, survivors include two stepsons, Gary and Tony Paris.
Mr.
Terry was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 1991
and was given a lifetime achievement award by the Recording Academy in
2010. Diabetes and other health problems forced him to cut down on
touring in the 1990s, but he remained active into the new century. He
appeared in New York nightclubs as recently as 2008, doing more singing
than playing but with his spirit intact.
And
Mr. Terry, who in recent years had been living in Pine Bluff, continued
to be a mentor to young musicians after his performing days were over.
An acclaimed 2014 documentary, “ http://keeponkeepinon.com/" rel="nofollow - Keep On Keepin’ On ,”
directed by Alan Hicks, told the story of his relationship with a
promising young pianist, Justin Kauflin, whom Mr. Terry first taught at
William Paterson, and with whom he continued to work even after being
hospitalized.
“The only way I knew how to keep going,” Mr. Terry wrote in his autobiography, “Clark,” published in 2011, “was to keep going.”
from www.nytimes.com
Replies: Posted By: js
Date Posted: 23 Feb 2015 at 5:00am
Wow, now there is someone who went way back. I'm always surprised to hear some of these guys were still around.
Posted By: Cannonball With Hat
Date Posted: 24 Feb 2015 at 2:24pm