Buck Clayton was born Wilbur Dorsey Clayton in Parsons, Kansas on November 12, 1911 and played piano when he was six years old, switching to trumpet from the age of seventeen, being trained by Bob Russell of George E. Lee’s band and  Mutt Carey, who would later emerged as a prominent west-coast revivalist in the 1940s.

In his early twenties Buck was based in Los Angeles, California, was briefly a member of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and worked with other leaders. He later formed a…