Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Clark Terry was born on December 14, 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri. After high school he started his professional career in the early 40s playing in local clubs, and then served as a bandsman in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He influenced both Quincy Jones and Miles Davis, teaching the later while in St. Louis.

Terry’s years with Basie and Ellington in the late 1940s and 1950s established him as a world-class jazz artist, blending the St. Louis tone with contemporary styles.  After leaving Ellington, Clark’s international recognition soared when he became NBC’s first African-American staff musician. He a ten-year member of The Tonight Show band where his unique “mumbling” scat singing became famous when he scored a hit with “Mumbles.”

Terry continued to play with musicians such as J. J. Johnson and Oscar Peterson, and led a popular group with Bob Brookmeyer in the early 1960s. In the 1970s he concentrated on the flugelhorn, performed studio work and teaching at jazz workshops, toured regularly in the 1980s with small groups and performed as the leader of his Big B-A-D Band.

At the behest of Billy Taylor, early in his career he and Milt Hinton bought instruments and gave instruction to young hopefuls and the idea was planted the seed that became Jazz Mobile in Harlem. He toured with the Newport Jazz All Stars and Jazz at the Philharmonic, recorded for the Red Hot + Rhapsody and Red Hot + Indigo albums, composed more than two hundred songs, performed for seven U.S. Presidents, has been both leader and sideman on more than three hundred albums performing with Clifford Brown, Gary Burton, Charlie Byrd, Tadd Dameron, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Lionel Hampton, Paul Gonsalves and Milt Jackson among others, recorded with symphonies and orchestras and established the Clark Terry Archive at William Paterson University.

Swing and bop trumpeter, pioneer of the flugelhorn and educator Clark Terry has received over 250 awards, medals and honors including a NEA Jazz Masters Award, has received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 16 honorary degrees, a knighthood, keys to several cities, the French Order of Arts and Letters and over the course of a seventy year career is the most recorded trumpet player of all time appearing on more than 900 known recording sessions.

Trumpeter, and flugelhorn player Clark Terry passed away from complications from advanced diabetes on February 21, 2015 at the age f 94 in Pine Bluffs, Arkansas.

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