Roy Eldridge, Snooky Young, Clark Terry, and Harry Edison
Jazz mythology rightly honors places like Mahogany Hall in New Orleans, the Lincoln Gardens in Chicago, the Sunset Cafe in Kansas City, the Bluebird in Detroit, and Minton’s in New York as sites where the most epochal moments in the music’s history took place. But as these clips attest, settings don’t necessarily make the music. Here are the trumpet kings Roy Eldridge, Snooky Young, Clark Terry, and Harry “Sweets” Edison burnishing the gold at Disney World, on the Tonight Show, and on the Cote d’Azur.
Roy “Little Jazz” Eldridge played an extended engagement at Disney World’s Village Jazz Lounge in the mid-’70’s. His band included Joe Muryani, clarinet, Bobby Pratt, trombone, Johnny Morris, piano, Ted Sturgis, bass, and Eddie Locke, drums. Here’s Roy singing the Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson jump blues classic about the gal who “Ain’t the caviar kind, just plain old Kidney Stew.”
Snooky Young, who’d played first chair trumpet with Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton before spending 25 years with the Tonight Show band, was still in his teens when he joined Lunceford’s orchestra in 1939. “Tain’t What You Do” was originally sung by the band’s trombonist Trummy Young, and was a big hit for Lunceford.
Young worked with Doc Severinsen between 1967 and ’92, and was a charter member of both the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis and Clayton-Hamilton orchestras. Here he is on a band led by his former Basie colleague Frank Wess playing a cup mute on “L’il Darlin’.”
Clark Terry spent a decade with the Tonight Show band when it was based in New York in the ’60’s. He was the first African American to be employed as a staff musician by NBC. After leaving the Tonight Show, which is where he conceived his “Mumbles” singing routine, he made occasional guest appearances as featured soloist with the band. Here he plays two tunes identified with his earlier bosses, Count Basie (“Basie “Power”), and Duke Ellington (“Just Squeeze Me”).
Harry “Sweets” Edison plays open horn on “In a Mellow Tone.” The Ellington jam session standard was here played at the 1982 Nice Jazz Festival, where the band included Illinois Jacquet, Curtis Fuller, Jay McShann, Eddie Jones, and Shelly Manne. Unlike these other trumpet kings, I never knew Sweets to sing, but his obbligati highlighted many fine records by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday.