Clark Terry

A legendary trumpeter who played with some of the great St. Louis big bands of the 1940s and '50s, Clark Terry mentored a new generation of stars including Miles Davis and Quincy Jones and was said by Dizzy Gillespie to make "the happiest sound in jazz." Born into a poor family in Missouri, Terry was one of 11 children and couldn't afford trumpet lessons, so instead learned second-hand from the local kids who could. He went on to play in the US Navy band during WWII and gave up a promising career as a boxer to become a sideman in the Count Basie Orchestra, also playing with Duke Ellington on his albums 'Ellington Upton' and 'Sweet Sweet Thunder'. He also led his own groups and recorded acclaimed albums 'Serenade to a Bus Stop' in 1957 and 'Color Changes' in 1960, and his complete mastery of his instrument allowed him to perform the unique party trick of playing flugelhorn in one hand and muted trumpet in the other. He gave informal lessons to a teenage Miles Davis and took him to all-night jam sessions in St. Louis where he was one of the first black musicians to regularly appear on television when he spent ten years as part of the band on NBC's 'The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson'. Going on to feature on over one hundred albums for artists such as Charlie Byrd, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Mann and Dinah Washington, he performed for eight American presidents and was honoured with a host of awards including the National Endowment of Arts Jazz Master Award in 1991 and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. Always passionate about teaching young musicians, the 2014 documentary 'Keep On Keepin' On' made by former student Quincy Jones captured him mentoring blind pianist Justin Kauflin, but he died the following year aged 94.

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