Today’s the birthday of Jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge. Eldridge was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and originally played drums, trumpet and tuba. He led bands from his early years, moving to St. Louis, and then to New York. Eldridge played in various bands in New York in the early 1930s, as well as making records and radio broadcasts under his own name. His rhythmic power to swing a band was a dynamic trademark of the jazz of the time. It has been said that “from the mid-Thirties onwards, he had superseded Louis Armstrong as the exemplar of modern ‘hot’ trumpet playing.”
Eldridge was very versatile on his horn, not only quick and articulate with the low to middle registers, but the high registers as well. The high register lines that Eldridge employed were one of many prominent features of his playing, another being blasts of rapid double time notes followed by a return to standard time. These stylistic points were heavy influences on Dizzy Gillespie.
In 1941 Eldridge joined Gene Krupa’s Orchestra. He also dueted with Anita O’Day on a song which became a novelty hit, then joined Artie Shaw’s band.
Although in the early 1940s Eldridge had taken a leading part in the jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse in New York, which later developed into bebop, his music was considered old-fashioned. He moved to Paris in 1950 while on tour with Benny Goodman. During his year in Paris he made some of his finest recordings, including a version of Fireworks in a duo with Claude Bolling in which the two men reworked the ideas shared by Armstrong and Earl Hines in their recording of the same title (1928). After returning to the USA in April 1951 he joined the burgeoning mainstream jazz movement, performing in small groups with Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Ella Fitzgerald (1963-5), and, notably, Coleman Hawkins, with whom he made several outstanding albums for Verve.
From 1970 until 1980, when he was incapacitated by a stroke, he led a traditional group at Ryan’s in New York. Thereafter he performed occasionally as a singer, drummer, and pianist. Roy died in 1989.
Listen for a great Roy Eldridge solo tonight on Cafe Jazz!
