Clark Terry, trumpeter, flugelhorn player, scat singer, and bandleader

Jazz Threads performance date: March 7, 2004

Born 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri

Nickname: "Mumbles"

Getting started: As a child, Terry made a trumpet from a hose, using a kerosene funnel as a mouthpiece. In high school he started on a valve trombone before changing to trumpet. Terry acquired his own instrument when neighbors bought him a trumpet for $12.50 from a local pawnshop.

Education: Watching and listening to other musicians, the University of Ellington (that is, he lived it!)

Career highlights: Terry became known for his command of jazz styles, his technical proficiency on both trumpet and flugelhorn, and his infectious good humor during years in the Navy All Star Jazz Band and then with Charlie Barnet, Charlie Ventura, Eddie Vinson, Count Basie (1948-1951), and Duke Ellington (1951-1959). As the first African-American staff musician at NBC, he was a standout in "The Tonight Show" band for 12 years (1960-1972). Terry has performed with the most brilliant and influential musicians of jazz and has taken part in many seminal recordings of our time. He's had his own groups too: quartets, quintets, Clark Terry's Big B-A-D Band, Clark Terry's Spacemen. Sample his "mumbling" on the recording The Orator ("CT's Sermon"), recorded with James Williams in 1993, and his instrumental "dialogues" with himself on his 1964 album with the Oscar Peterson Trio. Clark Terry was inducted into the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Hall of Fame in 1991. His star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame can be found at 6623 Delmar.

Most recent recording: Friendship: Clark Terry & Max Roach (2003, Eighty-Eights/Columbia Records) "One of those CDs that makes history just by the pairing of its featured artists."

Dedicated to education: Terry has been involved in jazz education since the 1960s. In 1994, he launched a four-year jazz degree program at the Clark Terry International Institute of Jazz Studies at Teikyo Westmar University in LeMars, Iowa. New York's jazz education unit, Jazzmobile, grew out of the Harlem Youth Band started by Clark Terry. In December 1971, the National Association of Jazz Educators called Terry "the world's busiest jazz clinician." In 1985, he was recognized as "An American Man of Music" joining William Warfield, Aaron Copland, and Van Cliburn among others.

Local connection: Local bandleader and radio personality Pete Bridgewater remembered playing gigs here with Terry, whose route north took him from St. Louis, to Peoria, to Champaign before New York. Pete even paid for Terry's first week's rent at the Columbia Hotel on Poplar Street in Champaign.

Clark Terry quote: "I believe that regardless of how many people you've listened to or emulated over the years, your sound is you and what you really feel inside."

Previous Krannert Center performances: May 16, 1970 with National College Jazz Festival; May 14, 1971 with National College Jazz Festival; April 18, 1981 with His New Big B-A-D Band