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Buck Clayton

Buck Clayton is an NEA Jazz Master

Buck Clayton first rose to national fame as the lead soloist with the first great Count Basie band that roared out of Kansas City in late fall, 1936. Ironically, while Clayton’s understated, bell-like sound is associated with the hard swinging Kansas City style, he actually spent little time in Kansas City. By the time he arrived at the famed Reno Club, a small dive on 12th Street, Clayton had already led a colorful career as a band leader, ranging from Los Angeles to Shanghai.

Born in Parsons, Kansas, Clayton grew up in a musical family. Clayton’s father, a minister, taught him the basics of music. Picking up the trumpet as a teenager, Clayton performed with the church band, featuring his mother on organ. He first heard the clarion call of jazz during a stopover by the George E. Lee band in Parsons. After high school, Clayton followed his muse to California, where he began his professional career.

In Los Angeles, Clayton joined Charlie Echols' 14-piece band, playing taxi dances and ballrooms. Clayton and other band members soon left Echols to join forces with Broadway producer Earl Dancer and work in movies. When Dancer, a chronic gambler, disappeared with the payroll, Clayton took over leadership of the group. Just 23 years old, Clayton led his new band to China.

In 1934, the Clayton band opened at the palatial Canidrome Ballroom in Shanghai, China, becoming one of the first bands to play the Orient. Madame Chiang Kai- Shek and other celebrities flocked to the Canidrome nightly to sway to a potent mixture of hot jazz and classical music performed by the band, decked out in tails. The Clayton band spent the next two years at the Canidrome, with a short jaunt to Japan. A melee with a former Marine that turned the dance floor into a roiling free-for-all cost Clayton the job at the Canidrome. Unable to find steady work in Shanghai, Clayton and what remained of the band returned to the United States.

Back in the Los Angeles, Clayton reformed the big band and played several seasons at Sebastian’s Cotton Club and Club Araby. In the summer of 1936, Clayton left for New York to join Willie Bryant’s band at the original Cotton Club. On his way east, Clayton stopped off in Kansas City and joined the Basie Band at the Reno Club, replacing Hot Lips Page as star soloist. Clayton’s solo excellence, arrangements and compositions bolstered the national rise of the Basie band. Clayton remained with the Basie band until he was drafted in 1943.

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Album Review

Buck Clayton Legacy Band: Claytonia

Read "Claytonia" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Buck Clayton, an acclaimed trumpet soloist with the Count Basie Orchestra in the late 1930s and early '40s, had lip surgery in 1969 that all but ended his playing career. After setting the trumpet aside for good in 1979, he turned full-time to composing and arranging, and the Buck Clayton Big Band made its debut in 1986 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The year before, he had become friends with British bassist Alyn Shipton who offered words of ...

205
Album Review

Dave Liebman & Bobby Avey: Vienna Dialogues

Read "Vienna Dialogues" reviewed by John Kelman


An album based around music by Mendelssohn, Mahler and other classical composers might sound a little too polite for expressionist saxophonist Dave Liebman. But Vienna Dialogues, a followup to the more in-character Manhattan Dialogues (Zoho, 2005), demonstrates what anyone who has followed his career already knows. Liebman has always been a player who can immerse himself in any setting, capture its essence and still sound completely himself. Vienna Dialogues simply challenges Liebman, in duet with young pianist Bobby Avey, to ...

225
Album Review

The Buck Clayton Swing Band: Buck Clayton Swings the Village

Read "Buck Clayton Swings the Village" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


A bright re-release of Big Band music.

 

Trumpeter and bandleader Buck Clayton was a mainstay of the '30s and '40s big band. Following that, Clayton led every stripe of band for the next 40 years. In the late 1980s, when age prevented Clayton to play his trumpet, he turned his attention to composition and arrangement for a big band. In 1990, Clayton brought his big band to the Village Vanguard for a recital of his compositions, some written only ...

213
Album Review

Buck Clayton Swing Band: Live from Greenwich Village, NYC

Read "Live from Greenwich Village, NYC" reviewed by Jack Bowers


If you’d like an up–to–date example of why the first Golden Age of big–band music in this country was known as the Swing Era, simply insert this wonderful disc, recorded in concert in February 1990, in your CD player and crank up the volume. This is music from the heart, a throwback to those memorable days when Lunceford, McShann, Basie, Goodman, Webb and Ellington helped redefine the boundaries of Jazz and big bands swung like there was no tomorrow. Buck ...

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