David (Roy) Eldridge
Roy Eldridge played professionally since the age of 16 years, first with a touring carnival (where he imitated Coleman Hawkins’ famous tenor saxophone solo in Stampede) and later with the Midwest obscure bands. In 1930, he moved to New York and played in various dance groups in Harlem, including that of Teddy Hill, in 1932, he began a serious study in the style of Louis Armstrong. In 1933, he worked in Pittsburgh and in Baltimore before returning to New York, where his first solo recording in 1935 with Hill immediately attracted attention, later this year, he joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra at the head trumpeter and occasional singer.
In autumn 1936 he formed his own group of eight piece band in Chicago with his brother Joe Eldridge as a saxophonist and arranger, the group broadcast at night, and Eldridge took advantage of his position to save several outstanding extended solos, including Gone and after Wabash Stomp. After a brief period of studying radio engineering in 1938 Eldridge formed ten piece bands, which began the following year began residency in New York at the Arcadia ballroom later to Kelly’s Stable.
At that time, Eldridge has been widely regarded as the jazz trumpet solo remarkable of his time and he began receiving offers of liberal white swing bands. In 1941 he joined Gene Krupa, becoming one of the first black jazz musicians to be accepted as a permanent member of the brass section of a big white band. If Krupa, he recorded with her famous ballad performance of Rockin ‘Chair and became a national celebrity, especially in a new hit, Let Me Off Up Town, with Anita O’Day. When the band broke in 1943 Krupa, Eldridge has played as a freelance and led his own group in New York for a while before taking a position in the Artie Shaw band in 1944. A year later, after several racist incidents have occurred while the band was on tour, he left Shaw to organize a big band of his own. Like most great jazz ensembles at the time, his group was financially unsuccessful, Eldridge and soon returned to small group work. In 1948 he began a long association with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic.
Although in the early 1940s Eldridge had a major role in the jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse in New York, which is then crystallized in bop, he was out of sympathy with this style, and by the late 1940s, its music was considered old. In a crisis of confidence, he moved to Paris in 1950 toured with Benny Goodman. During his years in Paris, he was lionized by the public of French jazz, and made some of his best recordings, including a version of Fireworks duet with Claude Bolling in which both men have reworked ideas shared by Armstrong and Earl Hines to the registration of the same title (1928). After his return to the USA in April 1951, he joined the growing movement of mainstream jazz, performing in small groups, with Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Ella Fitzgerald (1963-5) and, in particular, Coleman Hawkins, with which he made several outstanding albums for Verve. From 1970 until 1980, when he was incapacitated by a stroke, he led a traditional group in Ryan’s in New York. Thereafter, it sometimes plays like a song