Buck Clayton is most famous today for his association with Count Basie but that is only a small part of his musical legacy, a seven-year period in a career that lasted nearly six decades. A very good swing trumpeter and a skilled arranger-composer, Clayton was influenced (as were nearly all trumpeters of his generation) by Louis Armstrong. He always had his own distinctive sound and was most inspired by Armstrong in the way that he could make a complete statement (often with a beginning, middle, and end) even when only allocated eight bars.
Wilbur “Buck” Clayton was born on Nov. 12, 1911 in Parsons, Kansas. He began on the piano when he was six, taught by his father, a minister who also played tuba. The elder Clayton’s church orchestra rehearsed regularly at their home and generally stored their instruments there. Buck had the opportunity to try out several horns including the trumpet. However he stuck to the piano, playing in a kid’s band, and not seriously picking up the trumpet until he was 18. Mostly self-taught, he developed pretty quickly once he committed himself to the instrument.
After graduating from high school in 1930, Clayton moved to California, working day jobs while practicing the trumpet at night. Soon he was strong enough to play music fulltime. He worked with a variety of local bands that are now long forgotten including ones led by the Irwing Brothers, Duke Ellighew, Lavern Floyd, Charlie Echols and Earl Dancer, contributing some arrangements in addition to playing trumpet. He also gigged briefly with Duke Ellington and led his own orchestra which was called the 14 Gentlemen From Harlem.
Pianist Teddy Weatherford visited Los Angeles in 1934 with the mission of finding an orchestra that he could take to China. He was impressed by Clayton’s outfit and they were hired. Soon the trumpeter from Kansas was making very good money leading his big band in Shanghai at the Canidrome Ballroom. Unfortunately Clayton’s orchestra never recorded and one can only speculate what they sounded like but they apparently went over quite well. This was a happy period for him and it only ended when the upcoming war with Japan resulted in Clayton and his musicians leaving China in 1937, just ten days before the Japanese invaded.
Right before his departure, Buck Clayton accepted an offer to join Willie Bryant’s band in New York. While traveling east, he stopped in Kansas to visit his mother and then went to Kansas City to check out the local music scene. His timing was perfect. Count Basie had recently lost his trumpet soloist Hot Lips Page who had been persuaded by his new manager Joe Glaser to form his own band in New York. Clayton enjoyed the swinging, riff-filled and often blues-oriented music that Basie and his Kansas City-based big band were playing and joined them just in time for them to be discovered by the young producer John Hammond. Basie was persuaded by Hammond to take his band east and, after a little bit of struggling, his orchestra became so popular that it was recognized as the definitive swing institution. Clayton was one of Basie’s top highlight, even after trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison joined in 1938 and shared the solo space.
Clayton made his recording debut on Jan. 21, 1937 with the Basie big band. During this period he often utilized a cup mute that softened his sound. While that gave him a particularly attractive tone, it sometimes resulted in listeners underrating his technique. They were eventually surprised to find that Clayton could also hit some impressive high notes. He took particularly rewarding recorded solos with the Basie Big Band on such recordings as (Swinging at the Daisy Chain), (Good Morning Blues), (Topsy), the original version of (Jumpin’ At the Woodside), the first two recordings of (One O’Clock Jump), (Swinging The Blues), (Sent For You Yesterday), and his showcase (Fiesta In Blue). In addition to writing arrangements for Basie and other swing bands (including Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington), Clayton composed such tunes for the Basie orchestra as (Red Bank Boogie), (Taps Miller), (Avenue C), (Love Jumped Out), (Down For Double), and (It’s Sand, Man).
Buck Clayton also had an opportunity during this era to be a welcome guest on record dates with Billie Holiday during 1937-39 that also featured tenor-saxophonist Lester Young. Among the gems that he contributed to were (This Year’s Kisses), (I Must Have That Man), (Mean To Me), (Without Your Love), and (Why Was I Born). In addition, Clayton was a guest at Benny Goodman’s famous 1938 Carnegie Hall concert (jamming on Honeysuckle Rose) and recorded with combos drawn from the Basie Orchestra (the Kansas City Five, Six and Seven). An indispensable part of the Count Basie Orchestra, Clayton can be seen playing a solo on (One O’Clock Band) with the band in the 1943 movie Reveille With Beverly.
The glory years with Count Basie ended in Nov. 1943 when the 32-year old trumpeter was drafted. But unlike Lester Young whose period in the Army was traumatic, Clayton was very fortunate. He spent much of the next three years playing music in service bands headed by Sy Oliver and Mercer Ellington.
He was even lucky enough to be stationed in New York and able to get away temporarily to make a record date apiece with the Kansas City Seven, Coleman Hawkins, the Esquire All-Stars, Horace Henderson, Trummy Young, Freddie Green, Don Byas, Ike Quebec, Teddy Wilson, Charlie Ventura, J.C. Heard, and Hot Lips Page, plus a V-Disc session with the Count Basie Orchestra, and a four-song session of his own. Most interesting is a date led by pianist Sir Charles Thompson on Sept. 4, 1945 that had Clayton in a septet with a group that included altoist Charlie Parker and tenor-saxophonist Dexter Gordon. The trumpeter fit right in with the modernists, helped by the fact that Thompson played in a style that was similar to Count Basie’s.
When he was honorably discharged from the military in early 1946, Buck Clayton could have rejoined the Basie Orchestra. Instead, he decided to freelance and play with small groups. He went on a few tours with Norman Granz’s Jazz At The Philharmonic, playing alongside Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet and Billie Holiday while showing that he indeed could hit impressive high notes. He led two record sessions and during 1946-47 was featured on dates led by Teddy Wilson, Benny Carter, Trummy Young, and Helen Humes, in addition to an all-star session with Esquire’s All-American 1946 Award Winners.
The swing era was ending and the top soloists from the big bands found that small-group swing was declining in popularity in favor of bebop, rhythm & blues, and Dixieland. Clayton was still in his mid-thirties and was certainly not an aging veteran. He fought the trend by increasing his versatility, being open to new opportunities, learning the Dixieland repertoire, contributing arrangements to some of the remaining big bands, and taking some unlikely studio assignments including playing semi-anonymously in studio orchestras behind a variety of singers; best-known were Dinah Washington, Frankie Laine, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong (for two numbers).
In 1949, Clayton visited Europe for the first time, recording several sessions in France including ones with Earl Hines and Willie “The Lion” Smith. In 1951 he appeared at the Ember’s in New York for a period with pianist Joe Bushkin and in 1953 he toured Europe extensively with Mezz Mezzrow, resulting in several record dates. In the U.S. Clayton continued accompanying a variety of singers (including Titus Turner, Fluffy Hunter, Ace Harris, and Billy Daniels), took Dixieland gigs, and had occasional opportunities to record small-group swing including a Paul Quinichette session in 1952 with guest pianist and organist Count Basie.
When one realizes that Clayton’s swing style was considered out of vogue in the United States during a period when the pacesetting trumpeters were Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown and Chet Baker, what happened next was very surprising. John Hammond persuaded the Columbia label to take advantage of the extended playing time of 12-inch LPs (which were gradually replacing 78s and 10-inch LPs) to record lengthy performances of swing standards by all-star groups filled with veterans. Hammond correctly thought that Buck Clayton would be the perfect musician to be the leader so the Buck Clayton Jam Sessions were born.
Recorded at six sessions during 1953-56 and generally featuring medium-size groups of 10-12 pieces, the Buck Clayton Jam Sessions (which many years later were fully reissued as a limited-edition Mosaic eight-CD box set) helped launch a revival of small-group swing that helped the careers of many players who had been struggling to play the music they loved. Soon after the albums proved successful, jazz critic Stanley Dance started calling the music (swinging jazz that fell between bebop and Dixieland) “Mainstream,” a name that stuck and perfectly fit the playing of Buck Clayton and many of his contemporaries.
While the Jam Session recordings were quite popular, they were far from the only activities that Buck Clayton was involved with during that era. He appeared as part of the Benny Goodman Orchestra in the 1955 film The Benny Goodman Story (although he had no lines), played with Sidney Bechet at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, and occasionally worked and recorded with Eddie Condon during 1959-64.
Clayton also recorded as a leader on other non-jam session recordings, worked with fellow swing era veterans (including Goodman, Jimmy Rushing, Buddy Tate, Billie Holiday, and Vic Dickenson), and started a friendship with the British trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton that resulted in several collaborations in England.
Buck Clayton led a Count Basie reunion band that toured Europe in 1961, appearing at concerts and on television. A very valuable videotape released by Shanachie features Clayton in prime form leading the band which includes Emmet Berry, Dicky Wells, Earl Warren, Buddy Tate, Sir Charles Thompson, Gene Ramey, Oliver Jackson and Jimmy Witherspoon playing two full sets.
Despite the changes in musical tastes, Clayton managed to stay quite busy up until 1967, touring Japan with Condon in 1964 and visiting Europe often. He had performed at John Hammond’s renowned Spirituals To Swing Carnegie Hall concerts in 1938 and 1939, and was one of the few to also be featured at his 30th anniversary concert in 1967. Clayton toured Europe again that year (making a record with Ben Webster) and later in the year he recorded with Jimmy Rushing.
But a variety of serious health problems began to affect him and made it painful for him to play trumpet. While he recorded with Earl Hines in early 1968 (the last chance<|control450|> hear him in good form), in the following year he had lip surgery. Despite a few attempts at comebacks including one as late as 1977, Clayton had to permanently give up playing. Other than playing muted in the ensembles of an album by pianist Red Richards in 1979, his last recording as a trumpeter was in 1970. At the age of 58, he was through.
The 1970s were a depressing period for Buck Clayton. During 1974-76 he supervised and arranged for three new Buck Clayton Jam Session albums for the Chiaroscuro label but did not play. He worked for the Musicians Union for a year, had a job as a salesman, and began teaching at Hunter College but felt quite restless.
In the 1980s Buck Clayton made a comeback but in a different capacity. Inspired by his close friend photographer Nancy Elliott with whom he wrote his memoirs Buck Clayton’s Jazz World (Oxford University Press, 1986), he began to write music again. Clayton wrote arrangements and some originals for a Count Basie alumni band, Loren Schoenberg’s orchestra, the Dick Melodonian-Sonny Igoe Big Band, Grover Mitchell, Humphrey Lyttelton, the Juggernaut, Panama Francis’ Savoy Sultans, and a particularly memorable album by the Dan Barrett-Howard Alden Quintet.
In 1988 he went even further, forming the Buck Clayton Swing Band. Ranging from 13-16 pieces and at various times including such notables as Byron Stripling, Warren Vache, Dan Barrett, Jerry Dodgion, Frank Wess, Scott Robinson, Joe Temperley, Mark Shane, Chris Flory, and Mel Lewis, his big band recorded two excellent albums: A Swingin’ Dream (1988) and The Buck Clayton Swing Band Swings The Village (1990). Nearly all of the music was recent Clayton originals. He would end up contributing over 100 compositions to the band’s repertoire.
Buck Clayton stayed active in his new career until the end, passing away on Dec. 8, 1991, at the age of 80. Throughout his career as a trumpeter and an arranger-composer, he successfully went his own way, creating a great deal of timeless and swinging music.
See Also:
Swinging with Trumpeter Buck Clayton
Buck Clayton’s Jazz World, Part One
Buck Clayton’s Jazz World, Part Two
Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.
Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.
