Buck Clayton
| Buck Clayton | |
|---|---|
Clayton in Shanghai around 1934
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Wilbur Dorsey Clayton |
| Born |
November 12, 1911 Parsons, Kansas |
| Origin | United States |
| Died | December 8, 1991 (aged 80) New York City, New York |
| Genres | Swing, mainstream jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Jazz trumpeter, band leader, composer, arranger |
| Instruments | Trumpet |
Wilbur Dorsey "Buck" Clayton (November 12, 1911 – December 8, 1991) was an American jazz trumpet player who was a leading member of Count Basie’s "Old Testament" orchestra and a leader of mainstream-oriented jam session recordings in the 1950s. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong. The Penguin Guide to Jazz says that he “synthesi[zed] much of the history of jazz trumpet up to his own time, with a bright brassy tone and an apparently limitless facility for melodic improvisation”. Clayton worked closely with Li Jinhui, father of Chinese popular music in Shanghai. His contributions helped change musical history in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Clayton learned to play the piano from the age of six. His father was an amateur musician associated with the family's local church, who was responsible for teaching his son the scales on a trumpet which he did not take up until his teens. From the age of seventeen, Clayton was taught the trumpet by Bob Russell, a member of George E. Lee’s band. In his early twenties he was based in California, and was briefly a member of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and worked with other leaders. Clayton was also taught at this time by trumpeter Mutt Carey, who later emerged as a prominent west-coast revivalist in the 1940s. After high school, he moved to Los Angeles. He later formed a band named “14 Gentlemen from Harlem” in which he was the leader of the 14-member orchestra.
From there, there are multiple sources claiming different ways in which Clayton ended up in Shanghai. Some claimed that Clayton was picked by Teddy Weatherford for a job at the Canidrome ballroom in the French Concession in Shanghai. Others claimed he escaped the US temporarily to avoid racism.
From 1934 or 1935 (depending on the sources), he was a leader of the "Harlem Gentlemen" in Shanghai. Some of the bureaucratic social groups he was with included Chiang Kai-shek's wife Soong Mei-ling and her sister Ai-ling, who were regulars at the Canidrome. Clayton would play a number of songs that were composed by Li Jinhui, while adopting the Chinese music scale into the American scale. Li learned a great deal from the American jazz influence brought over by Clayton. A 1935 guidebook in Shanghai listed Clayton and Teddy Weatherford as the main jazz attraction at the Canidrome. He would eventually leave Shanghai before the 1937 Second Sino-Japanese War. Clayton is credited for helping to close the gap between traditional Chinese music and shidaiqu/mandopop. Li is mostly remembered in China as a casualty of the Cultural Revolution.
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