Clark Virgil Terry Jr. (December 14, 1920 – February 21, 2015) was an American musician who played the trumpet in swing and bebop styles. He helped make the flugelhorn popular in jazz and also wrote music and taught others.

He performed with Charlie Barnet (1947), Count Basie (1948–51), Duke Ellington (1951–59), Quincy Jones (1960), and Oscar Peterson (1964–96). He was part of The Tonight Show Band on The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1972. His career in jazz lasted more than 70 years, during which he became one of the most recorded jazz musicians, appearing on over 900 recordings. Terry also mentored Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, Pat Metheny, Dianne Reeves, and Terri Lyne Carrington.

Early life

Terry was born on December 14, 1920, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Clark Virgil Terry Sr. and Mary Terry. He went to Vashon High School. He started his professional career in the early 1940s by playing in local clubs. During World War II, he worked as a musician in the United States Navy. His first instrument was a valve trombone.

Big band era

Terry combined the St. Louis musical style with modern sounds during his time with the bands of Count Basie and Duke Ellington in the late 1940s and 1950s. His work with Ellington helped him become well-known. While with Ellington, Terry performed in many of the composer’s musical suites. He was recognized for his ability to play many different styles of music, such as swing and hard bop, his skill, and his friendly attitude. Terry influenced musicians like Miles Davis and Quincy Jones, who both said he helped them during the early parts of their careers. Terry taught Davis informally when they were both in St. Louis, and he taught Jones during his visits to Seattle with the Count Basie Sextet.

After leaving Ellington in 1959, Clark gained international fame when he joined the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) as a staff musician. He performed on The Tonight Show for ten years, from 1962 to 1972, as part of the Tonight Show Band. The band was first led by Skitch Henderson and later by Doc Severinsen. Terry’s unique way of singing, called “mumbling” scat, helped make a song called “Mumbles” a hit. Terry was the first African American to regularly appear in a band on a major U.S. television network. He later said, “We had to be models, because I knew we were in a test. We couldn’t have a speck on our trousers. We couldn’t have a wrinkle in the clothes. We couldn’t have a dirty shirt.”

Clark had many connections in the music world, and people who knew him spoke highly of him. One of these connections was Quincy Jones, who wrote the introduction to Terry’s autobiography. Jones led a band for the musical Free and Easy in 1959, and Terry left the Duke Ellington Orchestra to join them in Belgium.

Terry continued to play with musicians like trombonist J. J. Johnson and pianist Oscar Peterson. He also led a group with valve-trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, which had some success in the early 1960s. In February 1965, Brookmeyer and Terry performed on BBC2’s Jazz 625. In 1967, Terry was recorded at Poplar Town Hall for the BBC series Jazz at the Philharmonic, alongside musicians such as James Moody, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Bob Cranshaw, Louie Bellson, and T-Bone Walker.

In the 1970s, Terry focused more on the flugelhorn, which he played with a rich, clear sound. In addition to his studio work and teaching at jazz workshops, Terry toured in the 1980s with small groups, including those led by Oscar Peterson. He also performed as the leader of his Big B-A-D Band, which he formed around 1970. After financial problems forced him to end the Big B-A-D Band, Terry played with groups like the Unifour Jazz Ensemble. His sense of humor and mastery of jazz trumpet styles are shown in his “dialogues” with himself, playing on different instruments or on the same instrument, sometimes muted and sometimes not.

Later career

From the 1970s through the 1990s, Terry performed at famous places like Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, and Lincoln Center. He also toured with groups such as the Newport Jazz All Stars and Jazz at the Philharmonic. Terry played with Skitch Henderson’s New York Pops Orchestra. In 1998, he recorded George Gershwin’s song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” for the Red Hot Organization’s special album Red Hot + Rhapsody. This album honored George Gershwin and helped raise money for charities that worked to increase awareness of and fight AIDS.

In November 1980, Terry was a main performer at the opening of a two-week celebration for the return of the Blue Note Lounge at the Marriott O'Hare Hotel near Chicago. Other performers included Anita O'Day, Lionel Hampton, and Ramsey Lewis.

Early in his career, Terry was encouraged by Billy Taylor. Clark and Milt Hinton helped buy instruments and teach young musicians, which led to the creation of Jazz Mobile in Harlem. This effort inspired Terry’s lifelong work to help young people learn and keep jazz alive. From 2000 onward, Terry hosted Clark Terry Jazz Festivals on land and sea, taught at his own jazz camps, and performed at more than fifty jazz festivals across six continents. He wrote over 200 jazz songs and played for eight U.S. Presidents.

Terry recorded music with major groups, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Dutch Metropole Orchestra, and the Chicago Jazz Orchestra. He also performed with many high school and college ensembles, as well as his own small groups like duos, trios, quartets, and big bands such as Clark Terry’s Big Bad Band and Clark Terry’s Young Titans of Jazz.

In February 2004, Terry appeared on a children’s television show called Little Bill as himself. He lived in Bayside and Corona, Queens, New York, then moved to Haworth, New Jersey, and later to Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

Terry wrote an autobiography that was published in 2011. Taylor Ho Bynum, who wrote for The New Yorker, said the book showed Terry’s talent for storytelling and his sense of humor, especially when he described his early life on the road, including challenges from segregation and performances in small clubs and traveling shows.

The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings noted that Terry appeared on more of its listed recordings than any other artist. According to Terry’s website, he was one of the most recorded jazz artists in history and had performed for eight American Presidents. He was skilled at circular breathing, a technique that lets musicians play for long periods without stopping to breathe. In 1976, he published a book called Clark Terry’s System of Circular Breathing for Woodwind and Brass Instruments.

In April 2014, a documentary called Keep on Keepin’ On followed Terry as he mentored Justin Kauflin, a blind young pianist, as Kauflin prepared for a major international competition.

In December 2014, members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and Cécile McLorin Salvant visited Terry at the Jefferson Regional Medical Center, where he had celebrated his 94th birthday on December 14. They played a lively version of “Happy Birthday” for him.

Death and tributes

On February 13, 2015, it was announced that Terry had entered hospice care to manage his advanced diabetes. He died on February 21, 2015.

In an article from The New York Times, Peter Keepnews wrote that Terry was known for his excellent musical skill, loved for his fun-loving nature, and respected for his ability to adapt. Though his sound on the trumpet and the flugelhorn (which has a rounder sound and was helped popularized by Terry as a jazz instrument) was unique and easy to recognize, he could play it well in many different types of music.

In an article from The Daily Telegraph in the UK, Martin Chilton wrote that Terry was a music teacher and had a lasting influence on the development of jazz. He guided many generations of jazz musicians, including Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, and composer-arranger Quincy Jones.

In a 2005 interview, fellow jazz trumpeter Scotty Barnhart said Terry was "… one of the most incredibly versatile musicians to ever live … a jazz trumpet master who played with the greatest names in the history of the music …"

Southeast Missouri State University hosts the Clark Terry/Phi Mu Alpha Jazz Festival each year as a tribute to the musician. The festival began in 1998 and has become larger each year. It features talented student musicians and guest artists at the university's River Campus.

The University of New Hampshire hosts the Clark Terry Jazz Festival every year. It showcases middle- and high-school jazz musicians from across New England.

Awards and honors

This person has received more than 250 awards, medals, and honors, including:

• Named to the Jazz at Lincoln Center Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame in 2013
• Received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, two Grammy certificates, and three Grammy nominations
• Named to the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame
• Awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Award in 1991
• Received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music in 1988
• Received sixteen honorary doctorates
• Received keys to several cities
• Served as a Jazz Ambassador for the U.S. State Department on tours in the Middle East and Africa
• Received a knighthood in Germany
• Awarded the Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award by Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity in 1985. Also received honorary membership in the Beta Zeta chapter of the fraternity at the College of Emporia in 1968
• Became an honorary member of the Iota Phi chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi, National Honorary Band Fraternity, at the University of New Hampshire in 2011
• Received the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2000
• Displayed a life-sized wax figure at the Black World History Museum in St. Louis
• Inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1996
• Received the NARAS Merit Award in 2005
• Named Trumpeter of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2005

Discography

• Clark Terry (EmArcy, 1955)
• The Jazz School with Joe Gordon and Paul Gonsalves (Wing, 1955)
• Serenade to a Bus Seat (Riverside, 1957)
• Duke with a Difference (Riverside, 1957)
• Out on a Limb with Clark Terry (Argo, 1958) – recorded in 1957
• In Orbit with Thelonious Monk (Riverside, 1958)
• Top and Bottom Brass (Riverside, 1959)
• Color Changes (Candid, 1961) – recorded in 1960
• Everything's Mellow (Prestige/Moodsville, 1961)
• Clark Terry Plays the Jazz Version of All American (Moodsville, 1962)
• Back in Bean's Bag (Columbia, 1963) – recorded in 1962
• Tread Ye Lightly (Cameo, 1964)
• What Makes Sammy Swing (20th Century Fox, 1964)
• The Happy Horns of Clark Terry (Impulse!, 1964)
• Tonight with Bob Brookmeyer (Mainstream, 1965) – recorded in 1964
• The Power of Positive Swinging with Bob Brookmeyer (Mainstream, 1965)
• Gingerbread Men with Bob Brookmeyer (Mainstream, 1966)
• Mumbles (Mainstream, 1966)
• Spanish Rice with Chico O'Farrill (Impulse!, 1966)
• It's What's Happenin' (Impulse!, 1967)
• Soul Duo with Shirley Scott (Impulse!, 1967)
• At the Montreux Jazz Festival (Polydor, 1970) – recorded in 1969
• In Concert: Live (Etoile, 1973)
• Previously Unreleased Recordings with Bob Brookmeyer (Verve, 1974)
• Clark Terry's Big B-A-D Band Live at the Wichita Jazz Festival (Vanguard, 1975)
• Oscar Peterson and Clark Terry with Oscar Peterson (Pablo, 1975)
• Wham/Live at the Jazz House (MPS, 1976)
• Professor Jive (Inner City, 1976)
• The Globetrotter (Vanguard, 1977)
• Clark After Dark: The Ballad Artistry of Clark Terry (MPS, 1978)
• Ain't Misbehavin' (Pablo, 1979)
• Mother———! Mother———!! with Zoot Sims (Pablo, 1980) – recorded in 1979
• Memories of Duke (Pablo, 1980)
• Yes, the Blues (Pablo, 1981)
• To Duke and Basie (Enja, 1986)
• Live 1964 (Emerald, 1987) – live recording from 1964
• Portraits (Chesky, 1989)
• Squeeze Me (Chiaroscuro, 1989)
• Having Fun (Delos, 1990)
• Live at the Village Gate (Chesky, 1991)
• Music in the Garden (Jazz Heritage, 1993)
• What a Wonderful World (Red Baron, 1993)
• Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz with Guest Clark Terry (Jazz Alliance, 1994)
• Mellow Moods (Prestige, 1994)
• Big Band Basie with Frank Wess (Reference, 1995)
• The Second Set: Recorded Live at the Village Gate (Chesky, 1995)
• Clark Terry with Peewee Claybrook and Swing Fever (D'Note, 1995)
• Live in Chicago Vol. 1 (Monad, 1995)
• Live in Chicago Vol. 2 (Monad, 1995)
• Top and Bottom (Chiaroscuro, 1995)
• Clark Terry Express (Reference, 1996)
• The Songs Ella & Louis Sang with Carol Sloane (Concord Jazz, 1997)
• One on One (Chesky, 2000)
• The Hymn (Candid, 2001) – live recording from 1993
• Live in Concert (Image, 2001)
• Friendship with Max Roach (Columbia, 2002)
• Live on QE2 (Chiaroscuro, 2002)
• George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (Americana, 2004)
• Live at Marihans (Chiaroscuro, 2005)
• Louie and Clark Expedition 2 with Louie Bellson (Percussion Power, 2008)
• Carnegie Blues: The Music of Duke Ellington (Squatty Roo, 2015)

With Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis