St. Louis native Clark Terry – whose career in jazz spans more than 60 years – was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2010 Grammy Awards on Sunday, Jan. 31. The award honors lifelong artistic contributions to the recording medium.
Terry is a world-class composer, trumpeter, flugelhornist, educator and NEA Jazz Master. He performed for seven U.S. Presidents, and was a Jazz Ambassador for State Department tours in the Middle East and Africa. More than 50 jazz festivals in all seven continents still feature him
Terry was knighted in Germany and is the recipient of the French Order of Arts and Letters. His star on the Walk of Fame and his Black World History Museum’s life-sized wax figure can both be visited here in his hometown.
Terry has composed more than 200 jazz songs, and his books include Let’s Talk Trumpet: From Legit to Jazz, Interpretation of the Jazz Language and Clark Terry’s System of Circular Breathing for Woodwind and Brass Instruments.
He has recorded with The London Symphony Orchestra, The Dutch Metropole Orchestra, The Duke Ellington Orchestra and The Chicago Jazz Orchestra.
His discography reads like a Who’s Who In Jazz, with personnel that includes Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Dinah Washington, Ben Webster, Ray Charles, Billy Strayhorn, Dexter Gordon, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Coleman Hawkins, Zoot Sims, Milt Jackson and Dianne Reeves.
Terry exerted a positive influence on musicians such as Miles Davis and Quincy Jones, both of whom credit Clark as a formidable influence during the early stages of their careers. On the local scene, Baba Mike Nelson is one of many musicians who were formed by Terry.
In the 1940s, after serving in the U.S. Navy, Terry’s musical star rose rapidly with successful stints in the bands of George Hudson, Charlie Barnet, Charlie Ventura, Eddie Vinson – and then, in 1948, the great Count Basie. In 1951 Terry was asked to join Maestro Duke Ellington’s renowned orchestra where he stayed for eight years as a featured soloist.
Following a tour with Harold Arlen’s “Free and Easy” show directed by Quincy Jones in 1960, Terry accepted an offer from the National Broadcasting Company to become its first African-American staff musician. Soon after, Clark became a ten year television star as one of the spotlighted players in the Tonight Show band where he scored a smash hit as a singer with his irrepressible “Mumbles.”
Prompted early in his career by Dr. Billy Taylor, Terry and Milt Hinton bought instruments for and gave instruction to young hopefuls which planted the seed that became Jazz Mobile in Harlem. This venture tugged at Clark’s greatest love – involving youth in the perpetuation of jazz.
