David Roy Eldridge was born on this day, January 30, in 1911. Commonly known as
Roy Eldridge, and nicknamed
"Little Jazz
", he was an American
jazz trumpet player. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of
tritone substitutions (
link below), his virtuoso solos exhibited a departure from the smooth and lyrical style of earlier jazz trumpet innovator
Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on
Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the
swing era and a precursor of
bebop.
Eldridge
left home after being expelled (couldn't find out why) from high school
in ninth grade at the age of sixteen. He found work leading a small
band in the traveling "Rock Dinah" show where swing-era bandleader
Count Basie saw him and Basie thought Eldridge "the greatest trumpet I'd ever heard in my life."
At
the age of 20, Eldridge led a band in Pittsburgh, billed as "Roy
Elliott and his Palais Royal Orchestra", the agent intentionally
changing Eldridge's name because "he thought it more classy."
He moved to
New York in November 1930, playing in various bands in the early 1930s, including a number of
Harlem dance bands with
Cecil Scott,
Elmer Snowden,
Charlie Johnson, and
Teddy Hill. It was during this time that Eldridge received his nickname, 'Little Jazz', from Ellington saxophonist
Otto Hardwick, who was amused by the incongruity between Eldridge's raucous playing and his short stature.
Eldridge recorded a number of small group sides with singer
Billie Holiday in July 1935, including
What a Little Moonlight Can Do and
Miss Brown to You, employing a
Dixieland-influenced improvisation style.
In the fall of 1936, Eldridge moved to Chicago to form an octet with older brother Joe Eldridge playing saxophone and
arranging. The ensemble boasted nightly broadcasts and made recordings that featured his extended solos, including
After You've Gone and
Wabash Stomp."
Fed up with the racism he had encountered in the music industry, he
quit playing in 1938 to study radio engineering. He returned to playing
in 1939, when he formed a ten-piece band that gained a residency at the
Arcadia Ballroom in
New York.
Roy Eldridge Orchestra - January 1, 1939
photogrpaher unknown
When he wasn't onstage himself, one trumpeter remembered, Eldridge would
search out young trumpeters in other clubs, then "take out his horn at
the door....start on a high B-flat and just come walking in." ~
Jazz: A History of America's Music" by Geoffrey C Ward and Ken Burns.
His rhythmic power to swing a band was a dynamic trademark of the jazz
of the time. It has been said that "from the mid-Thirties onwards, he
had superseded
Louis Armstrong as the exemplar of modern 'hot' trumpet playing".
In April 1941, after receiving many offers from white swing bands, Eldridge joined the
Gene Krupa Orchestra, and was successfully featured with rookie singer
Anita O'Day.
In accepting this position, Eldridge became one of the first black
musicians to become a permanent member of a white big band. Eldridge was
instrumental in changing the course of Krupa's big band from
schmaltz to jazz. The group's cover of the
Jimmy Dorsey song,
Green Eyes,
previously an entirely orchestral work, was transformed into jazz via
Eldridge's playing; critic Dave Oliphant notes that Eldridge "lift[ed]"
the tune "to a higher level of intensity."
Eldridge and O'Day were featured in a number of recordings, including
the novelty hit
Let Me Off Uptown and
Knock Me a Kiss.
One of Eldridge's best known recorded solos is on a rendition of the
Hoagy Carmichael tune,
Rockin' Chair, arranged by
Benny Carter as something like a concerto for Eldridge. Jazz historian
Gunther Schuller
referred to Eldridge's solo on
Rockin' Chair as "a strong and at
times tremendously moving performance", although he disapproved of the
"opening and closing
cadenzas, the latter unforgivably aping the corniest of operatic cadenza traditions."
Critic and author Dave Oliphant describes Eldridge's unique tone on
Rockin' Chair as "a raspy, buzzy tone, which enormously heightens his
playing's intensity, emotionally and dynamically" and writes that it
"was also meant to hurt a little, to be disturbing, to express
unfathomable stress."
After leaving Krupa's band, Eldridge freelanced in
New York during 1943 before joining the
Artie Shaw band in 1944. In the postwar years, he became part of the group which toured under the
Jazz at the Philharmonic, a series of jazz concerts, tours and recordings produced by
Norman Granz.
Eldridge moved to
Paris in 1950 while on tour with
Benny Goodman, before returning to
New York in 1951 to lead a band at the
Birdland jazz club.
He additionally performed from 1952 until the early 1960s in small groups with
Coleman Hawkins,
Ella Fitzgerald and
Earl Hines among others, and also began to record for Granz at this time.
Eldridge also toured with Fitzgerald from late 1963 until March
1965 and with Count Basie from July until September 1966 before
returning to freelance playing and touring at festivals.
In 1960, Eldridge participated, alongside
Abbey Lincoln,
Charles Mingus,
Eric Dolphy,
Kenny Dorham and others, in recordings by the
Jazz Artist's Guild, a short-lived grouping formed by Mingus and
Max Roach as a reaction to the perceived commercialism of the Newport Festival. These resulted in the
Newport Jazz Rebels LP.
Eldridge became the leader of the house band at Jimmy Ryan's jazz club on
West 54th Street in
Manhattan for several years, beginning in 1969. Although Ryan's was primarily a
Dixieland venue, Eldridge tried to combine the traditional Dixieland style with his own more brash and speedy playing.
Eldridge was incapacitated by a stroke in 1970, but continued to lead
the group at Ryan's soon after and performing occasionally as a singer,
drummer and pianist.
Writer Michael Zirpolo, seeing Eldridge at Ryan's in the late 1970s,
noted, "I was amazed that he still could pop out those piercing high
notes, but he did, with frequency....I worried about his health, because
the veins at his temples would bulge alarmingly."
In 1971, Eldridge was inducted into the
Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.
After suffering a heart attack in 1980, Eldridge gave up playing.
He died on February 26, 1989, at the Franklin General Hospital in
Valley Stream,
New York, three weeks after the death of his wife, Viola. He was 78 years old.
~ 
