Jazz Articles about Shorty Rogers

About Shorty Rogers

Album Review

Red Norvo's The Secret Session arrives like a message in a bottle, its cork finally loosened after more than 80 years. Recorded in late 1942, in the dead of night and against the grain of wartime caution and a recording ban called by the American Federation of Musicians union, these sides capture a septet caught between eras. Besides Norvo, the band featured musicians who would go on to become stars in their own right, including trumpeter Shorty Rogers, trombonist Eddie ...

Jazz West Coast

Shorty Rogers And His Giants

by Steven Cerra
August 27, 2025

Shorty Rogers--trumpet, flugelhorn, arranger--was born on April 14, 1924 and died November 7, 1994. Born Milton Rajonsky, Shorty was the biggest name in West Coast jazz. He studied in New York before going into the army, and on his discharge worked first with Woody Herman's First and Second Herds, and from there in the Stan Kenton band of 1950-51. Besides his own trumpet playing, which was delivered in a bright, almost humorously optimistic yet contrarily low-key style, Rogers's ...

Reassessing

Shorty Rogers: Short Stops

by Richard J Salvucci
May 22, 2017

In the 1980s, trumpeter and Kenton alum Mike Vax put together a Supersax-type group called TRPTS. It released an album of harmonized trumpet classics, one of which was “Short Stop." There are lots of great tunes including “Night in Tunisia," “Trumpet Blues and Cantabile," and “Heckler's Hop." Oh yeah, one I never heard, Shorty Rogers' Short Stop. Really? How do you get to 35 years of age, listen to jazz almost daily, and not know about Shorty Rogers? I vaguely ...

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Extended Analysis

Shorty Rogers: Four Classic Albums

by David Rickert
December 28, 2011

Shorty RogersFour Classic AlbumsAvid Group 2011 Trumpeter Shorty Rogers was one of the few jazz musicians to embrace the big band sound long after the commercial appeal for the genre was over, and despite the lack of commercial viability, he produced a series of terrific albums in the 1950s. Part of his success was due to the large pool of studio musicians on the West Coast who also happened to be ...

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Album Review

Shorty Rogers: Shorty Goes To Hollywood

Read "Shorty Goes To Hollywood" reviewed by Nic Jones

by Nic Jones
June 22, 2007

This is volume three in an ongoing series devoted to the music of trumpeter Shorty Rogers, released by Giant Steps. The temptation to say that what's on this set is unlikely to win any new converts to his music is great, but while it might be apposite the case is a little more complicated than that. The quintet that Rogers led with reedman Jimmy Giuffre in the front line is arguably the best band he ever led, ...

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Album Review

Shorty Rogers: Bossa Nova/Jazz Waltz

Read "Bossa Nova/Jazz Waltz" reviewed by David Rickert

by David Rickert
May 12, 2003

Like Stan Kenton, Shorty Rogers led a big band that featured some of the greatest names in West Coast jazz. No less than Shelley Manne, Jimmy Giuffre, and Bob Shank appeared on early classics like The Big Shorty Rogers Express and Portrait of Shorty. However, Rogers’ band always seemed like a lot more fun to be in than Kenton’s, since Rogers exhibited a goofy sense of experimentation and a knack for writing peppy horn charts that exhibited a great deal ...

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Album Review

Shorty Rogers and His Giants: Portrait of Shorty

by Jack Bowers
December 1, 1999

This Portrait of Shorty is an unfinished portrait, of course, but no less pleasing because of it. Rogers called his big band “The Giants,” which is entirely appropriate, as he himself was widely recognized as one of the giants of the so–called West Coast school of “cool Jazz” that was born in the early ’50s and flourished for the next decade and beyond. While Portrait, recorded in 1957, gives a pretty fair representation of Shorty’s skills as big–band composer / ...