Jazz Articles about Buck Clayton

Buck Clayton Legacy Band: Claytonia

by Jack Bowers
September 4, 2013

Buck Clayton, an acclaimed trumpet soloist with the Count Basie Orchestra in the late 1930s and early '40s, had lip surgery in 1969 that all but ended his playing career. After setting the trumpet aside for good in 1979, he turned full-time to composing and arranging, and the Buck Clayton Big Band made its debut in 1986 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The year before, he had become friends with British bassist Alyn Shipton who offered words of ...

Dave Liebman & Bobby Avey: Vienna Dialogues

by John Kelman
October 9, 2006

An album based around music by Mendelssohn, Mahler and other classical composers might sound a little too polite for expressionist saxophonist Dave Liebman. But Vienna Dialogues, a followup to the more in-character Manhattan Dialogues (Zoho, 2005), demonstrates what anyone who has followed his career already knows. Liebman has always been a player who can immerse himself in any setting, capture its essence and still sound completely himself. Vienna Dialogues simply challenges Liebman, in duet with young pianist Bobby Avey, to ...

The Buck Clayton Swing Band: Buck Clayton Swings the Village

by C. Michael Bailey
May 1, 2002

A bright re-release of Big Band music.

Trumpeter and bandleader Buck Clayton was a mainstay of the '30s and '40s big band. Following that, Clayton led every stripe of band for the next 40 years. In the late 1980s, when age prevented Clayton to play his trumpet, he turned his attention to composition and arrangement for a big band. In 1990, Clayton brought his big band to the Village Vanguard for a recital of his compositions, some written only ...

Buck Clayton Swing Band: Live from Greenwich Village, NYC

by Jack Bowers
January 1, 1999

If you’d like an up–to–date example of why the first Golden Age of big–band music in this country was known as the Swing Era, simply insert this wonderful disc, recorded in concert in February 1990, in your CD player and crank up the volume. This is music from the heart, a throwback to those memorable days when Lunceford, McShann, Basie, Goodman, Webb and Ellington helped redefine the boundaries of Jazz and big bands swung like there was no tomorrow. Buck ...