Clark Terry

Clark Terry was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, composer, educator, and bandleader. His music covered swing, bebop, hard bop, big band jazz, and vocal/scat jazz. His official biography describes his career as spanning more than seventy years and identifies him as a world-class trumpeter, flugelhornist, educator, composer, writer, and NEA Jazz Master.

He played with major jazz figures and ensembles including Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, and The Tonight Show Band. Important albums and recordings include Color Changes, In Orbit, The Happy Horns of Clark Terry, Mumbles, Oscar Peterson Trio + One, The Alternate Blues, and Duke with a Difference. Deezer and Amazon Music list many of these recordings in his discography.

Clark Terry is known for his joyful, swinging trumpet sound, pioneering use of the flugelhorn in jazz, humorous “mumbling” scat style, and his influence on younger musicians including Miles Davis and Quincy Jones. The National Endowment for the Arts describes him as a consummate musician whose horn playing contributed strongly to the Basie and Ellington bands, and notes that his flugelhorn work influenced later players.