Msster improvisers have a personality in their playing, a singularity to their sound. They have the ability to adapt to any musical context while maintaining a sense of personal identity, displaying distinct individuality while always contributing to the needs of the collective. One of the greatest practitioners of this humanistic art died on Saturday: the ebullient, effervescent, irreplaceable, irrepressible trumpet virtuoso Clark Terry.
Born into a poor family in St. Louis in 1920, Terry would often tell the story of building a horn out of junkyard parts—a garden hose attached to a funnel—since his family couldn’t afford an instrument when he was a child. Even at the height of his fame and technical expertise, he still played with the imagination and abandon of that ten-year-old on a homemade creation; there have been few musicians who so embodied the sound of musical joy, of playful engagement and exploration. He was well cast as Puck in Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s 1957 Shakespearean suite “Such Sweet Thunder”—his playing glowed with trickster energy and elfish glee.
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It pains me to never hear that sound live again; no musician has made me laugh out loud in surprise and wonder more often than Clark Terry. But his imprint is a lasting one—a testament to the power of individual creativity, and a reminder that the best we can do is to be like no one but ourselves.
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aus Taylor Ho Bynums feinem Nachruf auf Clark Terry im New Yorker.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #158 – Piano Jazz 2024 (Teil 1) - 19.12.2024 – 20:00; #159: Martial Solal (1927–2024) – 21.1., 22:00; #160: 11.2., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba