Clayton in Shanghai around 1934
|Birth name||Wilbur Dorsey Clayton|
November 12, 1911|
|Died||December 8, 1991
New York City, New York
|Occupation(s)||Jazz trumpeter, band leader, composer/arranger|
Wilbur Dorsey "Buck" Clayton (Parsons, Kansas, November 12, 1911 – New York City, December 8, 1991) was an American jazz trumpet player who was a leading member of Count Basie’s "Old Testament" orchestra and a leader of mainstream-oriented jam session recordings in the 1950s. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong. The Penguin Guide to Jazz says that he “synthesi[zed] much of the history of jazz trumpet up to his own time, with a bright brassy tone and an apparently limitless facility for melodic improvisation”. Clayton worked closely with Li Jinhui, father of Chinese popular music in Shanghai. His contributions helped change musical history in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Clayton learned to play the piano from the age of six. His father was an amateur musician associated with the family's local church, who was responsible for teaching his son the scales on a trumpet which he did not take up until his teens. From the age of seventeen, Clayton was taught the trumpet by Bob Russell, a member of George E. Lee’s band. In his early twenties he was based in California, and was briefly a member of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and worked with other leaders. Clayton was also taught at this time by trumpeter Mutt Carey, who later emerged as a prominent west-coast revivalist in the 1940s. After high school, he moved to Los Angeles. He later formed a band named “14 Gentlemen from Harlem” in which he was the leader of the 14-member orchestra.
From there, there are multiple sources claiming different ways in which Clayton ended up in Shanghai. Some claimed that Clayton was picked by Teddy Weatherford for a job at the Canidrome ballroom in the French Concession in Shanghai. Others claimed he escaped the US temporarily to avoid racism.
From 1934 or 1935 (depending on the sources), he was a leader of the "Harlem Gentlemen" in Shanghai. His experience in the east was unique, since Clayton was discriminated against by fellow American marines who were stationed in Shanghai. On numerous accounts, he was attacked by soldiers, including an instance where bricks were thrown at him. On the contrary he was treated like an elite by the Chinese. Some of the bureaucratic social groups he was with included Chiang Kai-shek's wife Soong Mei-ling and her sister Ai-ling, who were regulars at the Canidrome. Clayton would play a number of songs that were composed by Li Jinhui, while adopting the Chinese music scale into the American scale. Li learned a great deal from the American jazz influence brought over by Clayton. A 1935 guidebook in Shanghai listed Clayton and Teddy Weatherford as the main jazz attraction at the Canidrome. He would eventually leave Shanghai before the 1937 Second Sino-Japanese War. Clayton is credited for helping to close the gap between traditional Chinese music and shidaiqu/mandopop. Li is mostly remembered in China as a casualty of the Cultural Revolution.
Later that year he accepted an offer from bandleader Willie Bryant in New York, but while moving east he stopped off in Kansas City and was persuaded to stay by Count Basie, whose orchestra had a residency at the Reno Club, and took the trumpet chair recently vacated by Hot Lips Page. From 1937, the Count Basie orchestra was based in New York, giving Clayton the opportunity to freelance in the recordings studios, and he participated in recordings sessions featuring Billie Holiday and was also present on Commodore (and later Keynote Records) sessions with Lester Young. Clayton remained with Basie until he was drafted for war service in November 1943. Based at Camp Kilmer near New York, Clayton was able to participate in various all-star sessions, some of which were led by Sy Oliver.
After his honorable discharge in 1946 he prepared arrangements for Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Harry James and became a member of Norman Granz’s 'Jazz at the Philharmonic' package, appearing in April in a concert with Young, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker, and in October participated in JATPs first national tour of the United States. He also recorded at this time for the H.R.S. label. In 1947 he was back in New York, and had a residency at the Café Society, Downtown, and the following year had a reunion with Jimmy Rushing, his fellow Basie alumni, at the Savoy Ballroom. Clayton and Rushing worked together occasionally into the 1960s.
From September 1949 Clayton was in Europe for nine months, leading his own band in France. Clayton recorded intermittently over the next few years for the French Vogue label, under his own name, that of clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow and for one session, with pianist Earl Hines. In 1953, he was again in Europe, touring with Mezzrow; in Italy; the group was joined (improbably) by Frank Sinatra.
The English critic Stanley Dance coined the term "mainstream" in the 1950s to describe the style of those swing era players who fell between the revivalist and modernist camps. Clayton was precisely one of the players to whom this appellation most applied. In December 1953 Clayton embarked on a series of jam session albums for Columbia, which had been the idea of John Hammond, though George Avakian was the principal producer. The recording sessions for these albums lasted until 1956. The tracks could last the length of an LP side, and it had been the new format that had given Hammond the idea, but sometimes this led to unfortunate anomalies. The title track on the Jumping at the Woodside album was compiled from two takes recorded four months apart, each with a completely different rhythm section. Clayton's Jazz Spectacular album from this series (with Kai Winding, J. J. Johnson and vocals by Frankie Laine) is loved by jazz and pop fans alike. Clayton also recorded at this time for Vanguard, with Hammond producing, under his own name and on dates led by Ruby Braff, Mel Powell and Sir Charles Thompson.
In 1955 he appeared in The Benny Goodman Story, also working with Goodman in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel two years later. In 1958 he was at the World Fair in Brussels for concerts with Sidney Bechet, and toured Europe the following year and annually through the 1960s. For the Swingville label (a subsidiary of Prestige Records) he co-led two albums with former Basie colleague Buddy Tate and supported Pee Wee Russell on his own outing for the label.
In 1964 he performed in Japan, Australia and New Zealand with Eddie Condon, with whom he had already occasionally worked for several years. In 1965 he toured England with trombonist Vic Dickenson and blues singer Big Joe Turner accompanied by British trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton and his Band. Part of a studio recording was shown on BBCtv and later issued on DVD. He made numerous visits to England thereafter and recorded three albums with Lyttelton. In order to hoodwink the musicians' union in the UK, it was necessary to claim that these albums were recorded in Switzerland. A live audio recording made on a club date with Lyttelton was released on Lyttelton's own Calligraph Records label (CLG CD 048).
Shortly after appearing at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1969, Clayton underwent lip surgery, and had to give up playing the trumpet in 1972. He was able to resume playing in 1977 for a State Department sponsored tour of Africa, but had to permanently stop playing in 1979, though he still worked as an arranger. He began to teach at Hunter College, CUNY from 1975–80 and again in the early eighties.
The semi-autobiography Buck Clayton’s Jazz World, co-authored by Nancy Miller Elliott, first appeared in 1986. In the same year, his new Big Band debuted at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and Clayton toured internationally with it, contributing 100 compositions to the band book.
Buck Clayton died quietly in his sleep in 1991.
- Bird and Pres – The '46 Concerts Jazz at the Philharmonic (Verve, 1946)
- The Classic Swing of Buck Clayton (OJC, 1946)
- Buck Special (Vogue, 1949–53)
- Copenhagen Concert (SteepleChase, 1959)
- Goin' to Kansas City (Riverside, 1960) – with Tommy Gwaltney's Kansas City 9
- Buck & Buddy (Swingville, 1960) – with Buddy Tate
- Buck and Buddy Blow the Blues (Swingville, 1961) – with Buddy Tate
- Buck Clayton All Stars 1961 (Storyville Records, 1961)
- Buck Clayton Jam Session 1975 (Chiaroscuro, 1975)
- The Buck Clayton Swing Band Live from Greenvich Village (1990)
With Red Richards
- In A Mellow Tone (West 54 Records)
With Count Basie
- The Original American Decca Recordings (GRP, 1937-39 )
- Buck Clayton & Nancy Miller Elliott Buck Clayton's Jazz World, Macmillan [Bayou Press], 1986 , p.19
- Clayton & Miller Elliott, p.21 -22
- Yanow, Scott.  (2000). Swing: Third Ear – The Essential Listening Companion. Backbeat Books publishing. ISBN 0-87930-600-9.
- Jones. Andrew F.  (2001). Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-2694-9
- The Buck Clayton Collection at the Miller Nichols Library of the University of Missouri – Kansas City
- Digitized photographs from the Buck Clayton Collection in the University of Missouri Digital Library