Buck Clayton

Buck Clayton stood out as a capable director of ensembles while supporting numerous singers, among them Billie Holiday. He served as an esteemed improviser in the Count Basie Orchestra through the 1930s and 1940s before earning recognition as a sought-after studio musician, jam-session participant, composer, and orchestrator. His incisive, bold sound and agile melodic command marked his playing, and he supplied numerous arrangements for Basie’s orchestra along with assorted other ensembles.

Clayton launched his professional path in California by forming a large band that secured a long-term engagement in China during 1934. After returning stateside he led his own unit and sat in with several regional groups. A 1936 stop in Kansas City resulted in an invitation to replace Hot Lips Page in Basie’s ranks. He appeared on recordings with Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, and Holiday in the late 1930s, remaining with Basie until 1943, when military service interrupted his tenure.

Following his discharge, Clayton prepared charts for Basie, Benny Goodman, and Harry James before assembling a sextet late in the decade. That group toured Europe in 1949 and 1950. Throughout the 1950s he continued to lead small combos, working alongside Joe Bushkin, Tony Parenti, and Jimmy Rushing. In the middle of the decade he curated an acclaimed series of Columbia sessions issued under the Jam Session banner, later compiled and reissued by Mosaic in 1993; those dates featured Rushing, Ruby Braff, and Nat Pierce.

At the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, Clayton directed a small group that included Coleman Hawkins and J.J. Johnson. He rejoined Goodman in 1957 for a Waldorf Astoria engagement and soon embarked on another European tour with Mezz Mezzrow. Clayton appeared in the 1956 film The Benny Goodman Story and performed at the 1958 Brussels World Fair with Sidney Bechet. Additional European travel followed on a Newport Jazz Festival package.

He joined Eddie Condon’s band in 1959, a year after his appearance in the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day. With Condon’s musicians Clayton visited Japan and Australia in 1964 and returned repeatedly to Europe during the 1960s, often in the company of Humphrey Lyttelton’s ensemble and at festivals throughout the United States. Embouchure and health difficulties largely ended his performing career by the late 1960s.

After a period away from music, Clayton resumed activity strictly as an arranger, joining a State Department-sponsored tour of Africa in 1977. He supplied arrangements and original material for a 1974 album by Lyttelton and Buddy Tate and recorded additional jam-session sets for Chiaroscuro in 1974 and 1975. He also entered academia, teaching at Hunter College in the early 1980s.

In 1983 Clayton led a contingent of former Basie sidemen on a European tour, then formed his own big band in 1987, an ensemble devoted almost exclusively to his compositions and charts. That same year his extensive autobiography, Buck Clayton’s Jazz World, written with Nancy Miller-Elliot, was published.