Biography
Although he remained largely overlooked, Don Sleet possessed notable talent as a hard bop and post-bop trumpeter whose appealing, smooth sound echoed the approaches of Kenny Dorham and Art Farmer. Dorham exerted a particularly powerful effect on his style, while certain elements of Miles Davis’ lyricism also left a deep impression; nevertheless, Sleet produced a fuller tone than Davis, favoring a medium-sized sound that exceeded both Davis and Chet Baker yet fell short of the robust school exemplified by Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on November 27, 1938, he was raised in San Diego and pursued studies in both jazz and classical music during his teenage years. The trumpeter in fact performed classical repertoire for three years alongside the San Diego Symphony, even though jazz remained his primary pursuit. He also devoted considerable time to Los Angeles, where he took lessons from trumpeter Shorty Rogers and encountered vibist Terry Gibbs, who subsequently engaged him for the trumpet section of Gibbs’ big band. In 1960 he performed for several months with Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars, then among the leading jazz ensembles in Los Angeles. The next year, at age twenty-two, Sleet recorded his lone session as a leader, All Members, for the Jazzland label. Produced in New York by Orrin Keepnews, the date featured an accomplished East Coast ensemble comprising Jimmy Heath on tenor saxophone, Wynton Kelly on piano, Ron Carter on upright bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Despite the opportunity to collaborate with such prominent musicians on his debut, Sleet never attained the recognition his work warranted. All Members proved to be his sole recording; he never completed a second album and died in 1986, still largely unknown, at the age of forty-seven. In 2001 Fantasy reissued All Members on compact disc as part of its Original Jazz Classics series.
Albums