Biography
Consistently billed as Pat Jenkins throughout his professional life, the buoyant swing trumpeter was born Sidney Jenkins on Christmas Day 1914, nearly ten years after another trumpeter named Sidney, Sidney DeParis, with whom he is occasionally mixed up. Originally from the Virginia coast, he had logged roughly five years as a working musician before relocating to New York City. In 1937 he enlisted with Al Cooper & His Savoy Sultans, an affiliation that occupied him for the following seven years until military service intervened. After the war he quickly resumed performing alongside alto saxophonist and bandleader Tab Smith. From 1951 onward he became a mainstay of Buddy Tate’s ensemble, the longest-running musical relationship of his career, even though he had already chosen not to pursue music on a full-time basis. Whenever Tate’s band held court at New York City’s Celebrity Club, Jenkins formed part of the expanded stage lineup that sometimes functioned as a de facto house band; yet whenever Tate departed for out-of-town or overseas engagements, Jenkins remained behind, working at a department store. His sessions with an assortment of swing and rhythm-and-blues groups extended into the early 1970s.
Albums