Roy Eldridge

Diagnoses

Vocation

Traits

American jazz trumpet player, nicknamed "Little Jazz", whose sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the dominant style of jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop. His rhythmic power to swing a band was a dynamic trademark of the jazz of the 1930s. It has been said that "from the mid-Thirties onwards, he had superseded Louis Armstrong as the exemplar of modern 'hot' trumpet playing." One of Eldridge's best known recorded solos is on a rendition of Hoagy Carmichael's tune, "Rockin' Chair", arranged by Benny Carter as something like a concerto for Eldridge. After suffering a heart attack in 1980, Eldridge gave up playing. He died on 26 February 1989 at the age of 78 at the Franklin General Hospital in Valley Stream, New York, three weeks after the death of his wife, Viola. Link to Wikipedia biography