Jazz, soul & blues
Clark Terry
Clark Terry (1920-2015), American trumpeter and flugelhornist, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, was a soloist in the Duke Ellington and Count Basie orchestras, and the mentor of the young Quincy Jones as of the young Miles Davis. Montreux was one of his faithful haunts.
Clark Terry: the flugelhorn by the lake
1969: the International Festival Big Band
In 1969, Clark Terry performed in Montreux with the International Festival Big Band led by Ernie Wilkins. The concert was released in 1970 as “Clark Terry at the Montreux Jazz Festival with the International Festival Big Band”, with titles as playful as “Swiss Air” and “Mumbling in the Alps”, a wink to his famous scat “Mumbles”. That 1969 edition also brought together Ella Fitzgerald and organist Jimmy Smith.
The sleeve is a tribute to the setting: the cover photo was taken at the top of the Glion funicular; on the back appears the Château de Chillon. Clark Terry’s jazz, like Bill Evans’s a year earlier, adopts the Lake Geneva landscape.
The mentor of Quincy and Miles
In St. Louis, it was Clark Terry who initiated a teenager named Miles Davis, then guided the first steps of Quincy Jones — a lineage both men always acknowledged. A Montreux regular, Terry returned throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, in sextet, in big band or in Oscar Peterson’s jam sessions, flugelhorn in hand.
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