Randy Brooks (musician)

Randy Brooks ( born March 15, 1919 in Sanford, Maine, † March 21, 1967 ) was an American jazz trumpeter and big band leader of a swing.

Randy Brooks began at the age of eight years playing the trumpet to play with his parents for the Salvation Army. At twelve, he won a competition for young trumpet players, with fourteen he toured with Rudy Vallee. After high school graduation in 1937, he moved to New York City to work as a musician. He played with Claude Thornhill, Bob Allen, Art Jarrett and Les Brown before he in 1944 founded his own band. The composer John Benson Brooks (with whom he is not related) contributed arrangements for the ensemble at; to the main soloists included vibraphonist Shorty Allen and saxophonist Eddie Kane. 1946 also played the young Stan Getz in the orchestra. Hiterfolge were titles like " Tenderly ", " Harlem Nocturne" and "The Man With the Horn" for Decca Records; In 1947 the orchestra in Downbeat as one of the best in the country was highlighted. The success of the band was, however, soon - with the end of the great swing bands - after. Brooks married in 1949 another bandleader Ina Ray Hutton and moved to Los Angeles, where he suffered a stroke in 1950, which his musical career ended with her. He died in 1967 in a house fire in Maine, where he had lived with his mother.