Clora Bryant

Clora Bryant (* May 30, 1927 in Denison ( Texas)) is an American jazz trumpet player and composer -. She is considered one of the most respected trumpeters the West Coast and has worked in big bands, show bands and jazz combos.

Life and work

Bryant, who sang as a child in a gospel choir and grew up in Los Angeles, was taken away by her single father early to concerts and thus experienced as a teenager, Jimmy Lunceford, Count Basie and Duke Ellington. When her brother was drafted into military service, they took over the trumpet, whose game they initially taught self-taught. In high school she played in dance orchestras. From 1944, the Prairie View College visited in Houston, where they soon played first trumpet in the all-female band Prairie View College Co - Eds and occurred with the every weekend, even at the Apollo Theater. In 1946, she played with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, and later with the Darlings of Rhythm and the Queens of Rhythm, other female bands. In 1947 she discovered in a radio broadcast bebop -oriented and stylistically to Dizzy Gillespie.

In 1948 she married in Los Angeles bassist Joe Stone; after having children, she worked again as a musician. Although she gave birth to more children and raised them, she was also in the 1950s, present on stage as they played regularly at jam sessions. She also appeared with a female quartet, the sepia tone on television. In 1957 she took for Mode Records on the album The Gal with the Horn, where they can also be heard as a singer. In the early 1960s, she worked as a musician in Las Vegas, where she performed with Harry James, Sammy Davis Jr. and Damita Jo in the film Pepi. Then she worked until 1964 with the Billy Williams band. The next two years she was with her brother, Mel Bryant, on tour. She also worked in the big bands of Ellington, Basie, Lionel Hampton, Bill Berry, and Count Basie. Since 1975 she has been active as a composer; she wrote the suite To Dizzy with Love and has two awards of the National Endowment for the Arts won for composition and execution.

She also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and was the first American jazz musician who appeared on request of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union.

Book Release

• Clora Bryant, Jack Kelson, Horace Tapscott, Gerald Wilson: Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles University of California Press, 1995, ISBN 0-520-22098-6.