I N - T H I S - I S S U E :

Two Remarkable Detroit Trumpeters Pass

By Lars Bjorn

Two magnificent Detroit trumpeters passed away this summer: Charles Moore at 73 years of age on May 30 and Gerald Wilson at 96 on September 8. They both ended up in Los Angeles, after spending their formative years in Detroit, but in different musical contexts. Gerald Wilson’s career got started at the juncture of swing and bebop before World War II, whereas Charles Moore emerged in Detroit in the post-bop years of the 1960s when free jazz was hot.

Gerald Wilson was born in Shelby, Mississippi, but came to maturity in Detroit where he attended Cass Tech. He took trumpet lessons at Cass with Mr. Byrne (trombonist Bobby Byrne’s father) and joined the band at Club Plantation, before going on tour with the Chick Carter orchestra. His big break came when he joined the trumpet section of the terrific Jimmie Lunceford band in late 1939. With Lunceford he wrote some of his first arrangements and compositions. He is most well-known for his “Yard Dog Mazurka.”

Wilson played around Los Angeles during 1942–43, played in the Navy Band with Clark Terry, and in the late forties played and arranged for both the Basie and Gillespie bands. By the fifties he settled in Los Angeles and worked a lot in the record studios with jazz and popular music. In 1961 he formed an influential big band that recorded several albums for Pacific Jazz. For these recordings he gathered the cream of the crop of LA modern jazz talents: Teddy Edwards, Joe Pass, Bud Shank, Mel Lewis, and Carmell Jones. His orchestra had great success at the Monterey Jazz Festivals, starting in 1963.

Wilson reconnected with Detroit when he signed with Mack Avenue records in 2003 and released five highly acclaimed recordings, including New York, New Sound and Detroit. The latter featured a six-part suite commissioned by the Detroit Jazz Festival. He often performed at the Detroit festival and his audiences were amazed at his creative spark and vitality as he moved into his 90s. He will be sorely missed.

Charles Moore was one of the founders of the Artists’ Workshop in late 1964 and a member of the house band, the Detroit Contemporary Five/Four. One of the goals of the Workshop was the integration of the arts, so music was featured along with poetry readings, film, paintings, and photo exhibits. At one point the Workshop published a magazine co-edited by Moore and John Sinclair. The Contemporary Five/Four had changing personnel over the next five years, but Moore was always the leader. The Workshop also had a larger group, the Music Ensemble, which presented a “Concerto for Charles Moore” (by Jim Semark) in its first concert in March of 1965 and featured Moore with a larger band led by Semark and Lyman Woodard, plus a chorus. These groups never recorded, but Moore had his first chance with the Contemporary Jazz Quintet led by pianist Kenny Cox in 1968. The group recorded two albums for Blue Note, which were packaged together in a 2007 re-release, Introducing Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet.

After moving to Los Angeles Moore received a Ph.D. in musicology at UCLA and started a collaboration with percussionist Adam Rudolph with whom he founded the Eternal Wind ensemble. The ensemble recorded on Flying Fish records in the 1980’s, and sometimes with Detroit tenor legend Yusef Lateef on Lateef’s YAL label. They performed at the 2007 Detroit Jazz Festival. Moore’s last recording is probably one with guitarist Wayne Kramer and the Lexington Art Ensemble.