Ray Linn

Raymond Sayre "Ray" Linn (born October 20, 1920 in Chicago , Illinois , † November 4, 1996 in Columbus , Ohio ) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer .

Live and act

Linn, whose father was also a trumpeter, initially played with local bands. In 1938 he became a member of Tommy Dorsey's swing band , with whom he stayed until 1941, when he worked with Woody Herman (1941/42). In later years he worked occasionally with Herman, so in 1945, 1947 and 1955–59. In the other 1940s he played with Jimmy Dorsey (1942-45), Benny Goodman (1943, 1947), Artie Shaw (1944-46) and in 1946 with Boyd Raeburn . In 1945 he moved to Los Angeles , where he worked full-time as a studio musician, he also played with Jesse Price / Dexter Gordon , Billy Eckstine (1947), Nat Cole , Bob Crosby (1950/51) and again with Woody Herman. As a member of the Buddy Bregman Orchestra, he accompanied Sarah Vaughan , Anita O'Day ( Pick Yourself Up ) and Ella Fitzgerald (1956) on their songbook albums for Verve; Linn can also be heard as a soloist on Bregman's jazz album Swingin 'Kicks . During this time he also worked on productions by Shorty Rogers , Milt Bernhart , Les Brown (who recorded Linn's composition "Where's Prez"), Bill Holman , Barney Kessel , Johnny Mandel , Mark Murphy (for whom he wrote "The Way It Was in LA “Wrote) and Red Norvo ( Red Plays the Blues ) with.

In the 1960s he mainly worked for television productions such as The Lawrence Welk Show . In the 1980s he lived in Vienna . Linn recorded eight tracks under his own name in 1946, including “West Coast Jump” / “The Mad Monk” (Atomic); In 1978 and 1980 two more albums were made, the latter in the Dixieland style. In 1981 he received an NEA award. After Leonard Feather , he followed Dizzy Gillespie early on , but later turned more to mainstream jazz and Dixieland.

Discographic notes

• Chicago Jazz ( Trend Records , 1978)
• Empty Suit Blues ( Discovery Records , 1980) with Mary Ann McCall , Eddie Miller , Dave Frishberg , Dick Berk

Lexical entries

• Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler: Reclams Jazzführer (= Reclams Universal Library. No. 10185/10196). Reclam, Stuttgart 1970, ISBN 3-15-010185-9 .
• Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 .
• Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-532000-X .

Web links

• Literature by and about Ray Linn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Scott Yanow , Ray Linn at Allmusic