Tommy Pederson

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Pullman Gerald "Tommy" Pederson (born August 15, 1920 in Watkins (Minnesota) , † January 16, 1998 ) was an American swing jazz trombonist . He also played and composed classical music.

Pederson took drums, piano and violin lessons and began playing the trombone at the age of 13, starting out in 1940 as a member of Orrin Tucker's touring band . From 1940 to 1945 he was with Gene Krupa and also with Red Norvo , Woody Herman , Tommy Dorsey (1943) and Charlie Barnet (1944, 1946). In his big band days he was not only a soloist but also arranged. In 1946 he finally moved to Los Angeles and from 1948 worked for twenty years as a freelance, busy studio musician. He turned down offers to join the film studio orchestra. From 1946 to 1948 he directed the Tommy Pedersen Orchestra , with whom he toured and which performed regularly at the Palladium in Hollywood. Tenor saxophonist Corky Corcoran and Billie Rogers (trumpet, vocals) played there. He worked a lot for television and film (e.g. Cleopatra and The Music Man ). For the film The Gene Krupa Story he played the trombone solos for Tommy Dorsey. During this time he was married to Kathryn Audrey Reed, the future wife of the director Robert Altman .

He has recorded with Krupa, Barnet, Boyd Raeburn , Benny Goodman (1946, broadcast), Georgie Auld , Spike Jones , Nelson Riddle , Billy May , Frank Sinatra , Nat King Cole , Peggy Lee , Rosemary Clooney and the Four Freshmen . In the late 1960s he played with Doc Severinsen . In the 1970s until 1986 he played again in big bands by Orrin Tucker, Tex Beneke , Freddie Martin , Billie Vaughn .

He also wrote many compositions for trombone, e. B. the three concerts Blue Topaz, Cogent Caprice, The Orators and Ensemble Works of two to twenty trombones. In the 1950s he took composition lessons from Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and then arranged piano works for trombone. The catalog of his compositions includes over 300 titles. He tried out some of his compositions with the band Hoyt's Garage in the 1960s to 1980s, which consisted of studio musicians in Los Angeles. He was particularly active as a composer in the early 1970s. Pederson was involved in 342 recording sessions from 1942 to 1968, most recently as the accompanist of Nancy Wilson in the Jimmy Jones Orchestra.

1986 to 1997 he had his own practice band The Terrible Tempered Trombones (alluding to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier), which also performed locally in Los Angeles. From 1991 he lived in the Casa Glendale retirement home.

literature

  • Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler, Christian Pfarr: Reclam's Jazz Guide . 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-010355-X .
  • Michelle Poland Devlin The contributions of Tommy Pederson (1920-1998) to trombone performance and literature in the Twentieth Century , Dissertation, University of North Carolina 2007, online

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Out of admiration for Dorsey, he also adopted his stage name, biography in Devlin's dissertation
  2. ^ Obituary for Kathryn Reed Altman in The New York Times
  3. ↑ Tom Lord Jazz Discography (Online)
personal data
SURNAME Pederson, Tommy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pederson, Pullman Gerald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz trombonist
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Watkins, Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1998