The Best Damn Trumpet Player

A book about Big Band musical personalities caught backstage, on-stage, at rehearsal, in dressing rooms, in back seats of cars, in band buses, radio stations, night clubs, and local park outdoor stages, and high schools. Richard Grudens has asked the right questions of these formidable stalwart performers of the past and present. His interviews with Harry James, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Billy Eckstine, and Buddy Rich are rare gems mostly because these personalities, at...
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A book about Big Band musical personalities caught backstage, on-stage, at rehearsal, in dressing rooms, in back seats of cars, in band buses, radio stations, night clubs, and local park outdoor stages, and high schools. Richard Grudens has asked the right questions of these formidable stalwart performers of the past and present. His interviews with Harry James, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Billy Eckstine, and Buddy Rich are rare gems mostly because these personalities, at this particular time of their lives, resisted interviews and personal studies for one reason or another. Others like Frankie Laine, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Tony Bennett, and Sarah Vaughan, were willing and gracious hosts who revealed valuable information for future historians of the genre to ponder. Each interview and encounter was expertly and charmingly photographed by former news photographer, Camille Smith who was able to catch each subject in his own special way, and some captured on film by Grudens' long-time friend, Gus Young.