Bill Berry born September 14, 1930

Bill Berry (September 14, 1930 – November 13, 2002)was an American jazz trumpeter and cornetist, best known for playing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the early-1960s, and for leading his own big band.

Born William Richard Berry in Benton Harbor, Michigan, he was the son of a bass player in a touring dance band. He spent his early years traveling with his parents. From the age of five, he took piano lessons at his parents' home in South Bend, Indiana. In high school in Cincinnati, he switched to trumpet and after graduating in 1947, he went out on the road for three years, playing one-nighters throughout the Midwest in a band led by Don Strickland. “All the bands had sleeper buses because they didn’t pay enough to afford hotels,” Berry recalled. “We used to check in once a week on Mondays, just to take a bath.”

                                  

After playing in Air Force bands for four years while stationed in Texas and Iceland in the early ‘50s, Berry studied at the Cincinnati College of Music, then attended Berklee College of Music in Boston before landing a job playing with Woody Herman. In 1960, he joined Maynard Ferguson’s band. While playing with Ferguson’s band at Birdland in New York City in 1961, Berry recalled in a 1997 interview with The New York Times, “this guy came into the club almost every night where we were playing and kept asking me, ‘Don’t you think you should meet Ellington?’ And I’d say, ‘Everybody should meet Ellington.’ Berry finally accompanied the man to the Apollo Theater, where he met Ellington. As Berry climbed down a narrow, winding wrought-iron stairway from the dressing room, he recalled, “This guy stops me and asks me if I can go out with the band later that week. It turned out to be the band manager, and the guy I was with turned out to be Duke’s press agent.”

He became one of the Duke Ellington orchestra's first white members. As Berry recalled, “I went through all the civil-rights era with Ellington. None of the bands were integrated except Maynard’s. Berry once described his old boss as “the only guy I ever met that I knew right off the bat was a genius.” “Duke Ellington changed my whole life,” Berry told The Times last year. “He changed my outlook about everything, and not just music.” After his working with Ellington, he played with The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra and led his own big band in New York. It featured other former Ellington sidemen over the years, and was described as one of “the definitive interpreters of Duke Ellington’s music.”

In 1965, he began his 15-year association with the “Merv Griffin Show” band and ghosted the trumpet playing for Frank Sinatra in the 1966 film A Man Called Adam. He formed his own big band, the New York Band, in 1970. After the Griffin show moved to the West Coast a year later, Berry re-formed his ensemble as Bill Berry and the L.A. Band, which he continued to lead on a part-time basis for the next 30 years. Jack Nimitz, a baritone saxophonist in his band, said "He knew how to get what he wanted out of the band in a very relaxed way — nice and easy, no shouting." 

In the 1980s, Berry visited Japan regularly with Benny Carter and made well-received solo tours in Britain. He had by then permanently adopted the cornet because it suited his use of plunger mutes and was more his size. Among the most successful of his own recordings was Shortcake (Concord, 1978), an album of jazz for small group in the Ellington style; he appeared on many albums by other musicians, including Rosemary Clooney (Everything's Coming Up Rosie), Scott Hamilton (Scott Hamilton Is a Good Wind Who Is Blowing Us No Ill), Jake Hanna (Live at Concord), and Coleman Hawkins (Wrapped Tight). In 1981, Berry began a seven-year stint as musical director of the Monterey Jazz Festival. He taught at Californian schools and colleges and at the same time began directing the Monterey Jazz Festival High School All Star Band. 

Heart bypass surgery in 1995 did not slow Berry down. He continued to travel as a soloist several times a year to Britain, Europe and Japan, as well as playing locally and doing studio work. From 1991 to 2000, he served as musical director and his wife produced the annual International Jazz Party, which brought Japanese and American musicians together for a one-night performance in Monterey and three in Los Angeles. 

His yearlong battle with cancer didn’t prevent him from taking the latest student all-stars on a tour of Japan in August or from conducting them in September at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He succumbed to the disease on Nov. 13, 2002 at the UCLA Medical Center. He was 72 years old.

(Edited from Wikipedia & L.A. Times)