StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Remembering Clark Terry's Big Bad Band

Among his many accomplishments, trumpeter and St. Louis native Clark Terry was one of just a handful of musicians who worked with both Duke Ellington and Count Basie - fellow trumpeter and St. Louis native Harold "Shorty" Baker is another - and later went on to integrate TV's most famous big band, the Tonight Show orchestra. Given those experiences and more with the big band format, it's not surprising that he eventually formed his own large ensemble.

Terry first put together The Big Bad Band (sometimes styled as "Big BAD Band" or even "Big B-A-D Band") around 1970, and the group was active into the early 1980s. Given the music industry economics of the time, much of their work was in Europe, though their 1975 album Clark Terry's Big B-A-D Band Live at the Wichita Jazz Festival was recorded right here in the USA.

Fortunately, the Big Bad Band's European itineraries over the years included several opportunities to appear on television, and those TV appearances yielded the material that, more than 40 years later, found its way online and will be featured here, starting up above with what seems to be the earliest video documentation available of the Big Bad Band, recorded on August 3, 1973 and broadcast in 1974 by the Norwegian TV network NRK's program Jazz Forum.

Along with Terry, this edition of the group included Richard Williams, Stan Shafran, Oscar Gamby, and Vince DiMartino (trumpets); Sonny Constanzo, Richard Boone, and Jimmy Wilkins (trombones); Jack Jeffers (bass trombone, tuba), Chris Woods and Arnie Lawrence (alto saxes), Jimmy Heath and Ernie Wilkins (tenor saxes), and Bobby Johanson (baritone sax), with Horace Parlan on piano, Eddie Jones on bass, and Grady Tate on drums.

After the jump, you can see selections from a 1978 performance in Lugano, Switzerland, starting with "Tee Pee Time," a Terry composition first recorded as a small group piece in 1967 that subsequently became a staple of the Big Bad Band's repertoire.

In addition to Terry, the band's personnel for this gig included Greg Bobulinski, Mike Vax, Willy Singleton, and Willy Cook (trumpets); John Gordon, Sonny Costanzo, and Dee-Dee Shirley (trombones); Chuck Connors (bass trombone), Bill Saxton and Herman Bell (tenor saxes), Charles Williams and Chris Woods (alto saxes), Charles Davis (baritone sax), plus a rhythm section featuring Hilton Ruiz on piano, Victor Sproles on bass, and Ed Soph on drums.

The selections are, in order, "Jeep's Blues," "Sheba," "Just Squeeze Me" and "Shell Game," followed by "Everybody's Blues," "On The Trail," "Here's That Rainy Day," and wrapping up with Terry's signature tune "Mumbles."

Look for part two, with videos of the Big Bad Band in Paris and at the North Sea Jazz Festival, next week. You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...