Clark Gayton is an American multi-instrumentalist, musician, composer and musicians' rights advocate.
Born as Carver Clark Gayton Jr. to Carver Clark Gayton [1] and Mona Marie Lombard, [2] Clark Gayton is a professional musician (trombone, [3] euphonium, tuba, sousaphone, cornet, keyboards, piano), composer and producer.
Clark studied music with Floyd Standifer, JoAnn Christen, Curry Morrison, Julian Priester, Joe Brazil and Buddy Catlet while attending Garfield High School. [4] After graduating from high school in 1981, Clark received a scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music, where he studied with Phil Wilson, Tom Plsek and Tony Lada. He graduated in 1984 and moved to Oakland before moving to New York in 1987 where he lives to this day. [5]
Since living in New York, Clark has worked and recorded [6] with some of the finest jazz musicians in the world, such as Charles Tolliver, Lionel Hampton, Wynton Marsalis and JALC, McCoy Tyner, The Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Mingus Big Band, Ted Nash and Odeon, Ben Allison & Medicine Wheel, Michael Blake, Brian Mitchell, Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra and Steven Bernstein/Henry Butler and the Hot 9, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, the Count Basie Orchestra, Clark Terry, [7] Nancy Wilson, and Ray Charles. [8]
In the early 2000s he joined the Levon Helm Band and performed at Helm's Midnight Ramblers concerts.
For several decades Gayton has toured and recorded toured with Bruce Springsteen, joining in 1997 as part of the We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions band. He rejoined Springsteen several years later as a regular member of his touring band, playing both trombone and sousaphone.
Clark has recorded or performed with Prince, Rihanna, Brazilian Girls, Steel Pulse, Wyclef Jean, Queen Latifah, [9] Quincy Jones, Sting, [10] Sturgill Simpson, Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Bruno Mars, Bette Midler, Nora Jones, Usher, Steve Van Zandt, Beyoncé, Santana, [11] Maxwell, The Skatalites, and Bad Brains, to name a few.
Gayton is a staple on the New York City music scene often creating a regular series at local bars and clubs including the Parkside Lounge, 55Bar, Bar Lunatico and Nublu. [12] While he has led several bands, most notable is the Jamaican music inspired project Explorations in Dub. [13]
Gayton has appeared in the movies Malcolm X , [14] Sweet and Lowdown , [15] and Kansas City . [16]
Gayton's most recent TV work was playing in the burlesque band on the series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel seasons 4 and 5.
It was reported in March 2023 that Gayton had recently suffered a very serious stroke. A GoFundMe page was set up to help raise money for his rehabilitation.
He is the son of Carver Clark Gayton [1] and Mona Marie Lombard [2] and is the great-grandnephew of the legendary New Orleans musician, Manuel "Fess" Manetta. [17]
The first two professionally trained musicians on his maternal side were Jules and Deuce Manetta who founded the Pickwick Brass Band and played cornet and trombone, respectively. Deuce, trained classically in France, was said to be the first slide trombone player in New Orleans. Valve trombone was the instrument of choice at the time. Their nephew was Manuel Manetta. He began on violin and guitar but did his first paid work as a pianist for Countess Willie Piazza. He played with Buddy Bolden in 1903. By 1910 he had mastered cornet, saxophone, and trombone. Manuel played at Tuxedo Hall with the Eagle band. He went to Chicago in 1913, then returned to New Orleans, played locally for five years. He went to Los Angeles in November 1919 to join Kid Ory. He returned home shortly afterwards and toured as pianist for with Martels' Family Band, then played piano in Ed Allen's Band on riverboats. He settled down in New Orleans where his versatility and musicianship enabled him to work with many bands and orchestras, including Papa Celestin's, Arnold Du Pas and Manual Perez's, and solo work at Lulu White's. [18]
In later years he became the most renowned teacher in New Orleans. He gave occasional public appearances well into his seventies, making a specialty of playing two brass instruments simultaneously. Manuel had a sister, Olivia, who had a son, Lawrence (trombone), and three daughters: Lucille (Clark's grandmother, piano), Dolly (Adams, played all instruments, mother of Justin, Placide, and Gerry Adams), and Gladys (piano). All were born in Algiers. [19]
"Mood Indigo" is a jazz song with music by Duke Ellington and Barney Bigard and lyrics by Irving Mills.
Epitaph is a composition by jazz musician Charles Mingus. It is 4,235 measures long, takes more than two hours to perform, and was only completely discovered during the cataloguing process after his death. With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation, the score and instrumental parts were copied, and the work itself was premiered by a 30-piece orchestra, conducted by Gunther Schuller and produced by Mingus's widow, Sue, at Alice Tully Hall on June 3, 1989, 10 years after his death, and issued as a live album. It was performed again at several concerts in 2007.
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band is a New Orleans jazz band founded in New Orleans by tuba player Allan Jaffe in the early 1960s. The band derives its name from Preservation Hall in the French Quarter. In 2005, the Hall's doors were closed for a period of time due to Hurricane Katrina, but the band continued to tour.
Lee Conrad Herwig III is an American jazz trombonist from New York City.
The Rebirth Brass Band is a New Orleans brass band. The group was founded in 1983 by Phillip "Tuba Phil" Frazier, his brother Keith Frazier, Kermit Ruffins, and classmates from Joseph S. Clark Senior High School, which closed in the spring of 2018, in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans. Arhoolie released its first album in 1984.
We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions is the fourteenth studio album by Bruce Springsteen. Released in 2006, it peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 49th Grammy Awards.
The Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions Band Tour, afterward sometimes referred to simply as the Sessions Band Tour, was a 2006 concert tour featuring Bruce Springsteen and the Sessions Band playing what was billed as "An all-new evening of gospel, folk, and blues", otherwise seen as a form of big band folk music. The tour was an outgrowth of the approach taken on Springsteen's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions album, which featured folk music songs written or made popular by activist folk musician Pete Seeger, but taken to an even greater extent.
Arthur John Baron is an American jazz trombonist. He also plays didgeridoo, conch shell, penny-whistle, alto and bass recorder, and tuba.
Troy Andrews, also known by the stage name Trombone Shorty, is a musician, most notably a trombone player, from New Orleans, Louisiana. His music fuses rock, pop, jazz, funk, and hip hop.
The Dukes of Dixieland is an American, New Orleans "Dixieland"-style revival band, originally formed in 1948 by brothers Frank Assunto, trumpet; Fred Assunto, trombone; and their father Papa Jac Assunto, trombone and banjo. Their first records featured Jack Maheu, clarinet; Stanley Mendelsohn, piano; Tommy Rundell, drums; and Barney Mallon, tuba and string bass. The 1958 album “Marching Along with the Dukes of Dixieland, Volume 3,” lists Frank, Fred, and Jac Assunto, along with Harold Cooper (clarinet), Stanley Mendelsohn (piano), Paul Ferrara (drums), and Bill Porter. During its run the band also featured musicians such as clarinetists Pete Fountain, Jerry Fuller, Kenny Davern, drummers Barrett Deems, Charlie Lodice, Buzzy Drootin and guitarists Jim Hall, and Herb Ellis. The band also recorded with Louis Armstrong.
Manuel "Fess" Manetta was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist.
The Sessions Band is an American musical group that has periodically recorded and toured with American rock singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen in various formations since 1997.
Dixieland jazz, also referred to as traditional jazz, hot jazz, or simply Dixieland, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The 1917 recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band fostered awareness of this new style of music.
"Rocky Ground" is a song written and recorded by American musician Bruce Springsteen. It is the second single from his album Wrecking Ball and was released exclusively in select stores as a limited-edition 7-inch 45-rpm vinyl single as a part of Record Store Day on April 21, 2012.
Larry Stoops, better known as "Steamboat Willie", is a veteran musician of Dixieland, jazz, and ragtime music, specializing in the early twentieth century era of the genres. He and his band perform nightly at Musical Legends Park, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, at the Cafe Beignet.
Live at Jazz Standard is an album by the Mingus Big Band that won the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album in 2011. The album documents a concert at the Jazz Standard club in New York City on New Year's Eve, 2009. The concert and the album commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of songs recorded by Charles Mingus. The band was conducted by Gunther Schuller and included trumpeter Randy Brecker, who played with Mingus during the 1970s.
The Nublu Club is a club in East Village, Manhattan, New York, that was opened in 2002 by Swedish-Turkish saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin. On its 10th anniversary the club's namesake festival presented what it calls the Nublu Sound, a combination of jazz, African, South American, Caribbean, electronic, and dance music. Among the bands associated with Nublu are The Brazilian Girls, Forro in the Dark, Love Trio, and Wax Poetic. Associates who perform there include Butch Morris, John Zorn, Sun Ra Arkestra, David Byrne, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Norah Jones, and Bebel Gilberto.
Born in the U.S.A. Live: London 2013 is a limited edition DVD of a live full album performance of Born in the U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band and was recorded at the Hard Rock Calling festival in London, England, at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on June 30, 2013. The DVD is available exclusively as part of a deluxe edition of Springsteen's 2014 album, High Hopes.
Nublu Records is an independent recording company founded by Swedish–Turkish musician, composer, cultural activist and entrepreneur, Ilhan Ersahin in 2005. It was a natural extension of the "Nublu sound" that developed at the club, Nublu, on New York's Lower East Side, founded by Ersahin in 2002. Capturing the cross-cultural fusion of the times, and embracing the beatnik jazz tradition for which the area has been known since the 1950s, an unofficial family of bands soon congregated around the club, which was known for its freewheeling late night jams. As more and more outfits formed, setting up Nublu Records was a logical progression.
İlhan Erşahin is a Swedish-Turkish musician and bar owner. Raised in Stockholm, he has been based in New York City since 1990. As a musician, Erşahin has performed and recorded with various musicians as well as his own projects/bands, Wax Poetic, Love Trio, Our Theory, I Led Three Lives, Wonderland and Istanbul Sessions.
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