Curtis Fuller カーティス・フラー
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Curtis DuBois Fuller (born in
Detroit, December 15, 1934) is a United States jazz trombonist.
Fuller's parents were Jamaican and died when he was young, so as a
result he was raised in an orphanage. While in Detroit he was a
schoolfriend of Paul Chambers and Donald Byrd, and also knew Tommy
Flanagan, Thad Jones and Milt Jackson.
After army service between 1953 and 1955 (when he played in a band with
Chambers and brothers Cannonball and Nat Adderley), Fuller joined the
quintet of Yusef Lateef, another Detroit musician. In 1957 the quintet
moved to New York, and Fuller recorded his first sessions as a leader
for Prestige Records.
Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records first heard him playing with Miles
Davis in the late fifties, and featured him as a sideman on record
dates led by Sonny Clark and John Coltrane; Fuller's work on the
latter's Blue Train album is probably his best known recorded
performance. Fuller led four dates for Blue Note, though one of these,
an album with Slide Hampton, was not issued for many years. Other
sideman appearances over the next decade included work on albums under
the leadership of Bud Powell, Jimmy Smith, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan
and Joe Henderson (a former room mate at Wayne State University in
1956). Fuller is particularly proud of being the only trombonist to
have recorded with Coltrane, Powell and Smith, all in August or
September 1957.
He was also the first trombonist to be a member of the Art Farmer-Benny
Golson Jazztet, later becoming the sixth man in Art Blakey's Jazz
Messengers in 1961, staying with Blakey until 1965. In the early 1960s
he recorded several albums as leader for Impulse Records, having also
recorded for Savoy Records and Epic after his obligations with Blue
Note had ended.
In the late sixties he was part of Dizzy Gillespie's band, and he went
on to tour with Count Basie and to reunite with Blakey and Golson. He
continues to perform and record.
[Selected discography]
as leader:
Blues-Ette
Blues-Ette 2
Curtis Fuller with Red Garland (1957)
Imagination
Keep It Simple
The Magnificent Trombone of Curtis Fuller
New Trombone (1957)
South American Cookin'
Up Jumped Spring
as sideman:
John Coltrane Blue Train (1957)