Jack Sheldon

• Genre: West Coast Jazz
• Hometown: Los Angeles

About

Jack Sheldon is one of the great jazz trumpet players. Besides leading his own groups, he was a busy session player with just about every West Coast musician and vocalist and on a series of Tom Waits records. He mastered the cool approach of Miles Davis and Chet Baker but was always more of a free-wheeling swinger and he excelled at Hard Boppers. He is a very funny performer, often singing and doing ribald monologues, and for a time he even had his own sitcom in the '60s. His latest recordings on the Concord label hold up to his best work of four decades ago.

- Nick Dedina