Red Rodney....

A native of Philadelphia, Red Rodney began his music career at age 15, and he ended up performing in numerous big bands before being inspired by the new bebop sounds of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Red ultimately ended up playing with "Bird" for two years, and many of his fans will recall that the red-headed trumpeter, the only white sideman playing with Parker at the time, was able to help Parker's band get around laws in some of the southern states which forbade mixed bands by pretending to be an albino! That's right, he would often pretend to be "Albino Red," a blues singer.

Red Rodney's career was derailed when he got into drugs and he wound up going to prison several times during the fifties and sixties, where during one stint in Terminal Island prison he was incarcerated along with Charles Manson. Red had also executed many successful cons which would sometimes land him in prison for extended stays, but he would always earn parole. In the 1960s, Red would eventually make his home in Las Vegas, where he began working in the orchestra pit bands at the Flamingo and other Strip casino showrooms during the 60's, befriending celebrities like Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra, heavyweight prize-fighter Sonny Liston and Vegas mob boss Johnny Roselli.

Red eventually returned to jazz in the 1970s, appearing on Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show," and numerous other TV shows. He played the jazz circuit, working his way thru the club scene up and down the west coast. He played with other jazz musicians, including Charlie Rouse, and another old friend, jazz musician Ira Sullivan, with whome he'd recorded with in the 1950s. They formed a new group and began recording again in New York, leading to several new albums, including Live At The Village Vanguard , which became a modest hit. Red’s career rebounded, spurred by the interest of new, younger jazz fans.

In the mid-80's, Red Rodney consulted on Clint Eastwood's Bird, a film bio-pic about legendary jazz musician Charlie Parker, playing his own trumpet solos for the film's soundtrack. During that decade, Rodney was inaugurated into Playboy's Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1990, Downbeat readers voted him in the magazine's Hall of Fame, voting him Best Acoustic Jazz Group leader and putting him second behind Wynton Marsallis -- a former student of his -- as best trumpet player.

Red flew to Europe three times a year to tour. In 1992, he played with the Rolling Stones' drummer Charlie Watts in England, and performed live for the last time in 1993 for President Bill Clinton at the White House, for a television special. By 1993, he had recorded more than 20 albums over his career, including four with Charlie Parker and two with Dexter Gordon. A studio album he had recorded with Sullivan, Spirit Within, was awarded a Grammy in 1982, and Red was also nominated for two other Grammys. He was touring up to 50 weeks a year and took time off to teach jazz music to college students.
In his last years he continued to enjoy a renewed career until his death from lung cancer (due to a 4 pack a day habit), on May 27, 1994, which prompted a memorial from jazz musicians who displayed lit candles in the windows of jazz clubs from New York to San Francisco. His son Mark Rodney, also a musician --there's a photo in the Pics section of Ira Sullivan, Mark and his dad Red -- received numerous letters of sympathy and condolences from Red's fans, friends and admirers, including letters from President and Mrs. Clinton, actor-director Clint Eastwood, and Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts phoned and sent flowers.
Photo 1: Paul Decker
Photo 2: William Gottlieb's portrait of Charlie Parker and Red Rodney, watching Dizzy Gillespie, Margie Hyams, and Chuck Wayne -- Downbeat, New York, N.Y., ca. 1947].
http://www.myspace.com/therealredrodney