Roy Eldridge The most admired—and most intimidating—trumpet player of the generation that followed Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge was called "Little Jazz," both because he was short and chesty and because he embodied the excitement and individuality and risk-taking that is at the music's heart. Eldridge led his own bands, played with Teddy Hill, Fletcher Henderson, Gene Krupa and Artie Shaw, was a fixture with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic and for ten years led his own group in New York until a heart attack forced him to stop playing in 1980. Wherever he happened to be, he played with titanic emotion and amazing speed—a by-product, he said, of having studied the work of saxophonists like his friend Coleman Hawkins. And he loved nothing more than to hear about a young challenger to his supremacy, seek him out and blow him off the bandstand. "He wanted to play better than anybody," remembered one of his most ardent admirers, Dizzy Gillespie, "just to wipe out everybody else." Count Basie Roy Eldridge Ella Fitzgerald Benny Goodman Earl Hines Johnny Hodges "Papa" Jo Jones Charles Mingus Joe "King" Oliver Max Roach Sonny Rollins Fats Waller View press release for more information.