Shorty Rogers was a highly respected jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player who became a key influence in the creation of the so-called West Coast jazz scene, but his real talent lay as a composer/arranger. He served his musical apprenticeship in the late 1940s and early 1950s with the likes of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton before progressing to the more experimental, avant-garde style of jazz alongside Texan Jimmy Giuffre, the free form jazz clarinettist and sax player.

Rogers was influenced by the music of Count Basie and went on to form his own ensemble, Shorty Rogers and His Giants. In the late 1950s Rogers was invited to score the music for the critically acclaimed film 'The Man With the Golden Arm' starring Frank Sinatra. For Rogers, this was the start of a long association with Hollywood that led to scoring films such as 'Tarzan, the Ape Man', 'Young Dillinger', 'Fools', 'The Teacher' and 'Dr. Minx'. During this period Rogers left the jazz scene and stopped performing the trumpet in order to concentrate on arranging and composing. He worked on The Monkees' hit 'Daydream Believer' in the late '60s and began to move into TV work scoring music for programmes such as 'The Partridge Family' and 'Starsky and Hutch'.

He made a return to jazz in the late '80s and spent a brief period playing with Britain's National Youth Jazz Orchestra, before he died from skin cancer in 1994 at the age of 70.

Shorty Rogers

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