He told me he got it from the assistant principal, who also was the band director. JW: When did you first pick up a trumpet?ĪS: One day in high school, a friend came home with a trumpet mouthpiece. Like all kids then, I grew up listening to the radio. Both of my parents came from Russia and Poland. My father was a lady’s shoe cutter-meaning he was responsible for the upper parts of shoes. And played it all.Īl Stewart: Yes, in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. And you had to have a strong stomach for the road, since bands often traveled hundreds of miles in one day, which meant you did your sleeping on the band bus and ate on the fly. You also had to have chops that could withstand two or three shows a day, week after week, plus rehearsals.
As a trumpeter in those days, you had to be a superb player and sight-reader. If you weren't great, you quickly found yourself doing something else for a living. In the 1940s and 1950s, there was only one type of trumpeter: exceptional. Over the past 55 years, Al has played trumpet along side the biggest names in post-War jazz, including Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bobby Hackett, Lee Morgan, Charlie Shavers, Buck Clayton, Conrad Gozzo, Maynard Ferguson, Bernie Glow, Gene Krupa to name just a golden handful.
But back in the late 1940s and '50s, he was one of the most in-demand East Coast trumpeters in the big-band business. In tribute to Al, here's my five-part interview with him in 2009 combined into one post: He was 89.Ī superb studio sight-reader, Al was in the trumpet section on Benny Goodman's bebop recordings of 1949, Machito's Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite (1950), Chico O'Farrill's Second Afro Cuban Jazz Suite (1951), Maynard Ferguson's Birdland Dreamband (1956), Nat Pierce's Big Band at the Savoy Ballroom (1957), Johnny Richards' Experiments in Sound (1958), Chubby Jackson's Chubby Takes Over (1958) and Gene Krupa Plays Gerry Mulligan Arrangements (1958). 17 in Sarasota, Fla., according to his daughter, Amy Abigail Stewart. Al Stewart, a first-chair swing trumpeter who recorded on some of the most significant New York big-band recordings of the late 1940s and '50s and toured with many marquee jazz orchestras, died on Oct.
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