Jazz24
  • Home
  • Listen Live
  • Playlist
  • Features
    • KNKX Studio Sessions
    • Jazz Northwest
    • Jazz Night In America
    • NPR Music
    • 50 Greatest Jazz Vocals
    • The Jazz 100
  • Support Jazz24
  • Connect With Jazz24
    • Instagram
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • YouTube
  • Streaming Help
    • Ways To Listen
    • Listener FAQ
    • Contact
  • About Us

Heir To A Jazz Legacy, A Trumpeter Finds His Own Way

Written by NPR Staff from NPR

  • ListenAudioDownload

Jazz composer and trumpeter Theo Croker opens his new album, AfroPhysicist, with an ode to his grandfather: New Orleans jazz great Doc Cheatham. The thing is, Croker didn’t grow up in New Orleans or any other jazz hub. He’s from Jacksonville, Fla., and he was just a child when his grandfather died in 1997. It wasn’t until his grandfather’s memorial services — attended by jazz legends — that he decided to join the legacy.

“I didn’t understand what a legacy was,” he tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. “I just wanted to play the trumpet ’cause it was loud. I was a 12-year-old going to jazz concerts and listening to jazz CDs. It was very strange.”

Croker went on to study at the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory. One of his early gigs out of school took him down an unexpected path — to Shanghai, and a new approach.

“For the longest time I was a jazz purist,” Croker says. “When I left the United States and I would see how people started to react to different kinds of music, then I started to become influenced by other kinds of music.”

He stayed in China for almost seven years, where he played with everyone — jazz ensembles, salsa bands, DJs — and met legendary jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater, who produces and sings on AfroPhysicist. Hear more about where those early connections took his career at the audio link, and check out a handpicked playlist of his favorite songs on Spotify.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
smartSpeaker
Insta

Listen on the Jazz24 App

iOS app on the App Store Android app on Google Play
© 2017 Jazz24 is brought to you by KNKX Public Radio