By Maddie Orton
Arts Correspondent
The William Paterson community lost an artist-in-residence, mentor and friend this weekend with the passing of jazz great Clark Terry. Terry was 94.
An NEA Jazz Master and Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award recipient, after serving as a bandsman in World War II, he joined up with some of the biggest names in music at the time — including both Duke Ellington and Count Basie.
He was also the first black staff musician at NBC and later, a mainstay of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show band.
“When he was on The Tonight Show, his sound became something I think everyone in America recognized even if they didn’t know him by name,” says David Demsey, William Paterson University’s Jazz Studies Coordinator.
Terry was an advocate for jazz education.
You know, majoring in jazz and wanting to be a jazz musician was something akin to majoring in alcoholism and drug use,” says Demsey. “And Clark made people realize first that this is our national music.”
William Paterson University will celebrate Clark’s life by hosting a screening of the documentary Keep on Keepin’ On, about the friendship between Clark and a former William Paterson mentee.