Clyde Lee McCoy (December 29, 1903 – June 11, 1990), was an American jazz trumpeter whose popularity spanned seven decades. He came from a family that was among the best known in the country, possibly in the world, but not for music -- he was a direct descendant of the McCoys of Kentucky, renowned for their long-running (and, indeed, legendary) feud with the Hatfields.
McCoy was born in Ashland, Kentucky. His family left its home state when he was nine and moved to Portsmouth, OH, and it was while living there that he first took up the trumpet, as well as the trombone. It was on the latter instrument that he played with the Loyal Temperance Legion Band, at age nine. Before his teens he had switched to the trumpet and was playing at school and church events, and at 14 he found work playing on the riverboats, which still plied the rural Midwest, Southern, and border states in those days. By 1920, at age 16, he'd assembled his first band for a two-week engagement at a popular Knoxville resort. Miraculously, though they'd never performed together before their first gig, they proved quite popular, and their contract was extended to two months.
McCoy felt ready for the big time even though he was still in his teens and decided to make for New York City, but the next few years were frustrating as they never quite caught on in the right way, at the right moment to make the next step, whatever it might be, easy. Finally, in 1924, McCoy decided to try for a fresh start by moving the band to California, where they spent a few years working the area around Los Angeles. They started touring, and it was during this period that McCoy started using a mute on this trumpet, creating the "wah-wah" effect that became his signature on the instrument.
In 1930, lightning finally struck when he was appearing with the band at the Drake Hotel in Chicago and performed "Sugar Blues." The audience responded well and soon it was getting carried over the radio, and a recording contract with Columbia Records followed in late 1930 -- the resulting 78 rpm single ended up selling millions of copies early the next year, no small feat in the depths of the Great Depression, which had generally started tearing up record sales. He also enjoyed more modest but still substantial hits with "In the Cool of the Night,""The Goona Goo," and "Wah Wah Blues," and made a successful single release of "Smoke Rings," which was best known as Glen Gray's theme.
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| McCoy & The Bennett Sisters |
He returned to civilian life in 1945 and tried to restart the band, and they still had an audience at the time. He put together a big band that did well for a time, and even cut some important records, including a superb rendition of "Basin Street Blues," expanding considerably on the version he'd cut for Columbia in the early '30s; but gradually their audience declined with the shifting in public taste, and in 1955, the year that rock & roll took over the charts, he disbanded the group.
McCoy and his wife, Maxine Means -- who'd been part of the Bennett Sisters, the vocalists for his band in the late '30s -- opened a club in Denver, where they were frequently featured on the entertainment bill, but it failed to pay its way, and McCoy was forced to resume performing to make a living, fronting a septet. He finally retired to Memphis in the late '70s, and started teaching music, with occasional performances with Dixieland groups around Memphis until his health began to fail in the 1980s due to dementia. His wife Maxine adamantly rejected medical advice to admit her beloved Clyde to an extended care facility. She cared for him in their home in Memphis, Tennessee, where he died on June 11, 1990, at age 86.
Clyde played an H. N. White King Liberty trumpet and also was known for playing “Sugar Blues" on his miniature King Liberty trumpet that is now on display at the Fiske Museum of Claremont University Consortium in Claremont, California. He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 6426 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.
(Edited mainly from Bruce Eder’s bio @ AllMusic)