William Alonzo "Cat" Anderson (September 12, 1916 – April 29, 1981) was an American jazz trumpeter known for his long period as a member of Duke Ellington's orchestra and for his wide range, especially his ability to play in the altissimo register.
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Anderson lost both parents when he was four years old, and was sent to live at the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, where he learned to play trumpet and learned a thorough training in the rudiments of music. Classmates gave him the nickname "Cat" (which he used all his life) based on his fighting style.
While still a teenager he formed the Carolina Cotton Pickers (1932 – 1936), a touring group consisting of orphanage students like himself. After leaving the Cotton Pickers, Anderson played with guitarist Hartley Toots, Claude Hopkins' big band, Doc Wheeler's Sunset Orchestra (1938–1942), with whom he also recorded, Lucky Millinder, the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, Sabby Lewis's Orchestra, and Lionel Hampton, with whom he recorded the classic "Flying Home No. 2".
Anderson's career took off, however, in 1944, when he joined Duke Ellington's orchestra, at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia. He quickly became a central part of Ellington's sound. Although Anderson was a very versatile musician, capable of playing in a number of jazz styles (Leonard Feather described his style as "somewhere between Louis Armstrong and Harry James), he is most renowned for his abilities in the extreme high or "altissimo" range. He had a big sound in all registers, but could play up to a "triple C" (the highest Bb note on a piano keyboard) with great power (he was able to perform his high-note solos without a microphone, while other members of a big band were usually amplified for their solos). Wynton Marsalis called him "one of the best" high-note trumpeters.
But Anderson was much more than just a high-note trumpeter—he was also a master of half valve and plunger mute playing. Author and jazz critic Dan Morgenstern said of Cat that "he was...the band's Number One utility trumpeter, capable of filling in for anyone else who was not there." He played with Ellington's band from 1944 to 1947, from 1950 to 1959, and from 1961 to 1971, with each break corresponding to a brief hiatus to lead and front his own big band.
In addition to his work on trumpet, he was a very skilled arranger and
composer—he performed his own compositions "El Gato" and
"Bluejean Beguine" with Ellington, and others of his compositions and
arrangements with his own band, for example on his 1959 record album for
Mercury, Cat on a Hot Tin Horn.
He was arguably the greatest high-note trumpeter of all time. His solo on "Satin Doll" from Duke Ellington's 70th Birthday Concert is a perfectly coherent chorus consisting of notes that are so high that it is doubtful if another trumpeter from all of jazz history could hit more than one or two.But as vigorous and technically dazzling as Andersons excursions into the upper register were, they too often overshadowed the fact that he was a trumpet player with a rich and varied palette of expression at his command.
After 1971, Anderson settled in the Los Angeles area, where he continued to play studio sessions, to perform with local bands (including Louie Bellson's and Bill Berry's big bands), and to tour Europe. He received honors from the US Air Force, the Prix du Disque de Jazz, and the City of Los Angeles. In 1973 he published a teaching manual, “The Cat Anderson Trumpet Method: Dealing with Playing in the Upper Register. He died on April 29, 1981 in Norwalk, California, of brain cancer.
(Edited
from Wikipedia, AllMusic, Smithsonian Institution & The New Grove
Dictionary of Jazz)