Charlie Shavers was an American jazz trumpeter. He played with Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, Sidney Bechet, Midge Williams, Tommy Dorsey. and Billie Holiday. He was also an arranger and composer. One of his songs, “Undecided”, is a jazz standard.

Charlie Shavers and his trumpet on radio in the 1960s…

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

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Charlie Shavers on the 1967 WCBS CBS TV NYC show, “Dail M for Music”…

YOUNG SHAVER

Charlie Shavers palyed piano and banjo before switching to trumpet.

Before the age of 16, in the mid-1930s, he was playing in the orchestras of Tiny Bradshaw and Lucky Millinder.

Aged 15, in 1935, he played in the trumpet section of Frankie Fairfax’s Campus Club Orchestra with Dizzy Gillespie and Carl (Bama) Warwick.

In 1936, he joined John Kirby’s Sextet as trumpet soloist and arranger. He was only 16, but gave his birth date as 1917 (he was born in 1920) to avoid child labor laws.

Shavers’s arrangements and solos helped make Kirby’s band one of the most commercially successful and imitated of its day. In 1937, he performed with Midge Williams and her Jazz Jesters.

Charlie Shavers on a 1950s Dorsey Brothers Stage Show…

YOUNG BLADE

In 1944, Shavers was playing sessions in Raymond Scott’s CBS staff orchestra, which you’ll here on this week’s Phantom Dancer.

He left John Kirby’s band in 1945 to join Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra, with whom he toured and recorded, off and on, until Dorsey died in 1956.

In 1949, he sang and played the hit “The Hucklebuck” with the Dorsey Orchestra. You’ll hear him sing “Mt Daddy’s Got The Gleeks” with the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra in 1956 on this week’s Phantom Dancer.

He played with the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra on all “Stage Show” telecasts for CBS in the 1950s.

During this time he also appeared with the Metronome All-Stars and made a number of recordings as trumpet soloist with Billie Holiday.

From 1953 to 1954, he worked with Benny Goodman and toured Europe with Norman Granz’s popular Jazz at the Philharmonic series, where he was a crowd favorite. He formed his own band with Terry Gibbs and Louie Bellson.

Shavers died from throat cancer in New York in 1971 at the age of 50. His friend Louis Armstrong died while Shavers was on his deathbed, and his last request was that his trumpet mouthpiece be buried with Armstrong.

Charlie Shavers with the Benny Goodman Orchestra playing Sing, Sing, Sing on the Sid Caesar TV Show, 1 Nov 1954…

16 AUGUST PLAY LIST