Ulyate, Lloyd (1927 – 12 May 2004)

Trombonist who started out in the big-band era blowing for the likes of Charlie Barnet, Al Donahue, and Jimmy Dorsey.

In 1947, he embarked on a career as a session musician. He is reputed to have played on more than one thousand movie soundtracks. Here is but a handful of them: Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Blazing Saddles, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dick Tracy, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, First Knight, Grease, Hot Rod Girl, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jaws, My Fair Lady, Out of Africa, Porgy and Bess, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Three Musketeers (1993), and West Side Story. He also crossed over into television, performing on the soundtracks of Bonanza, Checkmate, Highway to Heaven, Little House on the Prairie, Mannix, Mission: Impossible, and Rawhide. Oh, and you can add the Academy Awards and the Grammys to his list of credits.

You would think with all this movie and television work, he would have no time for touring, but he did tour Japan several times with Percy Faith and Henry Mancini and played in the 100 Trombones Concert in Tokyo with the likes of Harry Betts and George Roberts in the autumn of 1997. (A DVD of the concert is now available.) As a studio musician, well… Lloyd has recorded with just about everybody, it seems.

He was also a part of recording history. Although he was the immaculate team player, one of his early recordings was a completely solo effort entitled Lloyd Ulyate & His Trombone. It features Lloyd Ulyate playing with… Lloyd Ulyate. The album features trombone-ensemble arrangements of such standards as “In My Solitude” and “The Trolley Song” from Meet Me in St. Louis, and it is considered one of the early experiments in multi-track recording, with Lloyd playing all the parts. So, Lloyd Ulyate got to enjoy what so many others enjoyed: Collaborating with Lloyd Ulyate.

The list of other artists with whom he has recorded is too massive to list in toto, but includes Louis Armstrong, Elmer Bernstein, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Neil Diamond, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Hirt, B.B. King, Eartha Kitt, Frankie Laine, Julie London, Dean Martin, Walter Murphy, Anita O’Day, Lalo Schifrin, Doc Severinsen, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan, and Nancy Wilson.

Lloyd has been a member of several ensembles, including the American Jazz Philharmonic, which recorded one self-titled album, BonesWest ’97, a trombone choir assembled for an album entitled Just Friends, and the National American Orchestra. On 1^st April 1980, the NAO premiered “Betty”, a piece written by David Rose for his wife. The trombone soloist? Lloyd Ulyate.

Back in the day, Lloyd was a mainstay at the Crescendo Club in L.A. with Jerry Fielding, Conrad Gozzo, and Joe Howard. A longtime friend of trumpeter Jimmie Limes, whom he met in 1959 at a place called The Ram Lounge, Ulyate eulogized in an interview by describing one special Christmas during which the two of them trudged up Dollar Mountain, during a snowstorm, to play a Yuletide concert. During the uphill trek, Lloyd’s slide froze. Undaunted, Lloyd played the set in B-flat, which was where his slide had frozen. Now, that’s some cool jazz.

Glen Campbell recordings
Hollywood Smiles (Larry Weiss)
Capitol Records 1A 006 86273

Sources:

Ulyate, Lloyd (1927 – 12 May 2004)

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