Roy Eldridge - You Can Depend On Me



I think I first came across Roy Eldridge's name when reading Dizzy Gillespie's fine autobiography "To Be Or Not To Bop". Dizzy cited him (iirc) as one of his biggest earliy influences. Trumpeter Ian Smith who provided this lick would agree. We spent a fine evening in a South London tavern, where he dictated this transcription to me from memory, almost note perfect. Ian claimed that Roy's top F in the second bar here, was very consciously included, as it was higher than any note that Louis Armstrong had ever recorded at the time. The rest of this lick very clearly shows the way that be bop is heading in Dizzy's hands. This site shows the tune as being recorded on 8 April 1937. This one says 1936, and lets you stream it, and loads of other things from the same era.