Copeland, Ray (M.)
(Norfolk, VA, 17 July 1926 - New York, 18 May 1984)
Trumpeter, flugelhorn player, composer, and teacher
He studied classical trumpet and in his teens played with
groups in Brooklyn. He toured with Mercer Ellington
(1947-8) and Al Cooper's Savoy Sultans (?1948-9), but
during the early 1950s worked only part-time as a trumpeter, for Andy Kirk, Sy Oliver, and others. He was featured in the film Kiss her
Goodbye (1959), and in the late 1950s played bop and swing with Lionel Hampton,
Randy Weston, Oscar Pettiford, and others. He was
also a member of the Roxy Theater Orchestra in New
York (1959-61), and played with Louie Bellson and Pearl Bailey (1962-4) and Ella Fitzgerald
(1965). In 1966 he rejoined Weston, with whom he toured Africa
(under the auspices of the US State Department) in 1967 and Morocco
in 1970, performed at the Newport Jazz Festival (1973), and continued to play
at intervals into the 1980s. He also toured Europe with Thelonious Monk (1968). During the 1970s Copeland led his
own orchestras in the New York
area and devoted time to composition; his Classical Jazz Suite in Six Movements
was given its première at Lincoln Center
in 1970. He also worked in Broadway shows, and in 1974
toured Europe with a revue, The Musical Life of Charlie
Parker. Active as a teacher, Copeland gave many jazz workshops and courses on
jazz history; he published The Ray Copeland Method and Approach to the Creative
Art of Jazz Improvisation (St. Albans, NY, 1974). From 1979 he taught at Hampshire
College.
André Barbera
The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, © Macmillan Reference Ltd
1988