Marcus B. Belgrave

Jazz Musician. He was a jazz trumpet player. He started blowing a bugle at age 4 and a trumpet at age 6. At age 12 he began studying with a local teacher and performing with a concert band that included Clifford Brown (who was a jazz trumpeter). Brown helped him to learn to improvise by writing out a solo for him on the chords to "How High the Moon." After high school he joined the Air Force and played in a service band stationed in Wichita Falls, Texas. During this time he sat in with the Ray Charles band at a concert. In 1958, (while back in his hometown of Chester) Ray Charles offered him a job as second trumpet, he was then 21. His first recordings with Charles, playing brassy solos full of bebop curlicues on "Blues Waltz" (1958) and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1959). He can also be heard to good advantage on "Fathead: Ray Charles Presents David Newman," taped with Charles' band in 1958. He later worked with Gunther Schuller, Carl Craig, Max Roach, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, La Palabra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dizzy Gillespie and John Sinclair, and many others. In 1963 he moved to Detroit. Between 1963 to 1964 he played on numerous Motown sides. In 1970, pianist Harold McKinney, recruited him to work for Detroit's Metropolitan Arts Complex, a federally funded Model Cities program. He created the Jazz Development Workshop in the early 1970's. He also became involved in Detroit's legendary Tribe, a 1970's cooperative that ran a record label and produced concerts. His first album under his own name, "Gemini II," a progressive jazz-rock fusion album, was made for Tribe in 1974. His last public appearance was April 17 in Durham, N.C. as part of a "trumpet summit" with Russell Gunn and Rayse Biggs.