Roy Eldridge (born January 30, 1911, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA - died February 26, 1989, Valley Stream, New York, USA) also known as Little Jazz, was an American jazz trumpeter. He was a prominent soloist with the bands of
Fletcher Henderson,
Gene Krupa and
Artie Shaw as well as featured in
Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic events and a leader in his own name. Eldridge was given the nickname
Little Jazz by
Leon Chu Berry. On Wikipedia and the liner notes of i.a.
Little Jazz Jazz the nickname was given by the saxophone player Otto Hardwicke (Otto James Toby Hardwicke, 1904 – 1970) when they were together in The Elmer Snowden orchestra in the early Thirties.