Rasey, Uan (22nd August 1921-27th September 2011)

Respected teacher and trumpeter who took the success of his first-place showing at a Montana All State Band contest and converted it into Hollywood gold.

Uan moved to L.A. and played for the likes of Benny Carter, Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman before embarking on an extremely prolific career as an A-list session musician. He played some of the big radio programs of the day;The George Burns Show, The Jack Benny Show, The Paul Whiteman Hour, and Your Hit Parade;but bigger things were in store.

In 1949, Uan inked a contract with MGM and proceeded to accrue a filmography any actor would be proud of, let alone a trumpet player. You have probably heard his unique and versatile stylings on at least one of these films: Ake Hasselgard Story, All the Fine Young Cannibals, An American in Paris, Ben-Hur, Chinatown, Cleopatra, Gigi, The Godfather, High Anxiety, Jaws, My Fair Lady, Mutiny on the Bounty, On the Town, Pennies from Heaven, Rocky, The Sandpiper, Singing in the Rain, Too Late Blues, and West Side Story. He is reputed to have played on over three thousand movie soundtracks. Not bad for a guy who has suffered from polio since 1931. His crutches as permanent a fixture as his trumpet case,

Uan managed to work with some of the biggies: Leonard Bernstein, Les Brown, Hoagy Carmichael, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Doris Day, Frank DeVol, The Four Freshmen, Judy Garland, Glen Gray, Al Hirt, Andre Kostelanetz, Kay Kyser, Frankie Laine, Peggy Lee, Henry Mancini, Billy May, Zubin Mehta, The Monkees, Alfred Newman, Elvis Presley, Andre Previn, Louis Prima, Dellas Reese, Nelson Riddle, Miklos Rozsa, Frank Sinatra, Felix Slatkin, Leonard Slatkin, Barbra Streisand, Mel Torme, Dmitri Tiomkin, Andy Williams, and John Williams.

Some of his famous students include Harry James, Arturo Sandoval, and Jack Sheldon, who was still taking lessons from him at the tender age of seventy-five. In later years, he traded in his crutches for a wheelchair.

Uan Rasey is afforded the kind of reverence reserved for only a handful of musicians, his talent only equaled by his magnanimity, and his virtuosity only paralleled by his willingness to pass along what he has learned to more than a generation of aspiring trumpet players.

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Rasey, Uan (22nd August 1921-27th September 2011)

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