Ed Allen

There are two trumpeters in jazz by this name, but this one came first. Either can be happy to have their names appear early on in any encyclopedia devoted to this genre. Edward Clifton Allen was born in the country music capital of Nashville, but the year was 1897 and the first pedal steel lick was still a gleam in the eyes of someone yet unborn. By the time he was seven, his family had joined the migration to the north and jobs in Midwestern cities; his family wound up in St. Louis, where he began tinkling the piano at the age of ten, switching to cornet soon thereafter. In ...