Harry "Sweets" Edison
Trumpet Solo on
Red Boy Blues

About

Harry "Sweets" Edison's trumpet solo is the first of three solos on "Red Boy Blues," a Lester Young original from the 1955 Pres & Sweets session. Edison takes three choruses of blues in F at a medium 120 BPM, opening the proceedings on this straightforward 12-bar form. Edison's blues playing epitomizes the Kansas City approach—spare, vocal-inflected, and deeply rooted in the call-and-response tradition of the blues. The three-chorus length allows him to build a narrative arc from simple, bluesy phrases to more developed statements. Peterson and Young follow with their own multi-chorus solos.

Harry "Sweets" Edison was 39 to 40 years old at the time.