Carl Smith

About

Jazz trumpet player

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Carl "Tatti" Smith, trumpeter, was born in Marshall, Texas about 1908, but his birth date is uncertain.

Smith's early career included work with the Terrence Holder band in Kansas City in 1931. Subsequently, from 1931 to 1934, Smith toured the West Coast with the Amarillo band of Gene Coy.

In 1936 Smith joined the Count Basie Orchestra and during that year was the nominal co-leader of a sextet, labeled Jones–Smith, Inc., which played in the first recording session for legendary tenorist Lester Young

Smith left Basie the next year and performed with Skeets Tolbert's Gentlemen of Swing until 1940. During 1939 he also played with groups led by Hot Lips Page. In the 1940s Smith was briefly with several other bands, including that of Benny Carter.

After World War II he left for South America, and during the late 1940s and into the 1950s he was playing with groups in Argentina and Brazil. No further information on this unique trumpeter has surfaced since his move to South America, and his whereabouts after the 1950s have not been reported in any reference works on jazz history.

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