David Roy Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989), nicknamed “Little Jazz“, was an American jazz trumpet player. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the dominant style of jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.

Eldridge was born on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 30, 1911, to parents Alexander, a wagon teamster, and Blanche, a gifted pianist with a talent for reproducing music by ear, a trait that Eldridge claimed to have inherited from her.

Eldridge led and played in a number of bands during his early years, moving extensively throughout the American Midwest. He absorbed the influence of saxophonists Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins, setting himself the task of learning Hawkins’s 1926 solo on “The Stampede” (by Fletcher Henderson‘s Orchestra) in developing an equivalent trumpet style.

Eldridge left home after being expelled from high school in ninth grade, joining a traveling show at the age of sixteen; the show soon folded, however, and he was left in Youngstown, Ohio. He was then picked up by the “Greater Sheesley Carnival,” but returned to Pittsburgh after witnessing acts of racism in Cumberland, Maryland that significantly disturbed him. Eldridge soon found work leading a small band in the traveling “Rock Dinah” show, his performance therein leading swing-era bandleader Count Basie to recall young Roy Eldridge as “the greatest trumpet I’d ever heard in my life.” Eldridge continued playing with similar traveling groups until returning home to Pittsburgh at the age of 17.

At the age of 20, Eldridge led a band in Pittsburgh, billed as “Roy Elliott and his Palais Royal Orchestra”, the agent intentionally changing Eldridge’s name because “he thought it more classy.” Roy left this position to try out for the orchestra of Horace Henderson, younger brother of famed New York City bandleader Fletcher Henderson, and joined the ensemble, generally referred to as The Fletcher Henderson Stompers, Under the Direction of Horace Henderson. Eldridge then played with a number of other territory bands, staying for a short while in Detroit before joining Speed Webb‘s band which, having garnered a degree of movie publicity, began a tour of the Midwest. Many of the members of Webb’s band, annoyed by the leader’s lack of dedication, left to form a practically identical group with Eldridge as bandleader. The ensemble was short-lived, and Eldridge soon moved to Milwaukee, where he took part in a celebrated cutting contest with trumpet player Cladys “Jabbo” Smith, with whom he later became good friends.