Wilbur Dorsey “Buck” Clayton (November 12, 1911 – December 8, 1991 Parsons, KS) was an American jazz trumpet player who was a leading member of Count Basie‘s “Old Testament” orchestra and a leader of mainstream-oriented jam session recordings in the 1950s. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong, first hearing the record “Confessin That I Love You” on Central Avenue as he passed by a shop window.The Penguin Guide to Jazz says that he “synthesi[zed] much of the history of jazz trumpet up to his own time, with a bright brassy tone and an apparently limitless facility for melodic improvisation”. Clayton worked closely with Li Jinhui, father of Chinese popular music in Shanghai. His contributions helped change musical history in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Clayton learned to play the piano from the age of six. His father was an amateur musician associated with the family’s local church, who was responsible for teaching his son the scales on a trumpet which he did not take up until his teens. From the age of seventeen, Clayton was taught the trumpet by Bob Russell, a member of George E. Lee‘s band. In his early twenties he was based in California, and was briefly a member of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and worked with other leaders. Clayton was also taught at this time by trumpeter Mutt Carey, who later emerged as a prominent west-coast revivalist in the 1940s. He also met Armstrong while Armstrong was performing at Sebastian’s Cotton Club, who taught him how to glissando on his trumpet.