Ernie Royal

Who was Ernie Royal?

Ernest Andrew Royal was a jazz trumpeter.

His older brother was clarinetist and alto saxophonist Marshal Royal, with whom he appears on the classic Ray Charles big band recording The Genius of Ray Charles.

He began in Los Angeles as a member of Les Hite's Orchestra in 1937. In the following 20 years he would work with Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Wardell Gray, Stan Kenton and recording as a member of the Charles Mingus Octet, with Teo Macero, John Lewis and Kenny Clarke, among others, in 1953.

He led ten albums, most of them recorded in Paris. In 1957 he became a staff musician for the American Broadcasting Company. He went on to play in the The Tonight Show Band and can be heard on the Miles Davis albums Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain.

A resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, Royal died of cancer at age 61 at Mount Sinai Hospital on March 16, 1983.