Trigger Alpert

Herman "Trigger" Alpert (September 3, 1916 – December 21, 2013) was an American jazz double-bassist, best known for playing in the original Glenn Miller civilian band. He was born in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Biography

Alpert attended Indiana University in the late 1930s and moved to New York City, where he played with Alvino Rey in 1940 and with Glenn Miller soon after. When Miller entered the armed forces in 1942 and was recruiting music personnel for the Army Air Forces, he was able to secure the transfer of Alpert from the Army by swapping several musicians. Trigger became a fixture of Miller’s elite Army Air Forces Band (Special). Over the course of the 1940s he played with Benny Goodman, Bud Freeman, Ella Fitzgerald, Muggsy Spanier, Roy Eldridge, Louis Armstrong, Ray McKinley, Bernie Leighton (1945–46), Frank Sinatra, Woody Herman, and Jerry Jerome. In the 1950s he worked with Artie Shaw, Coleman Hawkins, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, Mundell Lowe, Don Elliott, Gene Krupa, and Buddy Rich. He appeared in the movie, Sun Valley Serenade (1941), playing himself. He released one album as a bandleader on Riverside Records in 1956, entitled Trigger Happy!. Tony Scott, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Joe Wilder, Urbie Green, and Ed Shaughnessy all appear on the album. In 1970 he left music and took up photography. He died on December 21, 2013 at an assisted living facility in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.^[1][2]

Discography

As leader

• Trigger Happy! (Riverside, 1956)

As sideman

With Mundell Lowe

• The Mundell Lowe Quartet (Riverside, 1955)
• Guitar Moods (Riverside, 1956)
• New Music of Alec Wilder (Riverside, 1956)

References

• Trigger Alpert at Allmusic
• 2009 interview with Trigger Alpert

External links

• Trigger Alpert at the Internet Movie Database