Snooky Young
American musician (1919–2011)
Eugene Edward "Snooky" Young (February 3, 1919 – May 11, 2011) was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known for his mastery of the plunger mute, with which he was able to create a wide range of sounds.
Biography
Young was lead trumpeter of the Jimmie Lunceford band from 1939 to 1942. He played with Count Basie (three stints totalling eight years), Gerald Wilson and Lionel Hampton, among others, and was an original member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band.
His longest engagement was with NBC, where, as a studio trumpeter, he joined The Tonight Show Band in 1967 and remained with them until 1992, when the band was replaced by a new, smaller group.
He was part of the touring ensemble, the "Now Generation Brass", that traveled with Doc Severinsen, which included other jazz greats such as reed man Lew Tabackin, drummer Ed Shaughnessy, and saxophonist and arranger Tommy Newsom, as well as singer Robert Ozn. Young went on to performing live concert dates, corporate events, and headlining shows in the main rooms of Las Vegas. The one-nighters usually occurred on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays, as Severinsen was committed to The Tonight Show on weeknights.
For the Las Vegas gigs, the nucleus of Severinsen's touring band (Young, conductor Steve Thoma, and drummer Paul Line) would commute to Vegas nightly, leaving Van Nuys Airport around 6pm via Lear jet, arriving in Las Vegas by 7pm. A limousine would transport the musicians directly backstage, where they would dress and prepare for an 8pm and midnight show.
The public source identifies “Snooky Young” as american musician (1919–2011). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Snooky, Young and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2004076. VIAF identifies the subject as 84975060. The Library of Congress control number is n78054331. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 2011, 1939 and 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “Snooky Young” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.