Buddy Collette

Buddy Collette changed music in more than one way. As a noted reed man, he played jazz along some of the greatest players in history including his boyhood friend, Charlie Mingus. Buddy was instrumental in the birth of the Los Angeles jazz scene. Beginning in the late 1940s, Buddy set out to break the color line within the American musicians’ union, which at the time separated the black performers from the whites within their directories. Thanks to Buddy’s efforts the Los Angeles chapter of the union was among the first to classify all members as equal.