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Artists
Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame
2000 Candidates
Clarence Aaron "Tonk" Edwards
Tonk Edwards has played with Sarah Vaughn, Dizzy Gillespie, Carmen McRae, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Gruesin, Sonny Stitt, Billy Butterfield, Chet Baker, Roy Hargrove. Not bad, he says, for a guy from Nashville, Ark., where he was born as Clarence Aaron Edwards.
A guitarist, he has played every kind of music from rock-a-billy to Dixieland, and he has performed everywhere from Chaylors Starlight Club in Texarkana to the Montreaux International Jazz Festival in Switzerland. But his first love is jazz. He has accompanied Sarah Vaughn many times, winning praise form critics like Leonard Feather of Downbeat. It’s hard to believe but Tonk was a established musician playing all over Texas, Louisiana and Southwest Arkansas before he learned to read music.
But he recognized his shortcomings and moved to Texarkana to enroll in Texarkana Junior College where he studied music, developing a taste even for classical music. To pay bills, he drove a dry cleaners delivery truck in the daytime and played in clubs at night. That was when he started singing, which he says “brings a new flavor to the gig.”
After completing junior college, he moved to Lubbock and enrolled in Texas Tech University. And he kept playing, mostly country music, traveling to Las Vegas, El Paso, North Dakota. Tonk owes his nickname to Country music. He was playing with Mary and Betty Kirby and had just finished Bill Doggett’s “Honky Tonk,” a real crowd pleaser in Texarkana. Betty started to introduce him but forgot his name so she yelled, “Way to go, Honky Tonk.” The crowd roared and the name stuck.
But Tonk wanted to concentrate on jazz, so when he got a call to come to Denver, he packed up his family and moved. He played with Dizzy Gillespie and later he accompanied Sonny Stitt at the Senate Lounge in Denver. He even opened a club of his own.
In a couple of years, he moved to California where he met Dave Gruesin, who hooked him up with Gerry Mulligan and Quincy Jones. One night with Jones at the Bel Air Country Club, Sarah Vaughn stepped up and sang with the band. She complemented Tonk’s playing and shortly after that he was in her band.
Salt Lake City was Tonk’s next stop; he taught guitar at the University of Idaho for four years. He has made other jazz festivals besides the Montreaux International Jazz Festival. He played with a group called “New Generations” at the Newport Beach Jazz Festival, and organized his own band to play at the North Sea Jazz Festival. He has also played in Belgium, Paris, Genoa, and Victoria, Spain.
In 1996, Tonk moved back to Nashville, Arkansas. He’s made a record celebrating his return home, “Back to My Roots with Jazz.” He teaches at a branch of the University of Arkansas at Hope, and he and his wife, Barbara, whom he taught to play electric bass, perform three times a week at a restaurant in Texarkana. Tonk also gives private lessons at his home in Nashville.
[Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame: 2014 | 2012 | 2010 | 2008 | 2006 | 2004 | 2002 | 2000 | 1998 | 1996 | 1995 | 1994]
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