20th-century American male musicians

Edward "Corky" Cornelius (December 3, 1914 – August 3, 1943) was an American jazz trumpeter.
Cornelius's father was a drummer who worked regionally in dance bands in Texas. He was born in Indiana and raised in Binghamton, New York, and began his career in the early 1930s, playing with Les Brown, Buddy Rogers, and Frank Dailey. He joined Benny Goodman's band early in 1939, and went with Gene Krupa when the drummer split off to form his own group.
While there, Cornelius met singer Irene Daye, whom he married soon after. He played with the Casa Loma Orchestra from 1941 until 1943, when he died suddenly of kidney failure. His widow, Daye, married Charlie Spivak, in 1950.

Barney Liddell (August 13, 1921 – May 5, 2003) was an American big band musician from television's The Lawrence Welk Show, his instrument was the trombone.

Cal Collins (May 5, 1933 – August 27, 2001) was an American jazz guitarist.
Born in Medora, Indiana, United States, Collins first played the mandolin professionally as a bluegrass musician in the early 1950s. After service in the Army, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and switched to jazz guitar after hearing swing guitarists Charlie Christian, Irving Ashby, and Oscar Moore. He played in Cincinnati for twenty years.Benny Goodman hired him in 1976 at the age of 43. He spent three years with the Goodman orchestra and then three years making albums for Concord Jazz. As a leader and sideman, he worked with Scott Hamilton, Warren Vache, Rosemary Clooney, Ross Tompkins, Woody Herman, John Bunch, and Marshal Royal.In the early 1980s, Collins returned to Cincinnati and slowed down his career. He joined the Masters of the Steel String Guitar Tour in 1993 with Jerry Douglas and Doc Watson and recorded his last album in 1998. In 2001, he died of liver failure.

Donald Clayborn Sleet (November 27, 1938 – December 31, 1986) was an American jazz trumpeter. He was a member of Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars and Lenny McBrowne and the Four Souls. Widely considered a gifted musician, compared to the likes of Art Farmer and Kenny Dorham, Sleet had a short career as a result of his drug abuse, recording only one album as a leader.

Phillip Earl Niblock (October 2, 1933 – January 8, 2024) was an American composer, filmmaker, and videographer. In 1985, he was appointed director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel branch in Ghent, Belgium.

Charles Richard Cathcart (November 6, 1924 – November 8, 1993) was an American Dixieland trumpet player who was best known as a member of The Lawrence Welk Show in which he appeared from 1962 to 1968.
Cathcart was born in Michigan City, Indiana, United States. He was a trumpeter for the U.S. Army Air Force Band and a member of big bands led by Bob Crosby, Ben Pollack, and Ray Noble.After World War II, he moved to Los Angeles. His friend Jack Webb was playing the part of trumpeter Pete Kelly in the movie Pete Kelly's Blues and told Cathcart he should supply the music. The band from the movie stayed together in the 1950s for performances and recordings under the name Pete Kelly's Big Seven. Cathcart also supplied music for the TV show Dragnet, which starred Jack Webb as Joe Friday. He spent much of his career as a musician on The Lawrence Welk Show. On the Welk show, he met Peggy Lennon, a singer with the Lennon Sisters, and the two married.

Richard Louis Holler (born October 16, 1934) is an American songwriter, pianist, and performer, best known as the writer of the folk-pop standard "Abraham, Martin and John". The song has been recorded by numerous artists including Dion, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Kenny Rogers, Emmylou Harris, Andy Williams, Marvin Gaye, Whitney Houston, and Moms Mabley, among others.

Charles "Buddy" Montgomery (January 30, 1930 – May 14, 2009) was an American jazz vibraphonist and pianist. He was the younger brother of Wes and Monk Montgomery, a guitarist and bassist respectively.
Buddy and brother Monk formed The Mastersounds in the late 1950s and produced ten recordings. When The Mastersounds disbanded, Monk and Buddy joined their brother Wes on a number of Montgomery Brothers recordings, which were mostly arranged by Buddy. They toured together in 1968, and it was in the middle of that tour that Wes died. Buddy continued to compose, arrange, perform, produce, teach and record, producing nine recordings as a leader.

J. J. Johnson (January 22, 1924 – February 4, 2001), born James Louis Johnson and also known as Jay Jay Johnson, was an American jazz trombonist, composer and arranger.
Johnson was one of the earliest trombonists to embrace bebop.

David "Buck" Wheat (March 19, 1922 – June 15, 1985) was an American folk and jazz musician. The Texas-born Wheat was a guitarist and bass player with the dance bands of the era, playing at the Chicago Playboy Jazz Festival 1959 in The Playboy Jazz All Stars and the Chet Baker Trio. In the winter of 1957, he was a jazz guitarist with Baker's Trio. Though most of Baker's material was recorded in Los Angeles, "Embraceable You", "There's a Lull in My Life" and "My Funny Valentine" are rare examples of Baker recording in New York. The format is also unusual for him, just Baker's vocals (no trumpet) accompanied by only Wheat on nylon string acoustic guitar and bassist Russ Savakus.
Wheat wrote music with his partner, lyricist Bill Loughborough. Their composition "Better Than Anything" is part of the live acts of Lena Horne, Phylicia Rashad, Irene Kral, Bob Dorough, Tuck and Patti and Al Jarreau. Their next song, "Coo Coo U", was recorded both by The Kingston Trio and by The Manhattan Transfer. Wheat embraced George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for improvization; he would sing scales while playing a guitar accompaniment based on the theory.