Bernie Privin

Privin was born in New York City, United States.[2] His father, Alter Privin, was a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe.

Privin was an autodidact on trumpet, and played professionally while in his teens.[2] When he was 13, he bought a trumpet the day after he heard Louis Armstrong perform. He became a member of Harry Reser's band in 1937, and in the same year also worked with Bunny Berigan and Tommy Dorsey.[2] In 1938, he joined the orchestra of Artie Shaw, and then worked with Charlie Barnet, Mal Hallett, and Benny Goodman.[2] He was drafted in 1943 and played from 1943 to 1946 with the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band in Europe.[2] After returning to the United States, he worked with Goodman once more, then became a staff musician for radio and television; he worked with NBC for two years and then CBS, the latter well into the 1960s.[2] Concomitantly he played as a session musician, especially with Goodman throughout the 1950s, as well as for musicians such as Sy Oliver and Al Caiola.[1]

Privin played frequently in Europe from the 1960s onward;[2] he played in Sweden multiple times in the 1960s, and was a member of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, under the direction of Warren Covington and Pee Wee Erwin, for tours of Europe in the mid-1970s. He was a member of the New York Jazz Repertory Company when it toured the Soviet Union in 1975.[1]

He died in October 1999, in White Plains, New York, at the age of 80.[1]

• Brian Peerless, "Bernie Privin". The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. 2nd edition, ed. Barry Kernfeld, 2004.

• Bernie Privin recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings