[1] Having studied music at school under Zelia N. Breaux,[1] Anderson was a professional musician by 1934, playing with the Ted Armstrong band in Clinton, Oklahoma.
In 1939 Anderson returned to Oklahoma City and joined the Leslie Sheffield band that included Charlie Christian, another Zelia Breaux pupil.
[3] Ross Russell described Anderson's style as a trumpeter, during his tenure with McShann, as having "smooth tone and legato phrasing" influenced by previous work with Charlie Christian, in Oklahoma City.
Russell considered Anderson "the most advanced musician in the band after [Charlie] Parker," and described him as an innovator: "the first to play in the new, linear, semi-legato, light-toned style later made popular by Fats Navarro and Dizzy Gillespie."
In 1978, Anderson was encouraged by a group of friends and medical students from Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine, to pick the trumpet up again.