Yukl learned to play violin before switching to trombone as a teenager.
Yukl relocated to New York City in 1927, where he took a position playing in radio bands for CBS, and worked with Red Nichols and The Dorsey Brothers.
[1] He played with Joe Haymes in 1934, then with the Dorseys once again; through the end of the decade he also played with Louis Armstrong, Ray McKinley, Bing Crosby, Ben Pollack, Frankie Trumbauer, and Ted Fio Rito.
In the 1940s he worked as a session musician for studio recordings in Los Angeles and for film and television; he played with Wingy Manone and Charlie LaVere in the 1940s.
He appears in the film Rhythm Inn (1951) and is heard playing trombone in The Glenn Miller Story (1953).