When auditioning for another job, he was heard by Dorothy Patton, a young pianist who was forming a band in the Fraternal Club in Flint, Michigan, she later hired him.

This was a break for the 21-year-old, as the Earl Hines Orchestra was not only nationally known but had nurtured the careers of emerging bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

But the real focus in Los Angeles was in clubs along Central Avenue, which were still thriving after the boom years brought about by the huge injection of wartime defence spending.

[5] Their fame began to spread, and Ross Russell managed to get them to simulate one of their battles on "The Chase", which became Wardell's first nationally known recording and has been called "one of the most exciting musical contests in the history of jazz".

Goodman's new group included the young Swedish clarinettist Stan Hasselgard and, initially, Teddy Wilson, and it opened at Frank Palumbo's Click Club in Philadelphia in May 1948.

For a while in late 1948/early 1949 he worked with the Count Basie Orchestra, while also managing to record with Tadd Dameron and in quartet and quintet sessions with Al Haig.

Basie had bowed to economic pressures and broken up his big band, forming a septet which included Clark Terry and Buddy DeFranco.

[3] The only drawback to working with Basie (who had by now enlarged his group again to big band size) was the constant traveling, and Wardell eventually decided to leave so that he could enjoy more home life.

And an unexpected side-effect was that, because work in the LA area was short (for black musicians, anyway) Wardell still had to travel frequently in search of jobs.

In 1950, Gray played a live concert at the San Francisco Veteran's Memorial Hall as a guest with Gerald Wilson's band.

However, there are increasing signs of a lack of engagement around 1951/52, notably in a further live session with Dexter Gordon from February 1952, and it seems that he may have been becoming disillusioned with the music business.

His friends, working with the group of Benny Carter in LA, wanted no police trouble, so they put his body in a car and brought it to the desert.

"[7] James Ellroy's novel The Cold Six Thousand contains a reference to Gray's disappearance and death:[8] according to this, he was murdered by (fictional) racist conspirator Wayne Tedrow, Sr. for having an affair with his wife, Janice.

[9] Jack Kerouac explicitly references Wardell in his novel On the Road: "They ate voraciously as Neal, sandwich in hand, stood bowed and jumping before the big phonograph listening to a wild bop record I just bought called 'The Hunt', with Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray blowing their tops before a screaming audience that gave the record fantastic frenzied volume.