Clarence Horatio “Big” Miller, was an American-born blues musician. Born on December 18th 1922, in Sioux City, Iowa, Miller studied and played the trombone, and was an educator. He left the United States because of growing racial tensions and settled in Vancouver and then later Edmonton, eventually passing away in his adopted hometown of Edmonton in 1992. He led a variety of small blues and jazz bands around western Canada, but performed on a national scale with Phil Nimmons’ band, Nimmons ‘N’ Nine Plus Six. He continued to travel abroad as a soloist, working with jazz legends such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, and Dizzy Gillespie. Miller played a huge role in the growth of the Edmonton Jazz Society, and helped organize Edmonton’s Jazz City Festival. He was the subject of a 1980 documentary “Big and the Blues” which was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. While living in Canada, he recorded many successful albums, including Jazz Canada Montreux with the Tommy Banks Orchestra which would go on to win a Juno Award in 1979. He also had a short side career as an actor, appearing in Big Mad Eater, A Name for Evil, and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World. He taught at the Banff Centre and Grant MacEwan College and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Athabasca University.