Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Alvin Stoller was born October 7, 1925 in New York City, New York and studied with drum teacher Henry Adler. He launched his career touring and recording with swing era big bands led by Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, and Charlie Barnet. He backed singers including Billie Holiday, Mel Tormé, and Frank Sinatra on some of their major recordings.

His drums may be heard on many of Ella Fitzgerald’s Songbook recordings; on Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook, having performed with the Duke Ellington orchestra itself, alongside Ellington’s own Sam Woodyard. From the moment Frank Sinatra started to record with Capitol Records in 1953, Stoller was the singer’s preferred percussionist and performed on nearly all Sinatra recordings until 1958.

He recorded with Art Tatum, Roy Eldridge, Oscar Peterson, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Benny Carter, Herb Ellis, and Erroll Garner among many other jazz musicians. The 1950s saw Stoller settlling in Los Angeles, California where he became respected for his work in the Hollywood studios which lasted for several decades.

Leonard Feather considered him a first-rate, swinging drummer. Buddy Rich, whom some consider to have been the greatest of all jazz drummers, chose Alvin to play drums on an album in which Rich sang suggests the esteem Stoller earned from his fellow musicians. He was the drummer on both Mitch Miller’s recording of The Yellow Rose of Texas and Stan Freberg’s parody of Miller’s recording.

Drummer Alvin Stoller, though an in-demand drummer during the Forties and Fifties and recorded more than five dozen albums, and eventually appeared to have been largely forgotten, transitioned on October 19, 1992.

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