Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don Butterfield was born on April 1, 1923 in Centralia, Washington and though he wanted to play trumpet in high school, the band director assigned him to tuba instead. After serving in the U.S. Military from 1942-46 he went on to study the instrument at the Juilliard School.
Butterfield started his professional career in the late 1940s playing for the CBS and NBC radio networks. He played in orchestras, including the American Symphony and on albums by Jackie Gleason until he became a full time member at the Radio City Music Hall.
By the 1950s, Don had switched to jazz, backing such artists as Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Charles Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Jimmy Smith, and Moondog. He fronted his own sextet for a 1955 album on Atlantic Records and played the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
The mid 1960s saw him taking a temporary, nearly unpaid, position conducting an amateur group of musicians known as the Gloria Concert Band, located in upstate New Jersey. In the Seventies he worked as a session musician playing on recordings for a variety of artists, and on television and film soundtracks, including The Godfather Part II.
As a sideman he recorded with Cannonball Adderley, Nat Adderley, David Amram, Bob Brookmeyer, Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, Teddy Charles, Jimmy Cleveland, Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Maynard Ferguson, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Heath, Roland Kirk, John Lewis, Arif Mardin, Gil Mellé, Charles Mingus, Modern Jazz Quartet, James Moody, Wes Montgomery, Lee Morgan, Oliver Nelson, Oscar Peterson, Sonny Rollins, Lalo Schifrin, Jimmy Smith, Billy Taylor, Clark Terry, The Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra and Stanley Turrentine
Suffering a stroke in 2005 left him unable to no longer play the tuba and on November 27, 2006 tubist Don Butterfield passed away in Clifton, New Jersey from a stroke-related illness.
Sponsored By
Bronze Lens
#preserving genius
More Posts: tuba
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ike Isaacs was born Charles Isaacs on March 28, 1923 in Akron, Ohio and played trumpet and tuba as a child before settling on bass. Serving in the Army during World War II, he took lessons from Wendell Marshall.
After being discharged Ike played with Tiny Grimes from 1948 to 1950, then with Earl Bostic until 1953, followed by Paul Quinichette in ‘53 and Bennie Green in 1956. He led a band locally in Ohio in 1956, then played for two years in the trio of Carmen McRae, whom he married late in the decade.
Throughout the Sixties Isaacs went on to work and recorded with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, then with Count Basie, Gloria Lynne, Ray Bryant, Maxine Sullivan, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Harry “Sweets” Edison and Erroll Garner, as well as with his own small groups.
Bassist Ike Isaacs only recorded once as a leader in 1967 for RGB Records. With him on the date were Jack Wilson on piano and Jimmy Smith on drums. He passed away on February 27, 1981.
#preserving genius
More Posts: bass
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert James Neloms was born on March 2, 1942 in Detroit, Michigan and received piano lessons from the age of five and as a youth played in Country & Western Bands. In 1959 he received a scholarship from Downbeat to attend the Berklee College of Music.
From 1961 to 1963 he worked as a studio musician for Motown and afterwards he was active on the West Coast, founding the jazz rock band The Flower in San Francisco, California and also performed with Sly Stone. In 1969 and 1970 Bob returned to continue his studies at Berklee College, then continued to work in the Boston area.
1973 saw his move to New York City and performing with Roy Haynes, Pharoah Sanders, Pepper Adams and Clifford Jordan. Leading his own bands he enlisted Ricky Ford, Eddie Henderson and Bob Mover. In 1977 he became a member of the Charles Mingus band, with whom he went on tour and on whose last albums he participated, like Cumbia & Jazz Fusion and then became a member of the Mingus Dynasty recording of their first album. He worked with Danny Richmond, Billy Bang, Ahmed Abdullah , Allen Lowe, James Newton , Abbey Lincoln , Buddy Tate, and Hamiet Bluiett on the Soul Note label.
In 1981 he recorded his solo album for India Navigation titled Pretty Music. From the mid-1980s onwards he was mainly active as a music teacher, but occasionally performed as a soloist or in a duo with the bassist Vishnu Wood in New York. Currently residing in Birmingham, Michigan, pianist Bob Neloms continues to be active in modern jazz and music education.
Sponsored By
#preserving genius
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lennie Hayton was born Leonard George Hayton on February 14, 1908 in New York City, New York and developed a penchant for the piano when six years old, showing unusual interest in the early classics from the rolls of the family player piano. His parents were keen followers of the concert hall and took their son to many concerts, however, disliking jazz, it was not until he was 16 that he really discovered it. He left high school to become pianist with the Broadway Hotel Orchestra of Cass Hagen, a boyhood friend.
In 1928 while playing at the Park Central, Hayton was heard by Paul Whiteman who immediately engaged by him as second pianist, playing piano and celeste as well as acting as a part-time arranger. He played alongside Frankie Trumbauer, Bix Beiderbecke, Red Nichols and Joe Venuti, and became friendly with Bing Crosby. With the ongoing Depression in 1930, theatre audiences fell to the economic problems and he and Eddie Lang were let go as Whiteman streamlined the band. He then joined the Charles Previn Orchestra, which had a weekly assignment on radio in the Camel Pleasure Hour.
Re-joining Bing Crosby who was enjoying tremendous success on record, radio and the stage, in 1932 they embarked on a tour of Paramount-Publix theatres, working across the country to Hollywood where he was to make the film The Big Broadcast. At each location, he continued to broadcast his radio show until he reached the West Coast. He and Lang provided the musical support to Crosby on his theatre appearances and on his radio shows.
His long relationship with Crosby leading his orchestra rendered the singer’s first hit recordings Cabin in the Cotton, Love Me Tonight and Some of These Days and Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? his most famous recordings. which went to the top of the charts of the day. Hayton became the musical director for the Chesterfield radio series Music That Satisfies, again featuring Crosby. He would go on to be musical director for the singer’s film Going Hollywood in 1933, and continue to work with Crosby until he became a musical director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1940 and guided it through its prime years as forerunner of the movie musical.
He would be nominated for six Oscars for Best Original Music and won two for On The Town and Hello Dolly!, the latter co-composed with Lionel Newman. He arranged the music for 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain, arranged Frank Sinatra’s first attempt at the Beatles tune Something. Lennie composed Apple Blossoms with Joe Venuti, Frankie Trumbauer and Eddie Lang; as well as Flying Fingers, The Stage is Set, Mood Hollywood with Jimmy Dorsey, and Midnight Mood, and co-arranged the Hoagy Carmichael composition Stardust with Artie Shaw, for a 1940 recording on the Bluebird label.
Hayton met Lena Horne when both were under contract to MGM and married her in 1947 in Paris, France. Throughout their marriage he was her music director but the pressures of an interracial relationship made it tumultuous, and they were separated for most of the Sixties. Always a heavy drinker and smoker, pianist, composer, arranger, musical director and bandleader Lennie Hayton passed away of heart disease while separated from Horne, in Palm Springs, California on April 24, 1971.
#preserving genius
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bob Carter was born Robert Kahakalau on February 11, 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut and learned to lay the bass and guitar from his father, a vaudeville performer of Hawaiian heritage. He played in local orchestras from 1937 to 1940, toured from 1940 to 1942 and worked with his own trio in Boston, Massachusetts in 1944.
By 1944 he was working in various groups on New York City’s 52nd Street with Tony Scott, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Stuff Smith and Charlie Shavers among others. Following time spent playing bebop with Allen Eager and Max Roach in 1946, he worked with Charlie Ventura from 1947 to 1949 and again in 1953-54. Between the Ventura stints he played with Benny Goodman in 1949-50.
In 1953, he also worked with jazz guitarist Johnny Smith and appeared on the albums Jazz at NBC and The Johnny Smith Quintet Featuring Stan Getz.
After his second stint with Ventura he studied composition with Wesley LaViolette and later that decade his arrangements were used by Red Norvo, Bob Harrington, and Shelly Manne. He spent two years in Hawaii beginning in 1957, then returned to New York in 1959, where he played with Bobby Hackett. In the early 1960s, he worked in Germany in the Kurt Edelhagen Orchestra. He did little playing after the end of the Sixties decade.
Bassist and arranger Bob Carter passed away in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 1, 1993 at the age of 71.
Sponsored By
#preserving genius
More Posts: bass