Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born near Kyiv, Ukraine on April 22, 1920 Benjamin “Buzzy” Drootin moved to Boston, Massachusetts with his family when he was five. His father played the clarinet, and two of his brothers and his nephew were musicians. He began playing drums professionally as a teenager. At age twenty, he toured with the Jess Stacy All-Stars, a band that includeded Lee Wiley.
In 1940, he also toured with Ina Ray Hutton, then joined the Wingy Manone band. From 1947 until 1951, he worked as the house drummer at Eddie Condon’s night club in New York City. He was a bandleader at El Morocco club in New York City, and a member of the house band with his brother Al at George Wein’s Storyville club in Boston. During these years he worked with Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Bobby Hackett, Ruby Braff, Claude Hopkins, Jimmy McPartland, Pee Wee Russell, and Arvell Shaw.
Drootin recorded with Tommy Dorsey, Bobby Hackett, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Condon, Ruby Braff, Anita O’Day, George Wein, the Newport All-Stars, Lee Konitz, Sidney Bechet, PeeWee Russell and The Dukes of Dixieland. In 1968–69, he toured and recorded with Wild Bill Davison’s Jazz Giants and then formed Buzzy’s Jazz Family, borrowing some of Davison’s sidemen, Herb Hall and Benny Morton, plus added Herman Autrey on trumpet and his nephew, Sonny Drootin, on piano.
In 1973, after touring Europe and America, he returned to his hometown of Boston, where he and his brother Al and nephew Sonny formed the Drootin Brothers Band. They played at the Newport Jazz Festival. He played at the first Newport festival and at many festivals after that. He also played at the Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival in the 1980s.
Drummer Buzzy Drootin transitioned on May 21, 2000 from cancer at the age of 80 at the Actors Fund Retirement and Nursing Home in Englewood, New Jersey.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cecilia Wennerström was born on April 21, 1947 in Stockholm, Sweden. Educated at the music academies in Malmoe and Gothenburg. She was influenced by Archie Shepp, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, Elvin Jones, Jack DeJohnette, and Charlie Haden. She took part in a workshop led by David Murray and has allied herself with the music since the Eighties.
From 1979-91 she was the leader of Salamander, a jazz group that toured a lot in Sweden and Europe on festivals and clubs. Salamander made its debut 1981 at the Women’s Jazz Festival in Kansas City, Missouri.
In 1990 she started working with the talented singer and voice art performer Marie Selander in several creative and exciting projects, like for instance Maries composition “Blåst-Tuuli-Wind” that was performed in Kallio-Kuninkala Festival, Finland in 1996. She would go on to tour many times between 1997 to 1999. During the decade she was a member of the all nordic women big band April Light Orchestra
Cecilia is a member of Wennerstrom Larsson Explicity with her husband Sven Larsson. They released their first CD Tussilago in 2011, and she is in the octet LARS 8 which plays compositions by Lars Gullin and other Swedish jazz icons.
Saxophonist, composer and arranger Cecilia Wennerström has won several awards over the three decades and continues to perform, record and compose.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Burton Franklin Bales was born on April 20, 1916 in Stevensville, Montana and began to play piano at age twelve. By the 1930s he was in California playing in hotels and nightclubs. He played regularly in San Francisco, California in the 1940s, with Lu Watters’s Yerba Buena Jazz Band until he was drafted in 1943 and only recorded with that group on one brief session with Bunk Johnson.
After he was discharged for myopia he led his own band from 1943 to 1946 before taking an extended residency at San Francisco’s 1018 Club. He played with Turk Murphy (1949–50), Bob Scobey, and Marty Marsala, then played mostly solo between 1954 and 1966 where one of his regular gigs was at Pier 23.
He recorded extensively for Good Time Jazz, Arhoolie, ABC-Paramount, and Euphonic. Stride pianist Burt Bales transitioned on October 26, 1989, in San Francisco.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Czesław Kazimierz Bartkowski was born April 19, 1943 in Łódź, Poland and has been dealing with music since the age of 6. A percussion class graduate of the Secondary Music School in Wrocław, he made his official debut in 1960 as a drummer for Jerzy Pakulski ‘s Far Quartet.
In 1963, he met Zbigniew Namysłowski and became a musician in his band Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet. He also played with other well-known jazz groups, e.g. with Czesław Niemen’s Niemen Enigmatic or Michał Urbaniak’s Group, and in trios with various musicians. He has also collaborated with the Polish Radio Jazz Studio and Sławomir Kulpowicz’s Mainstream and InFormation bands .
In addition, he participated in the recording of such singers as Ewa Bem, Urszula Dudziak and Stanisław Sojka, and such foreign musicians as: Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry, Joe Newman, Art Farmer, Ben Webster, and the Polish band Novi Singers.
Not only has he performed in Poland, but abroad in India, USA, New Zealand, Australia and numerous European countries. In the winter of 1976, he took part in the jazz workshop Radost ’76 in Mąchocice, Poland near Kielce, which was immortalized in the documentary titled We’re Playing Standard!.
In 1993 he became a lecturer at the Secondary School of Music. Fryderyk Chopin in Warsaw, Poland and the Warsaw Jazz Studio. Drummer and pedagogue Czesław Bartkowski continues his endeavors in music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Freddie Hill was born Frederick Roosevelt Hill on April 18, 1932 in Jacksonville, Florida. He studied cello and piano as well as trumpet. After four years at Florida A & M on a music scholarship and then spent two years in the army that brought him into contact with the Adderley brothers, among others. He moved to Los Angeles, California to pursue graduate studies at Los Angeles State College and gigs with many artists, including Gerald Wilson and Earl Bostic, followed.
Steady studio work gave him security thanks to Wilson, Matthews, Nelson and H. B. Barnum. However, his opportunities to record as a jazz soloist were few. Playing on the Gerald Wilson Pacific Jazz sessions put him in the company of many outstanding soloists. Hill is prominently heard on Leroy Vinnegar’s Leroy Walks Again!!! And Buddy DeFranco’s Blues Bag, which included Curtis Fuller and Art Blakey.
Besides working with Wilson and Vinnegar, Freddie recorded with Oliver Nelson’s Big Band, South Central Avenue Municipal Blues Band, and The Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra.
Leaving the Los Angeles scene in 1971, he married and moved to the desert. By the end of the decade studio work was drying up and trumpeter Freddie Hill transitioned a forgotten man, date unknown.
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