Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Squire Gersh was born William Girsback on May 13, 1913 in Astoria, Oregon. In the Thirties, he played in San Francisco, California with Lu Watters, Bob Scobey, Turk Murphy, and Mutt Carey. He went on to record with Watters in 1942 and with Murphy multiple times between 1950 and 1966.
Gersh’s agile double bass playing may be heard on Some Of These Days, recorded by Darnell Howard’s Frisco Footwarmers in San Francisco in 1950. He replaced bassist Arvell Shaw and accompanied Louis Armstrong on recording sessions with is All-Stars in “The Edsel Show” on October 13, 1957 and went on a tour of South America with Armstrong between 1956–58.
He then went on to play in Europe with Kid Ory and Red Allen in 1959, along with drummer Alton Redd and pianist Cedric Haywood making up the rhythm section. Never leading his own recordings, little is known about the musician from the Sixties until his death. Tubist and double-bassist Squire Gersh, who played in the traditional jazz genre, passed away on April 27, 1983 in San Francisco.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Williams, Jr. was born on March 13, 1908 in Memphis, Tennessee he learned to play the violin as a child, switched to tuba as a teenager, playing both tuba and the stand-up bass while playing in regional territory bands in the southern states.
A move to New York City in 1936, had him working with jazz luminaries such as Red Allen, Buster Bailey, Sidney Bechet, Benny Carter, J.C. Higginbotham, Billie Holiday, Harry James, James P. Johnson, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Frankie Newton, and Teddy Wilson.
In the early 1940s he also played in the bands of Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong before joining Teddy Wilson’s band once again. He and Edmond Hall recorded together in 1944 and worked together until 1947. Following this collaboration, Williams played with Tab Smith and then with Johnny Hodges in the mid-1950s.
From the 1960s onward, Williams was less active, though he worked occasionally with musicians such as Buddy Tate in 1968, Red Richards in the Seventies, and Bob Greene from 1978 to 1982. Tubist and double-bassist Johnny Wiliams Jr. performed with the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band from 1978 to1998 until he had a stroke and passed away later that year on October 23, 1998 in New York City.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herb Bushler was born March 7, 1939 in New York City and played piano and tuba in his youth before picking up double bass. Classically trained in bass he has performed with symphony orchestras in this capacity. In 1966 he began a longtime association with ballet and film composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.
He worked extensively in jazz idioms in the 1960s and 1970s, including David Amram, Ted Curson, Blossom Dearie, Tony Williams, and Paul Winter. He first played with Gil Evans in 1967, an association that would continue on and off until 1981.
Other work during the 1970s included sessions with Enrico Rava, Joe Farrell, Ryo Kawasaki, David Sanborn, and Harold Vick. He played with The Fifth Dimension in the 1960s and has also worked with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Billy Harper, Les McCann, Joe Chambers, and Howard Johnson. Bassist Herb Bushler, never recording as a leader, continues to perform and record utilizing both double bass and electric bass.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John William Barber was born May 21, 1920 in Hornell, New York outside Rochester and was also known as Bill Barber or Billy Barber. He started playing tuba in high school and studied at the Juilliard School of Music. After graduating, he travelled west to Kansas City, Missouri, where he played with the Kansas City Philharmonic and various ballet and theatre orchestras.[1]
Joining the United States Army in 1942 he played in Patton’s 7th army band for three years. After the war, he started playing jazz, joining Claude Thornhill’s big band where he became friends with trombonist Al Langstaff, Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan in 1947. Bill became one of the first tuba players to play in a modern jazz style, playing solos and participating in intricate ensemble pieces.
Barber became a founding member of Miles Davis’s nonet in 1949 in what became known as the Birth of the Cool recording sessions. He then worked in theatre pit orchestration of the King and I, Paradiso and the City Center Ballet before joining up with Davis and Gil Evans in 1957 to record albums such as Sketches of Spain, Miles Ahead, Quiet Nights and Porgy and Bess. He also performed on John Coltrane’s album Africa/Brass.
During the 1950s and Sixties her recorded several albums with Art Blakey, Bob Brookmeyer, Kenny Burrell, Gigi Gryce, Slide Hampton and Pete Rugolo. Completing a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music he chose to go into education and became an elementary school music teacher in Copiague, New York. He continued to play where possible including with the Goldman Band.
In 1992, he recorded and toured with a nonet led by Gerry Mulligan, reworking material from Birth of the Cool. From 1998 to 2004 he was part of The Seatbelts, New York musicians who played the music of the Japanese anime Cowboy Bebop.
Tubist Bill Barber, who never led a recording session, passed away of heart failure in Bronxville, New York on June 18, 2007.
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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.
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