Music database

Musician

Don Butterfield

Don Butterfield - © www.iteaonline.org

born on 1/4/1923 in Centralia, WA, United States

died on 27/11/2006 in Cedar Grove, NJ, United States

Don Butterfield

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Don Butterfield

Don Butterfield (April 1, 1923 November 27, 2006) was an American jazz and classical tuba player.

Biography

Butterfield took up tuba in high school. He wanted to play trumpet, but 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, on albums by Jackie Gleason until he became a full time member at the Radio City Music Hall.

In the 1950s, Butterfield 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.

In the 1970s he worked as a session musician. He played on recordings for a variety of artists and on television and film soundtracks, including The Godfather Part II.

The Grove dictionary of music calls Butterfield's playing style, "uncommonly florid, a skill that made him of value as a jazz musician... He was one of the first modern jazz players who, rather than simply marking out the bass line, rediscovered the possibility of bringing to the instrument a facility akin to that of a trumpeter."

Butterfield suffered a stroke in 2005, which left him unable to play, and he passed in 2006 from a stroke-related illness.

Discography

As sideman

With Maynard Ferguson

  • Blues Roar (Mainstream, 1965)

With Cannonball Adderley

  • African Waltz (Riverside, 1961)
  • Domination (Capitol, 1965)

With Nat Adderley

  • Autobiography (Atlantic, 1964)

With David Amram

  • Subway Night (RCA, 1972)

With Kenny Burrell

  • Blues - The Common Ground (Verve, 1968)
  • Night Song (Verve, 1969)

With Donald Byrd

  • Jazz Lab (Columbia, 1957) - with Gigi Gryce
  • I'm Tryin' to Get Home (Blue Note, 1965)

With Bill Evans

  • Symbiosis (MPS, 1974)

With Art Farmer

  • Brass Shout (United Artists, 1959)

With Dizzy Gillespie

  • Gillespiana (Verve, 1960)
  • Carnegie Hall Concert (Verve, 1961)

With Jimmy Heath

  • Swamp Seed (Riverside, 1963)

With Roland Kirk

  • The Roland Kirk Quartet Meets the Benny Golson Orchestra (Mercury, 1963)

With Arif Mardin

  • Journey (Atlantic, 1974)

With Gil Mellé

  • Gil's Guests (Prestige, 1963)

With Charles Mingus

  • The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (Impulse!, 1963)
  • Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (Impulse!, 1963)

With the Modern Jazz Quartet

  • Plastic Dreams (Atlantic, 1971)

With James Moody

  • Moody with Strings (Argo, 1961)
  • Moody and the Brass Figures (Milestone, 1966)

With Wes Montgomery

  • Movin' Wes (Verve, 1964)

With Lee Morgan

  • Delightfulee (Blue Note, 1966)

With Oliver Nelson

  • The Kennedy Dream (Impulse!, 1967)

With Oscar Peterson

  • Bursting Out with the All-Star Big Band! (Verve, 1962)

With Sonny Rollins

  • Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass (Metro Jazz, 1958)

With Lalo Schifrin

  • New Fantasy (Verve, 1964)
  • Once a Thief and Other Themes (Verve, 1965)

With Jimmy Smith

  • The Cat (Verve, 1964)

With Billy Taylor

  • My Fair Lady Loves Jazz (Impulse!, 1957)

With Clark Terry

  • Top and Bottom Brass (Riverside, 1959)

With The Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra

  • New Life (A&M, 1975)

References

External links

This page was last modified 19.11.2013 00:27:01

This article uses material from the article Don Butterfield from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and it is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.