Birth name Donald Butterfield Years active 1940s–2005 | Name Don Butterfield | |
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Born April 1, 1923 ( 1923-04-01 ) Died November 27, 2006, Clifton, New Jersey, United States Similar People Ernie Royal, Jimmy Cleveland, Jerome Richardson, Clark Terry, Art Taylor |
Don Butterfield, Tuba "Legend of the Sleeping Bear" By David Uber
Don Butterfield (April 1, 1923 – November 27, 2006) was an American jazz and classical tuba player.
Contents
- Don Butterfield Tuba Legend of the Sleeping Bear By David Uber
- Don Butterfield
- Biography
- As sideman
- References
Don Butterfield
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 mid 1960s, Butterfield took a temporary, nearly unpaid, position conducting an amateur group of musicians known as the Gloria Concert Band, located in upstate New Jersey. During one concert, he passed out the music for Stars and Stripes Forever by John Phillip Sousa. The band had not practiced this piece but were capable of performing it. Except for the very young piccolo player who had never seen the music before. He announced to the crowd that the band would next be playing this piece. The poor piccolo player was about to faint. He further explained that since this was a piece by Sousa, the inventor of the Sousaphone, he would be playing the piccolo part on the tuba in his honor. What followed was a perfect, octaves lower, performance of that part. There is, unfortunately, no recording of that performance. (Maybe impossible to verify, but I was the one sitting next to the piccolo player.)
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.
As sideman
With Cannonball Adderley
With Nat Adderley
With David Amram
With Bob Brookmeyer
With Kenny Burrell
With Donald Byrd
With Teddy Charles
With Jimmy Cleveland
With Bill Evans
With Art Farmer
With Maynard Ferguson
With Dizzy Gillespie
With Jimmy Heath
With Roland Kirk
With John Lewis
With Arif Mardin
With Gil Mellé
With Charles Mingus
With the Modern Jazz Quartet
With James Moody
With Wes Montgomery
With Lee Morgan
With Oliver Nelson
With Oscar Peterson
With Sonny Rollins
With Lalo Schifrin
With Jimmy Smith
With Billy Taylor
With Clark Terry
With The Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Orchestra
With Stanley Turrentine