Don Butterfield
| Don Butterfield | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Donald Butterfield |
| Born | April 1, 1923 |
| Origin | Centralia, Washington, USA |
| Died | November 27, 2006 (aged 83) Clifton, New Jersey |
| Genres | Jazz, classical |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments | Tuba |
| Years active | 1940s–2005 |
| Labels | Atlantic |
| Associated acts | Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Charles Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Jimmy Smith, many others |
Don Butterfield (April 1, 1923 – November 27, 2006) was an American jazz and classical tuba player.
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.)
...
Wikipedia