Billy Butterfield

Billy Butterfield & Andy Bartha: Take Me to the Land of Jazz

by Forrest Dylan Bryant
February 6, 2006

The annals of jazz are full of figures like Andy Bartha and Billy Butterfield. Solid horn players with long, respectable careers as sidemen, they remained on the fringes of popular attention, occasionally brushing greatness but never attaining that status themselves.

Butterfield came close, playing trumpet alongside Bob Crosby, Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman in the swing era. His stint with Shaw included a classic solo on the latter's 1940 recording of “Stardust," as well as time in Shaw's groundbreaking Gramercy ...