Frank Butler, Drums, 1928, Kansas City, MO
Frank grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, where he learned drums in school. During the war years he participated in shows sponsored by the USO. After the war he moved to Kansas City where he studied with Jo Jones. In 1950 he was living in San Francisco working with Dave Brubeck and accompaning Billie Holiday at the Blackhawk and Bop City. In 1954 he toured briefly with Duke Ellington and then moved to Los Angeles where he recorded with Curtis Counce and then worked as a freelance into the late '50s. He was largely inactive from the '60s to the mid '70s. His only recordings as a leader were made in 1977 and 1978. Frank was a superb timekeeper and wonderful accompanist. He was perhaps the only drummer on the West Coast in the 1950s who played in the hard bop tradition of Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones, and Art Blakey. Frank Butler died in 1984.
George Baquet, Clarinet, 1883, New Orleans, LA
At the age of 14, George played in the Lyre Club Symphony Orchestra, an amateur group led by his father, Theogene V. Baquet, a clarinetist who founded the Excelsior Brass Band, a very popular local orchestra. Later, in the early 1900s, he worked with numerous local bands along with many other musicians, who came out of New Orleans during this era and achieved widespread fame. George went to Los Angeles with Freddie Keppard in 1914 to play with the Original Creole Orchestra. In 1917 he settled in Philadelphia where he remained for most of the rest of his life, leading his own groups and doing some work with Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers. George Baquet died in 1949.
