Buster Williams
Encyclopedia
Charles Anthony Williams (born April 17, 1942 in Camden, New Jersey
) is an American
jazz
bassist
.
, then played and recorded with the Gene Ammons
/Sonny Stitt
quintet (1960–61). After that, he played in Los Angeles
for the vocalists Betty Carter
, Sarah Vaughan
and Nancy Wilson
(until late '60's), recording with Vaughn and Wilson, and also with The Jazz Crusaders and the Bobby Hutcherson
/Harold Land
quintet while working with Miles Davis
.
In 1969, Williams moved to New York City
and joined the Herbie Hancock
Mwandishi Sextet for the next three years, doubling in acoustic and electric basses, and also worked with Mary Lou Williams
(1973–75) and Ron Carter
's quartet (1977–78). Since the 1980s, Williams has appeared as a sideman in a significative number of session records with notable jazz instrumentalists and vocalists, although opportunities to lead his own sessions are rare.
Williams also has collaborated with Chet Baker
, Kenny Barron
, Sathima Bea Benjamin
, Larry Coryell
, Stanley Cowell
, Gil Evans
, Frank Foster
, Dexter Gordon
, Joe Farrell
, Shirley Horn
, Illinois Jacquet
, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Harold Mabern
, Branford Marsalis
, Carmen McRae
, Frank Morgan
, Hilton Ruiz
, Woody Shaw
, Steve Turre
, McCoy Tyner
, and the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra
.
In 2008, Williams began releasing a series of live albums exclusively for download through his company, Buster Williams Productions. Live Volume 1 was released June 2008.
With Others
Camden, New Jersey
The city of Camden is the county seat of Camden County, New Jersey. It is located across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 77,344...
) is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
bassist
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
.
Biography
Williams has gained prestige among jazz musicians as a solid supportive player. Since the early 1960s, he has made subtle swing, a precise rhythm and superb technique the landmark of his playing. He started his professional career in Philadelphia with Jimmy HeathJimmy Heath
James Edward Heath , nicknamed Little Bird, is an American jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger. He is the brother of bassist Percy Heath and drummer Albert Heath.-Biography:...
, then played and recorded with the Gene Ammons
Gene Ammons
Eugene "Jug" Ammons also known as "The Boss," was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, and the son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons.-Biography:...
/Sonny Stitt
Sonny Stitt
Edward "Sonny" Stitt was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. He was also one of the best-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording over 100 albums in his lifetime...
quintet (1960–61). After that, he played in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
for the vocalists Betty Carter
Betty Carter
Betty Carter was an American jazz singer renowned for her improvisational technique and idiosyncratic vocal style...
, Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."...
and Nancy Wilson
Nancy Wilson (singer)
Nancy Wilson is an American singer with more than 70 albums, and three Grammy Awards. She has been labeled a singer of blues, jazz, cabaret and pop; a "consummate actress"; and "the complete entertainer." The title she prefers, however, is song stylist...
(until late '60's), recording with Vaughn and Wilson, and also with The Jazz Crusaders and the Bobby Hutcherson
Bobby Hutcherson
Bobby Hutcherson is a jazz vibraphone and marimba player. His vibraphone playing is suggestive of the style of Milt Jackson in its free-flowing melodicism, but his sense of harmony and group interaction is thoroughly modern...
/Harold Land
Harold Land
Harold de Vance Land was an American hard bop and post-bop tenor saxophonist. Land developed his hard bop playing with the Max Roach/Clifford Brown band into a personal, modern style. His tone was strong and emotional, yet displayed a certain fragility that made him easy to...
quintet while working with Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
.
In 1969, Williams moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and joined the Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
Mwandishi Sextet for the next three years, doubling in acoustic and electric basses, and also worked with Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records...
(1973–75) and Ron Carter
Ron Carter
Ron Carter is an American jazz double-bassist. His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, along with Milt Hinton, Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. Carter is also an acclaimed cellist who has recorded numerous times on that...
's quartet (1977–78). Since the 1980s, Williams has appeared as a sideman in a significative number of session records with notable jazz instrumentalists and vocalists, although opportunities to lead his own sessions are rare.
Williams also has collaborated with Chet Baker
Chet Baker
Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...
, Kenny Barron
Kenny Barron
Kenny Barron , is an American jazz pianist. He is the younger brother of tenor saxophonist Bill Barron, and known for his lyrical, adaptive style.-Biography:...
, Sathima Bea Benjamin
Sathima Bea Benjamin
Sathima Bea Benjamin , is a South African vocalist and composer born in Johannesburg, raised in Cape Town, and now based in New York City.-Early life:...
, Larry Coryell
Larry Coryell
Larry Coryell is an American jazz fusion guitarist.-Biography:Coryell was born in Galveston, Texas. He graduated from Richland High School, in Richland, Washington, where he played in local bands The Jailers, The Rumblers, The Royals, and The Flames. He also played with The Checkers from nearby...
, Stanley Cowell
Stanley Cowell
Stanley Cowell is an American jazz pianist and founder of the Strata-East Records label. He played with Roland Kirk while studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and later with Marion Brown, Max Roach, Bobby Hutcherson, Clifford Jordan, Harold Land, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz...
, Gil Evans
Gil Evans
Gil Evans was a jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader, active in the United States...
, Frank Foster
Frank Foster (musician)
Frank Foster was an American tenor and soprano saxophonist, flautist, arranger, and composer. Foster collaborated frequently with Count Basie and worked as a bandleader from the early 1950s.-Biography:...
, Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon
Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and an Academy Award-nominated actor . He is regarded as one of the first and most important musicians to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the tenor saxophone...
, Joe Farrell
Joe Farrell
Joseph Carl Firrantello , known as Joe Farrell, was an American jazz saxophonist and flutist. He is best known for a series of albums under his own name on the CTI record label and for playing in the initial incarnation of Chick Corea's Return to Forever.-Biography:Farrell was born in Chicago...
, Shirley Horn
Shirley Horn
Shirley Valerie Horn was an American jazz singer and pianist.-Biography:Encouraged by her grandmother, who was an amateur organist, Horn began piano lessons at the age of four. At twelve, Horn studied piano and composition at Howard University and later majored from there in classical music...
, Illinois Jacquet
Illinois Jacquet
Jean-Baptiste Illinois Jacquet was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, best remembered for his solo on "Flying Home", critically recognized as the first R&B saxophone solo....
, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Harold Mabern
Harold Mabern
Harold Mabern is a hard bop and soul jazz pianist.Early in his career, Mabern played in Chicago with Walter Perkins' MJT + 3 in the late 1950s before moving to New York in 1959. Mabern has worked with Jimmy Forrest, Lionel Hampton, the Jazztet , Donald Byrd, Miles Davis , J. J...
, Branford Marsalis
Branford Marsalis
Branford Marsalis is an American saxophonist, composer and bandleader. While primarily known for his work in jazz as the leader of the Branford Marsalis Quartet, he also performs frequently as a soloist with classical ensembles and has led the group Buckshot LeFonque.-Biography:Marsalis was born...
, Carmen McRae
Carmen McRae
Carmen Mercedes McRae was an American jazz singer, composer, pianist, and actress. Considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century, it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and her ironic interpretations of song lyrics that made her memorable...
, Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.-Early life:...
, Hilton Ruiz
Hilton Ruiz
Hilton Ruiz was a Puerto Rican American jazz pianist in the Afro-Cuban jazz mold, but was also a talented bebop player....
, Woody Shaw
Woody Shaw
Woody Shaw was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer and band leader, often referred to as the "last innovator" in the jazz trumpet lineage...
, Steve Turre
Steve Turre
Steve Turre is a trombonist, recording artist, arranger, and educator. In 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2006 he won the Down Beat Reader's Poll for best trombonist....
, McCoy Tyner
McCoy Tyner
McCoy Tyner is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and a long solo career.-Early life:...
, and the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra
Mel Lewis
Mel Lewis was an American drummer, jazz musician and band leader. He was born Melvin Sokoloff in Buffalo, New York to Russian immigrant parents....
.
In 2008, Williams began releasing a series of live albums exclusively for download through his company, Buster Williams Productions. Live Volume 1 was released June 2008.
As leader
- Pinnacle (1975)
- Crystal Reflections (1976)
- Tokudo (1978)
- Heartbeat (1978)
- Dreams Come True (1978)
- Something More (1989)
- Lost in a Memory (1999)
- Houdini (2001)
- Griot Liberte (2004)
- Live Volume 1 (2008)
As sideman
With Herbie HancockHerbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
- Fat Albert RotundaFat Albert RotundaFat Albert Rotunda is the eighth album by jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock, released in 1969. It also was the first album that Hancock had on the Warner Bros. Records label, since leaving Blue Note Records.-About the Album:...
(1969) - MwandishiMwandishiMwandishi is the ninth album by jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, released in 1971. It is one of Hancock's first departures from the traditional idioms of jazz as well as the onset of a new, creative and original style which produced an appeal to a wider audience, before his 1973 album, Head Hunters...
(1969) - PrisonerThe Prisoner (album)The Prisoner is the seventh album by Herbie Hancock, his final on the Blue Note label, released and recorded in 1969. His next record would be on Warner Bros. Records. Hancock confessed in 1969 that he had been able to get close to his real self with this album than on any other previous ones...
(1969) - SextantSextant (album)Sextant is the eleventh album by Herbie Hancock, and the last album with his Mwandishi Band.-About the Album:Released in 1973 but recorded in 1972, Sextant was Herbie Hancock's first album on Columbia Records. It was a complex, harmonically and rhythmically challenging musical statement...
(1973) - VSOPVSOPVSOP may refer to:*"V.S.O.P." , a song by Above The Law*VSOP , an album by Herbie Hancock**VSOP: The Quintet**V.S.O.P. *Very Special Old Pale, a grade of cognac** Hennessy VSOP...
(1977)
With Others
- Compact Jazz: Sarah Vaughan (1957)
- Boss Tenors: Gene Ammons with Sonny Stitt (1961)
- Way Back Home - The Crusaders (1961)
- Miles Davis Quintet (1965)
- Jazz Profile - McCoy Tyner (1967)
- Lush Life - Nancy Wilson (1968)
- EasyEasy (Grant Green album)Easy is the final album by American jazz guitarist Grant Green featuring performances recorded in 1978, a few months before his death, and released on the Versatile label.-Reception:...
- Grant GreenGrant GreenGrant Green was a jazz guitarist and composer....
(1978) - Another Story - Stanley TurrentineStanley TurrentineStanley William Turrentine, also known as "Mr. T" or "The Sugar Man", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.-Biography:Turrentine was born in Pittsburgh's Hill District into a musical family...
(1969) - Art of the Ballad - Dexter Gordon (1969)
- Frank Foster - Frank Foster (1969)
- AsanteAsante (album)Asante is an album by jazz pianist McCoy Tyner released on the Blue Note label. It was recorded in 1970 and features performances by Tyner with Andrew White, Ted Dunbar, Buster Williams, Billy Hart, Mtume and Songai Sandra Smith providing vocals on two tracks...
- McCoy TynerMcCoy TynerMcCoy Tyner is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and a long solo career.-Early life:...
(1970) - Ms. Magic - Carmen McRae (1971)
- Outback - Joe Farrell (1971)
- The Essence of MysteryThe Essence of MysteryThe Essence of Mystery is the debut album by American jazz drummer Alphonse Mouzon recorded in 1972 and released in 1973 on the Blue Note label.-Reception:...
- Alphonse MouzonAlphonse MouzonAlphonse Mouzon is a well-known jazz-fusion drummer and percussionist, and the Chairman/CEO of Tenacious Records. He also composes, arranges and produces, as well as acts...
(1972) - SunburstSunburst (album)Sunburst is an album by American jazz trumpeter Eddie Henderson recorded in 1975 and released on the Blue Note label.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Richard S...
- Eddie HendersonEddie Henderson (musician)Eddie Henderson is an American jazz trumpet and flugelhorn player. Henderson's influences include Booker Little, Clifford Brown, Woody Shaw and Miles Davis.-Family influence and early music history:... - Piano Man - Hilton Ruiz (1975)
- The Return of the 5000 Lb. ManThe Return of the 5000 Lb. ManThe Return of the 5000 Lb. Man is an album by jazz multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk featuring performances by Kirk with Howard Johnson, Romeo Penque, Hilton Ruiz, Buster Williams, Charlie Persip, Joe Habao Texidor, Betty Neals, Maeretha Stewart, Hank Jones, Milt Hinton, Fred Moore, Wilton...
- Rahsaan Roland KirkRahsaan Roland KirkRahsaan Roland Kirk was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played tenor saxophone, flute and many other instruments...
(1975) - The Betty Carter AlbumThe Betty Carter AlbumThe Betty Carter Album is a 1976 album by Betty Carter. It is unique among her albums in its use of overdubbing on some tracks to allow her to record multiple vocal lines. It was also her first album for which she wrote the majority of the songs herself....
- Betty Carter (1976) - Innocence - Kenny Barron (1978)
- Lazy Afternoon - Shirley Horn (1978)
- Woody Shaw III - Woody Shaw (1978)
- Ballads for Two - Chet Baker with W. Lackerschmid (1979)
- Renaissance - Brandord Marsalis (1986)
- Toku Do - Larry Coryell (1987)
- African RiverAfrican River-Track listing:# "Toi-Toi" – 3:27# "African River" – 9:44# "Joan – Capetown Flower" – 5:46# "Chisa" – 4:24# "Sweet Samba" – 5:52# "Duke 88" – 8:27# "The Wedding" – 3:54# "The Mountain Of The Night" – 3:33...
- Abdullah Ibrahim (1989) - Right There - Steve Turre (1991)
- Acoustic Masters IAcoustic Masters I-Track listing:# "Blues for Bill" – 9:48# "Clandestine" – 9:08# "Sweet Georgia Bright" – 5:52# "Lady Day" – 7:13# "Green Chimneys" – 5:50# "Strivers Jewels" – 5:23...
- Charles Lloyd (1994) - Lunar Eclypse - Gil Evans (2000)
- Pick 'Em/Super Strings - Ron Carter (2001)
- SongSpirit - Sathima Bea BenjaminSathima Bea BenjaminSathima Bea Benjamin , is a South African vocalist and composer born in Johannesburg, raised in Cape Town, and now based in New York City.-Early life:...
(2006)
External links
- [ All Music]
- BW web site
- Buster Williams Interview at allaboutjazz.com