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Buddy Catlett

The incredibly solid bassist Buddy Catlett has been going strong since the late '50s, appearing on more than 100 jazz recordings. He is also a multi-instrumentalist stemming from his studies as a child on clarinet and saxophone, talents he kept up throughout his career. In 1996 he tricked discographer Tom Lord into thinking there were two different guys named Buddy Catlett, one a bassist and the other a horn blower. It is of course on the former axe that this artist, born George James Catlett, is best known. Highlights of his recording career on bass include an order of "Cocktails for Two" with the Louis Armstrong band in which most of the theme is sipped as a bass solo. Catlett was associated with the music scenes in several different parts of the United States. Seattle figures prominently in his biography this was where he began studying music as well as a place to which he returned again and again, taking part for example in an '80s collaborative ensemble with Clarence Acox called the Roadside Attraction Big Band. Flash forward another 20 years and he would still be playing with jazz big bands in Seattle. He also was as much a fixture on the Denver jazz scene in the late '50s as a decent day's view of the Rockies in the distance.

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Photo Credit
Grant M. Haller

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Album Review

Jay Thomas Quartet: Upside

Read "Upside" reviewed by Paul Rauch


Seattle-based musician Jay Thomas may be considered the oddest of ducks in the jazz universe. By that, I am referring to his fierce musicality expressed both on trumpet and saxophone, as well as most members of the brass and woodwind families. Inspired early in his career by the like minded veteran Ira Sullivan, Thomas in a single night will drift from trumpet to tenor, from flugelhorn to alto, and then double back on flute and soprano. He may as well ...

421
Album Review

Buddy Catlett: Here Comes Buddy Catlett

Read "Here Comes Buddy Catlett" reviewed by Mark Sabbatini


Buddy Catlett is a snapshot of everything that's right and wrong with jazz today. A player with legends for more than fifty years--and supposedly Count Basie's favorite bassist--he's currently gigging as a sideman in a Seattle club on Thursday nights. Such unpretentiousness and enduring passion for the craft is what makes so many longtime players so admirable. So why aren't there enough admirers to pack the house on weekends?

Part of the answer lies in his 2004 trio ...

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Obituary

Buddy Catlett, 1933-2014

Buddy Catlett, 1933-2014

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

I was saddened to learn on the road that Buddy Catlett died yesterday. I remember him looking as he does in this photograph made around the time we were both involved in Seattle’s vibrant jazz community in the early-to-mid 1950s. He left town to work with a variety of large and small bands. By the end of the decade Buddy had joined the big band his childhood friend Quincy Jones took to Europe that also included Seattleites Floyd Standifer and ...

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Performance / Tour

Bassist Buddy Catlett, a Seattle Native, Brings Jazz Home

Bassist Buddy Catlett, a Seattle Native, Brings Jazz Home

Source: All About Jazz

He's performed with the greats, like Frank, Ella and Louis Armstrong During the 1940s, bassist George James “Buddy" Catlett roamed the streets of Seattle as a teenager, performing with such future luminaries as trumpeter Quincy Jones and pianist Ray Charles. “Seattle was one of the hottest cities in America," Jones said, adding that he and Catlett often performed three clubs a night together, finishing up around 5:30 a.m. and attending Garfield High School a few hours later. Over the course ...

"Buddy Catlett, a man who makes the bass sound as warm as a mother's embrace, is honored by long-time colleagues. In the late 1940s, he gigged on Seattle's fabled Jackson Street with Quincy Jones and Ray Charles, then hit the road from the 1950s to 1970s with Jones, Cal Tjader, Count Basie, and Louis Armstrong, and recorded landmark albums with them, Frank Sinatra, and others. In 1978 he returned to Seattle, where he is held in both awe and admiration." —Earshot Jazz

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Upside

McVouty Records
2020

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I Could Have Told You

Vivify Music, Inc.
2006

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Here Comes Buddy...

Pony Boy Records
2005

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The Shadow Of Your...

Vivify Music, Inc.
2005

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Blue and Bossa Nova

Vivify Music, Inc.
2000

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The Brian Nova Trio...

Vivify Music, Inc.
1996

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Videos

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