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Revision as of 18:38, 17 November 2020 by Vmavanti (talk | contribs) (→top: added header, improved prose)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Benjamin "Buzzy" Drootin (April 22, 1920 – May 21, 2000) was a jazz drummer.
Career
Drootin was born near Kiev, Ukraine, and moved to Boston, Massachusetts, with his family when he was five. His father played the clarinet, and two of his brothers and his nephew were musicians. He began playing drums professionally as a teenager. At age twenty, he toured with the Jess Stacy All-Stars, a band that includeded Lee Wiley. He toured with Ina Ray Hutton around the same time. He then joined the band of Wingy Manone. From 1947 until 1951, he worked as the house drummer at Eddie Condon's night club in New York City. He was a bandleader at El Morocco club in New York City and a member of the house band with his brother Al at the Storyville club in Boston. During these years he worked with Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Bobby Hackett, Claude Hopkins, Jimmy McPartland, Pee Wee Russell, and Arvell Shaw.
Drootin recorded with Tommy Dorsey, Bobby Hackett, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Condon, Ruby Braff, Anita O'Day, George Wein, the Newport All-Stars, Lee Konitz, Sidney Bechet, PeeWee Russell and The Dukes of Dixieland. In 1968–69 he toured and recorded with Wild Bill Davison's Jazz Giants and then formed Buzzy's Jazz Family, borrowing some of Davision's sidemen (Herb Hall, Benny Morton) and adding Herman Autrey on trumpet and his nephew Sonny Drootin on piano.
In 1973, after touring Europe and America, he returned to his hometown of Boston where he and his brother Al and nephew Sonny formed the Drootin Brothers Band. They played at the Newport Jazz Festival. Drootin played at the first Newport festival and at many festivals after that. He also played at the Los Angeles Classic Jazz Festival in the 1980s.
He died from cancer at the age of eighty at the Actors Fund Retirement and Nursing Home in Englewood, New Jersey.
Discography
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With Ruby Braff
Several albums with Bobby Hackett and Jack Teagarden. Numerous albums on George Wein's Storyville label. Several albums with the Newport Jazz Festival All-Stars.