Frank Butler

Who was Frank Butler?

Frank Butler was an American jazz drummer. Butler was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but later moved west and was associated in large part with the West Coast school. He never became well known but was highly regarded by fellow musicians and performed with jazz notables like Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Art Pepper in the 1950s and 1960s. In the mid-to-late 1950s, he was a member of the Curtis Counce Quintet. Sidelined for many years by an addiction to heroin, he did not record an album under his own name until the 1970s.

Butler died in Ventura, California at the age of 56.