Billy Butler - Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow 'April 27 and June 29, 1970

Tracks list

Tracks

01.Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 
02.Girl Talk 
03.Dancing on the Ceiling 
04.Hold It! 
05.Evening Dreams 
06.The Butler Did It 
07.Sweet Georgia Brown

Personnel

Billy Butler - guitar, bass guitar
Houston Person - tenor saxophone (tracks 1-4 & 7)
Jerome Richardson - tenor saxophone, flute (tracks 5 & 6)
Ernie Hayes (tracks 1-4 & 7), Sonny Phillips (tracks 5 & 6) - organ, electric
piano
Everett Barksdale, Billy Suyker - guitar (tracks 5 & 6)
Jimmy Lewis (tracks 1-4 & 7), Chuck Rainey (tracks 5 & 6) - electric bass
Jimmy Johnson - drums

Billy Butler is well known to guitarists only, as the co-author of the early R&B
funked-up standard "Honky Tonk," with organist Bill Doggett. Yesterday,Today,
and Tomorrow, eleased in 1970 -- offers a wide view of the man and his music.
With a saxophonist like Houston Person, he could play the most elegant swing --
as in their read of the Rodgers & Hart classic "Dancing on the Ceiling" .The
wildest tune  is Neil Hefti and Booby Troup's "Girl Talk." Before this I could
never have imagined hearing this tune as an instrumental, but it works like
grease on a bicycle chain with Butler punching up the melody and bending his
strings all over it to make the language impenetrable to all but his rhythm
section, and Person who flies over the top making the simple pop song into a
work of groove jazz artistry. This disc is a welcome introduction to one of the
great, all-but-lost talents in jazz history. Billy Butler was a guitarist's
guitarist and an innovator in both production and arrangements. This disc is
solid from top to bottom and reveals the restless spirit of a quiet yet
demanding artist.

Thom Jurek

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