Bootsie Barnes

Robert " Bootsie " Barnes is an American jazz saxophonist.

Barnes grew up in a musical family: his father was a trumpeter in the Bill Doggett's big band, his cousin was twenty-six years, saxophonist and clarinetist in Duke Ellington's band. Barnes had six years of piano lessons, switched to drums and ten years old at the school of Graterford, where he completed a jazz studies from the age of sixteen, to the saxophone. There were, inter alia, Lex Humphries, Bill Cosby, Al " Tootie " Heath, Spanky DeBrest and Lee Morgan his classmates. An important teacher in this period was the artist-in -residence Freddy Lacey.

He then appeared in all the major jazz clubs in Philadelphia and was from 1971 to 1974 Assistant Secretary of Jimmy Adams ' Local 274 American Federation of Musicians (later Clef Club of the Performing Arts ). He worked among others with Shirley Scott, Jimmy Smith, Don Patterson, Jimmy McGriff, Jack McDuff, Charles Earland, Trudy Pitts, Poppa John and Joey DeFrancesco, Philly Joe Jones and Al Grey.

In the late 1980s he toured with Bill Cosby and was a guest on the Bill Cosby Show; In 2001, he joined with Cosby at the Playboy Jazz Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival. He toured the U.S., Canada and Europe, was, inter alia, awarded the Marjorie Dockery Volunteer Award and the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation Award, and recorded four albums as a bandleader with his own quartet or quintet.

Discography

• Been Here All Along
• Hello
• You Leave Me Breathless
• Boppin ' Round the Center, 2003