Spilka, Bill

Bill Spilka is a professional trombonist, bassist, and jazz researcher. He has played venues ranging from burlesque to the Newport & JVC Festivals. He leads his own Rowdy Rooters, the official band of the New York Rangers. He has also played with musicians such as Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong .

He joined the photography staff of Metronome magazine in 1955, and over the years has done assignments for The New York Times, Life, The New Yorker, Jazz Today, and many others. He is also the official photographer of the New York Brass Conference for Scholarships . He received a Jazz Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to document on videotape the lives and performances of the sidemen and women who made up the big jazz-oriented dance bands of the "Golden Age" (1935-45).

From the guide to the Bill Spilka collection of jazz videorecordings [videorecording], (The New York Public Library. Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound.)