The tuba has played a role in jazz from the music's earliest days. It provided bass lines in early jazz until the string bass took over that function. Indeed, there was a transitional period during which bassists were expected to to play both instruments. Rarely employed during the big band era, the tuba became prominent again in the late Forties as a member of the Miles Davis "Birth of the Cool" ensemble. In the mid-Fifties, young Ray Draper was determined to make the ungainly inst… MORE