Jazz Articles about Buddy Tate

Basie All Stars: Live At Fabrik Vol. 1

by Chris May
March 13, 2023

Such are the glories of his band's recorded legacy from the 1930s through the 1950s, that the mere mention of Count Basie's name will trigger a Pavlovian response from his fan base. Like no other, the Count Basie Orchestra epitomised big-band swing at its most sublime; reefer fuelled, riff based, loose and louche Kansas City jazz that is irresistible even in 2023, a life-affirming antidote to the barbarity of DL-only albums, generative music and social media. Seasoned ...

Buddy Tate: Texas Tenor

by Hrayr Attarian
March 3, 2015

Saxophonist George “Buddy" Tate came to prominence in the 1930s with his hard swinging style and robust and resilient tone. His sound mellowed and matured like a fine spirit throughout a long and busy career but his approach did not veer far from his original fashion of playing, dubbed Texas Tenor. The 1978 Sackville record is named just that, one of three Tate discs to bear this title.The label's rhythm trio joins Tate on an intimate set of ...

Buddy Tate: The Texas Tenor

by Chris Mosey
May 16, 2014

When Herschel Evans died in 1939, Buddy Tate took his place in the Count Basie band. Basie used Tate's muscular, blues- based tenor as a foil to the lighter toned playing of Lester Young. Tate played with Basie for the next nine years fulfilling the same role with Young's successors, Don Byas, Illinois Jacquet, Lucky Thompson and Paul Gonsalves. He went on to play with Hot Lips Page, was in singer Jimmy Rushing's backing band, and from ...

Buddy Tate From Texas State

by Nic Jones
August 27, 2004

By the end of the 1930s both the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands had established signature styles of music making that were in some respects antithetical. Whilst the latter was dependent on composition as an integral part of its musical output -and arguably no-one before or since has married composition and the making of jazz so successfully, the former had developed a kind of inner momentum from which its music flowed and which was shaped in no small part ...

Buddy Tate: Tate Live

by Jack Bowers
March 1, 2003

From the moment in 1983 when he heard Buddy Tate play with fellow “Texas tenors” Illinois Jacquet, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Arnett Cobb at the Berlin Philharmonic, drummer Torsten Zwingenberger knew he wanted Tate to tour and possibly record with his band. After a number of setbacks, this lively concert date at the Quasimodo in Berlin was recorded nearly seventeen years ago, in April 1986, at the close of Zwingenberger’s second tour with Tate.

Buddy, who was ...

Buddy Tate & Claude Hopkins: Buddy & Claude

by Derek Taylor
February 1, 2000

Combining two rare Swingville sessions from the 60’ this disc is an excellent primer for those unfamiliar with the singular sounds of Buddy Tate. Tate served a lengthy tenure in Basie’s band and many other Kansas City collectives before branching out on his own and these sessions visit him in his later years still laying down a voluptuous and sultry swing. His tone on tenor has elements of many of his peers, most noticeably Coleman Hawkins without the bite, but ...