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Bud Shank
Shank first came to prominence in the big bands of Charlie Barnet and Stan Kenton during the late 1940s. In the 1950s the saxophonist began a long tenure with Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars, as well as work with his own quartet. A charter member of the "West Coast" jazz movement, Shank's cool but always strongly swinging sound has made him one of a handful of sax players with an instantly recognizable and always exciting sound. In addition to club and concert dates this period found the musician producing some 50 diverse albums.
During the next two decades Shank augmented his club, university, and festival appearances with a healthy amount of studio work. A first call alto sax and flute player, he was a four-time winner of the coveted Most Valuable Player award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS).
In the 1970s and 80s Shank joined with Ray Brown, Jeff Hamilton, and Laurindo Almeida to form the world-renowned LA Four, who recorded and toured extensively through the decade. Shank helped to popularize both Latin-flavored and chamber jazz music, and as a musician's musician also performed with orchestras as diverse as the Royal Philharmonic, the New American Orchestra, the Gerald Wilson Big Band, Stan Kenton's Neophonic Orchestra, and the legendary Duke Ellington.
In the 1990s Shank continued to grow and explore, creating the multi-media jazz performance, "The Lost Cathedral," expanding the Bud Shank Jazz Workshop and Jazz Southwest Festival in Albuquerque, and touring with his quartet and sextet. Both bands feature exemplary writing, tight and fiery playing, and a joyous sense of collaboration.
Today, Bud Shank juggles a packed schedule of touring, festivals, and teaching combined with select major club performances and time set aside for composing and arranging. He is in demand as a clinician, and is available in a duo, as leader of his own quartet and sextet, and as a feature soloist with orchestra or big band, or with all star groups. With over 60 years as a professional jazz musician, Bud Shank has more than earned his status as a legend.
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Bud Shank: Four Classic Albums
by David Rickert
Bud ShankFour Classic AlbumsAvid Records UK2012Bud Shank is typical of the jazz musicians that roamed the West Coast in the fifties in that he was able to work comfortably in a variety of settings: big bands, the studio, and clubs. Like many of the other players, Shank also played more than one instrument, which made him a valuable member of the bandstand and afforded his solo recordings a bit more variety than ...
Continue ReadingJake Fryer / Bud Shank Quartet: In Good Company
by Jerry D'Souza
Jake Fryer second recording, In Good Company, finds the British alto saxophonist recording in San Diego with fellow altoist Bud Shank and his rhythm section. Fryer's previous release, On Our Terms (Nuts About Jazz, 2008), was the live debut of the London Bebop Collective; Fryer also leads the Jake Fryer Quartet and is part of the Little Big Band. With two saxophonists in front, it is not surprising that this turns out to be a blowing session in ...
Continue ReadingBud Shank: Fascinating Rhythms
by Jack Bowers
In the Wild West, when a cowboy passed away while doing his job, whether herding cattle, branding a steer or engaging in a gunfight, the popular saying was that he “died with his boots on." The adage applies as well to renowned alto saxophonist Bud Shank, who recorded what was to be his final album, Fascinating Rhythms, at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City, CA on January 29-31, 2009--less than three months before his passing at age eighty-two after a ...
Continue ReadingBud Shank: A Voice for the Ages
by Jack Bowers
I'll always have fond memories of the 2007 Prescott (Arizona) Jazz Summit, as it was the last time I had the great pleasure of seeing and hearing the phenomenal alto saxophonist Bud Shank doing what he did best: enfolding an entire audience in the palm of his hand with a seemingly endless stream of irrepressible notes and phrases that arose from his heart and soul and cascaded gracefully through the bell of his horn.
As Shank was at the time ...
Continue ReadingReflections on Bud
by Graham Carter
During the past few years I have had the honor to work with many famous jazz musicians, but without a doubt the nicest one of that group was Bud Shank. In thinking about Bud, and his contributions to the jazz world the past 60 years or so, one must rank his demeanor right next to his extensive music abilities.Bud would listen to you intently. It did not matter whether you were a fan rushing up to him on ...
Continue ReadingBud Shank: Never at a Standstill
by Ken Dryden
Bud Shank has long been labeled as a cool or “West Coast Jazz" stylist, though the veteran alto saxophonist, now in his seventh decade as a performer, has long evolved past such labels. An alum of Charlie Barnet, Stan Kenton and Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars, Shank first began leading his own quartet during the '50s and recorded extensively for Pacific Jazz/World Pacific while also doing studio work. In the '70s, Shank formed the LA Four with Laurindo Almeida, Ray ...
Continue ReadingBud Shank: Still Going Strong at Eighty-Two
by Jack Bowers
At a time when most of his contemporaries are content to relax on a couch or easy chair and watch their favorite TV programs and sporting events, alto sax superstar Bud Shank is on a roll. Hard on the heels of Graham Carter's splendid documentary of Shank's career, Against the Tide: Portrait of a Jazz Legend, and its companion CD, the eighty-two-year-old Shank, who continues to blow up a storm, has been honored by the Tucson, AZ, Jazz ...
Continue ReadingHow Bud Shank Invented Surf Music
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
In 1966, just before the country went psychedelic and the place to be was off the grid and deep in the woods, there was the beach. The passing this week of Mike Hynson—star of that year's cult surf film The Endless Summer, produced and directed by Bruce Brown—took me back to my childhood. When I was a kid in the early 1960s, going to New York's Jones Beach was excruciating. It was a place where mothers slathered kids in Coppertone, ...
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Bud Shank and Three Trombones
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Bud Shank was among the most recorded West Coast jazz reed players. He was on more than 600 known sessions, according to Tom Lord's Jazz Discography. Heard most often on alto saxophone, Bud began his recording career in 1947 with Ike Carpenter and then with Charlie Barnet in 1948 before joining Stan Kenton's Innovations Orchestra in 1950. He left the band with Shorty Rogers and others in 1952 to pioneer a more swinging West Coast jazz style in small ensembles, ...
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Bud Shank's Last Recording: Jake Fryer's "In Good Company"
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Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards
If there is still a west coast kind of jazz it's because players associated with the west coast still play music. That's obvious, of course, but even in its heyday the west coast style covered a broad group of stylistic tendencies, from the cool of a Chet Baker to the heat of Hampton Hawes. Bud Shank leaned toward to cooler alto style in his first years, making some marvelous records. Sometime in the '70s his style changed and he began ...
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Bud Shank: Windmills of Your Mind
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
In the mid-'60s, Bud Shank recorded a string of albums in Los Angeles for World Pacific Jazz that were West Coast attempts to capitalize on rock, pop and the new movie music. These recordings included Michelle, A Spoonful of Jazz, California Dreamin,' Light My Fire, Music from Today's Movies, Magical Mystery and Let It Be. One of the most glorious efforts in this groovy genre was Bud's Windmills of Your Mind (1969). What I love about Bud on these recordings ...
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Bud Shank and the Sax Section
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Whenever a jazz artist is packaged on an album as joining, meeting or leading a “sax section," I'm instantly hooked. In every case, the result is exciting, since no one in his right mind would be paired with a sax section unless the results and collective talent were sterling. Examples of this approach that come to mind include Al Cohn and the Sax Section (1956), Coleman Hawkins Meets the Saxophone Section (1958) and That's Right: Nat Adderley and the Big ...
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Bud Shank "Against the Tide" film on Jazzed Media Receives EMPixx Gold Award
Source:
All About Jazz
The EMPixx Awards, a competition honoring excellence in the production of moving pixels, had honored Jazzed Media with a 2009 EmPixxAwards- Gold for the documentary film Bud Shank Against the Tide.
The documentary film was produced and directed by multi-Grammy nominated and award winning filmmaker Graham Carter, founder of Jazzed Media. Jazzed Media produces jazz CDs and documentary jazz films. This is the fourth national award for the Bud Shank Against the Tide" documentary film. Previously the film was awarded ...
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Bud Shank, 1926-2009
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Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Bud Shank's honesty, forthrightness and cheerfulness came through in his playing. Those qualities and his transcendent musicianship were evident to all but those deafened by categorical imperatives having to do with geography, race and style. He lived to be 82, and he worked to the end, one of the great alto saxophonists in jazz. Shank died Thursday night shortly after arriving home in Tucson, Arizona, from Southern California. He had been putting the finishing touches on his next album. He ...
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Bud Shank Alto Saxophonist Was Immersed in West Coast Jazz Scene
Source:
Michael Ricci
Bud Shank, the alto saxophonist who was a key figure in the West Coast jazz scene of the 1950s, has died. He was 82. Shank died Thursday night at his home in Tucson of pulmonary failure, friends said. A versatile musician with an adventurous nature, Shank also played flute and -- during a productive period of studio work -- had pivotal solos on the popular 1960s pop tunes “California Dreamin' “ by the Mamas and the Papas and “Windy" by ...
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Bud Shank: California Dreamin'
Source:
All About Jazz
The great jazz musician Bud Shank has died at the age of 82. He had one of the most unlikely backgrounds for any jazz musician, growing up not in the urban welter of cultural ferment or in the musically rich backwaters of the South -- but on a farm in Ohio. He may not have been the greatest jazz musician to emerge from rural America -- Dave Brubeck grew up as a cowboy in California, after all -- but Shank ...
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