Bud Shank, 1926-2009

Alto saxophonist, flautist and West Coast jazz legend Bud Shank passed on last week at the age of 82, one day after cutting tracks here in San Diego as a hired session player. My familiarity with Shank isn't the strongest, but I do treasure one of his earlier albums - the Brazilliance LP of 1953, cut with Brazilian composer and acoustic guitarist Laurindo Almeida. It's hard to imagine how foreign-sounding these sessions must have seemed to contemporary American audiences at the time, nine years before the bossa-nova craze swept the country, and forever rendered the complex rhythms and compositions of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto into cocktail party background music. While the music in Brazilliance isn't bossa-nova per se - the style wouldn't properly develop until the later 1950s in Rio de Janeiro- the samba rhythms and folk-derived melodies (all but 4 of the 14 tunes are based on traditional Brazilian compositions) clearly look towards the future innovation. And while it was Almeida and his intricate guitar that injected the most obvious flavor of exoticism, it was Shank's lovely, airy and cool tone that helped ground the proceedings in a familiar and explicitly West Coast jazz sound.

Others may be more familiar with Shank's work in the Stan Kenton Orchestra, and I suspect his biggest audience came the day he cut the flute solo on the Mamas and the Papas' hit song, "California Dreamin'" in 1965. But for me, his legacy clearly rests with Brazilliance, a wonderful piece of enjoyable innovation and a major addition to West Coast improvisation, a scene still denied a rightful place in the jazz pantheon. Shank's gentle work on "Atabaque" and "Baa-Too-Kee" bring an automatic smile to my face, and goes some way towards lowering the blood pressure, and even his work on the less successful (and more flute-heavy) follow-up, 1958's Brazilliance sequel, has multiple charms.