A Bud Shank Memorial

This my second comment. First I have an extensive Bud Shank Collection. That includes Bud's "Against The Tide" DVD/CD which I highly recommend.

Bud's decision to drop the flute could be easily explained if he has the same issue I, many other sax players have.

Embouchure! I can play flute and saxophone well, but not on the same date. My saxophone embouchure destroys my flute embouchure. This may have been true of Bud. I won't play a flute on a same gig that calls for sax unless I can play the flute first then the sax and never return to the flute

Yea... could be training but I'm 66 and really don't give a hoot!
RIP Bud...

Mike Gorrera" does not look right to me. On the related album, one of the percussionists was Frank Guerrero, who was a well-known Latin percussionist in the LA area, perhaps best known for his timbales work. Another was Milt Holland, one of whose many percussion specialties was the tambourine (though as far as I can tell, there was nothing Holland could not play well). My guess is that it's one of these two.

(A Rifftides reader who asks to remain anonymous adds:

"I googled for Bud Shank Clare Fischer samba and arrived at this Library of Congress page, where the percussionist is identified as Frank Guerrero under 'Personnel on camera note'":

http://tinyurl.com/qb6ate -- DR)

I have an VHS copy of this show, nicely packaged too, which I bought from the English firm "Kay Jazz" - and they identified Gorrera on their sleeve.

I'm a very big Bud Shank guy, but one thing that has always rankled with me was his attitude to jazz flute (quite apart from the fact that he's one of my favourites): I don't grudge him the right to have given it up and to have concentrated on alto exclusively (no problem there at all), but his total dismissal remains unsupportable. He seemed often to take opportunities to undermine flute in jazz altogether, and really dig the boot in. Hurtful.

But I sure love him: he's a hero to me, and has one of the most important bodies of recorded work in jazz.

Best from Ireland,

PS.: It's extremely impressive to see who's gathering for the memorial... Any idea if the great Billy Bean is still living, though?

(For decades, Bean (born 1933) has been back in his hometown of Philadelphia. You will find a reasonably good biography of him here:

http://www.classicjazzguitar.com/artists/artists_page.jsp?artist=7

Here is a link to a MySpace page with three MP3 tracks of his playing

http://www.myspace.com/billybeanguitar -- DR)

He was one of the all time greats and set the bar for most of us.

RIP Bud

Percussionist is "Mike Gorrera".

(I found one net reference to Gorrera, a name new to me: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/natlib/ihas/mets/jots/loc.natlib.ihas.200020919.xml -- DR)