By the mid sixties, trumpeter Chet Baker (1929-88) was known – amazingly, for the time – as much for his music as he was for his drug use. As the literal – and figurative – poster boy for West Coast Jazz and West Coast “cool” in the early fifties, the-previously beautiful, beatific and Beatnik-ish Baker’s…
Bud Shank with Chet Baker: 1965-68
Clifford Everett “Bud” Shank, or “C.E. Shank” (1926-2009), was one of the great West Coast “cool” legends who played in the big bands of Pete Rugolo, Maynard Ferguson, Shorty Rogers and Gerald Wilson. While born in Dayton, Ohio, Shank became the epitome of the “cool” jazz style California so prominently heralded in the early fifties…