If you don’t know what a “Texas Tenor” is, then this album is your introductory lesson. Essentially, it’s a tenor sax player who has a big, breathy and growling sound, swinging with a swagger. Every big band in the 30s and 40s had one, like Illinois Jacquet or Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and many of them switched over to playing R&B when the big band era started dying out.
One of the first, and best, was Buddy Tate, who started out with Count Basie’s orchestra back in the early days of The Swing Era, and never waned in his style. This album from a 1982 gig in Denmark finds him in vintage form, backed by locals Poul Valde Pederson/tp, Jens Sondergaard/as for a couple tunes and always with the rhythm tem of Ole Matthiesson/p, Niles Praestholm/b and Ove Res/dr.
Tate growls like the proverbial lion on a heavyweight take of “Jumping At The Woodside” and sears through “Lester Leaps In” like a ravenous lion. The gasps, repeated riffs, swirls and snarls make for a wild rollercoaster of a ride. He plays a rich and woody clarinet on part of “In A Mellotone” and is absolutely Ellingtonian with it on “Mood Indigo”. The guest horns are enthusiastically supportive on “Now’s The Time”, and Tate even sings like a hep cat on “Tate’s Delight”. This is the kind of music that got me initially interested in jazz, and makes almost everything I hear these days seem stale in comparison.