[Dixielandjazz] Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 76, Issue 11

[Stephen G Barbone]

On Apr 11, 2009, at 3:00 PM, dixielandjazz-request at ml.islandnet.com  
wrote:

> "Tavecchio, L.W.C." <L.W.C.Tavecchio at uva.nl>
>
> Did anyone know this statement by Duke, and when he said it?
>
> "Bud Shank is too much. I told him I had his contract ready, but I  
> can't get him to leave California. He was the greatest part of  
> Kenton's Neophonic concert the other night, and he was even greater  
> with us the last two days. He even shook Johnny Hodges . . . Bud  
> Shank is something else!"
> -- Duke Ellington 



Dear Louis:
  The quote appears several times in various biographies of Bud Shank.  
Here is the only source I could find that attributes it directly.  
(more or less)

“Bud Shank is too much. I told him I had his contract ready but I  
can’t get him to leave California. He was the greatest part of the  
Kenton Neophonic concert the other night, and he was even greater with  
us the last two days [recording the film score for Assault on a  
Queen]. He even shook up Johnny Hodges. Bud Shank is something else.”  
– Duke Ellington, 1966
[Footnote 10, page 204, Gordon Jack, Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral  
Perspective, [Oxford: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2004].