At last - the first ever Bunk Gardner solo album! It's All Bunk! spans Bunk's first session with Bud Wattles and His Orchestra (1959) to a live track with The Grandmothers in 1981. In between are post-Mothers improvised recordings done with his late brother Buzz and bassist John Balkin, and melodic pieces with the late Andy Cahan. More than half of these tracks have never been released in any form. In tribute to Buzz Gardner, Buzz's My Love Has Gone is also included.
'This, the first solo album in a career stretching from the late 50's
to the early 90's from tenor sax player Bunk Gardner patches together
a diverse range of historic and archive material. Primarily famed for
his time as a sparring partner of Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of
Invention during the mid- late 60's, the mood of the material on
display on this 20 track miscellany ranges all the way from the
straight ahead to the thouroughly avant garde. Taken from the 1959
album Themes From The Hip originally released on Roulette in 1959,
the breezy big band arrangements of the tracks from Bud Wattles & his
Orchestra come with de rigeur echoes of Nelson Riddle and Billy May
and offer a stark contrast with the more out there uneasy listening as
documented on the selections from Bunk's late 60's - early 70's combo
Menage A Trois whose line up featured Bunk's brother Buzz on trumpet
and flugelhorn and fellow ex Mother Don Preston on keyboards. Though
many of these tracks have previously surfaced on the various
Grandmothers releases on Rhino and other rarities such as the three
cassette set The Grandmothers Interviews 1992 it's still nice to have
all this Bunk related paraphernalia together in the one place.'
Grahame Bent (Record Collector)
