Bunk Gardner - It’s All Bunk!

One hundred per cent guaranteed pure Bunk-um

This, the first solo album in a career spanning the late 50s to the early 90s from tenor saxophone player Bunk Gardner, patches together a diverse range of historic and archive material. Primarily famed for his time in Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention during the mid-to-late 60s, the material on this 20-track miscellany ranges all the way from the straightahead to the thoroughly avant-garde.

Taken from the 1959 album Themes From The Hip, originally released on Roulette in 1959, the breezy big band arrangements of tracks from Bud Wattles & His Orchestra come with de rigueur echoes of Nelson Riddle and Billy May. It’s a stark contrast with the more out-there uneasy listening of selections from Bunk’s late 60s-to-early 70s combo Menage A Trois, whose line-up included 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.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Crossfire Publications | 9506-2

Reviewed by Grahame Bent
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