Tenor saxophonist Buddy Tate was born George Holmes Tate on February 22, 1915. He grew up in Texas and later came to be known as one of the great "Texas Tenors" with Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb. Buddy filled Herschel Evans' chair in the Basie band and stayed from 1939-49. After Basie, a gig at the Celebrity Room in New York led to a stay of twenty years. He can be heard on records with Basie, Jimmy Rushing, Jay McShann and with numerous groups under his own name. Count Basie was certainly thinking of Buddy when he said "the band has always been built from the rhythm, to the tenors and then to the rest of the band."
Buddy was our very first interview in Scottsdale, Arizona and marked the date where I realized what an opportunity I was given. Buddy grew up in the era where jazz was moving from the traditional "two beat" feel into the more swing four. The former sounds corny to us today but it had its function for a certain style of dancing and was also fitting for the jazz band instrumentation of the day, especially the tuba. "The Buddy System" attempts to capture these two feels and also includes a section, after Bill's solo, where the horns play a transcribed version of a Buddy Tate solo from a 1940 Basie recording, "The World is Mad Part II."
The jazz community was saddened to learn of Buddy's passing on February 10, 2001 in Chandler, Arizona. He was the last link to the stellar Count Basie Band of the late 1940's, where he shared the stage with Lester Young and Sweets Edison.