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Bob Cranshaw

Bob Cranshaw has been the bassist of choice for Sonny Rollins since 1959. Their forty-seven-year collaboration is the subject of a new video on Sonny's website, “Bob Cranshaw and Sonny Rollins, The First Gig." Created by Bret Primack, it features interviews with both Rollins and Cranshaw . Exclusive performance footage includes excerpts from The Sonny Rollins Group in Concert back in April in California. The content is also available as an MP3 download.

Born December 10, 1932, the Evanston, Illinois native started on drums and piano before switching to the tuba and bass in high school. He was a founding member of Walter Perkins' MJT +3 band in 1957 and it was Perkins who recommended Bob to Sonny as a replacement bassist for a gig at the first Playboy Jazz Festival in Chicago in 1959.

Bob Cranshaw's discography is nothing short of amazing. He has recorded with every major jazz artist of the latter 20th century, including, including Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Jimmy Heath, Johnny Hodges, Jackie McLean, Thelonious Monk, James Moody, Lee Morgan, Wes Montgomery, Oscar Peterson, Buddy Rich, George Shearing, Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner, and Joe Williams.

Bob has also worked extensively on Broadway and television, including memorable stints as the bassist in Billy Taylor's Orchestra on the David Frost Show, on Sesame Street, and on the original version of Saturday Night Live in the late 70s.

A tribal elder and compassionate advocate for musicians' rights, Bob Cranshaw has devoted considerable energy in the last decade to helping other musicians as a representative of Local 802, the musician's union in New York. Bob seeks to empower musicians by helping them understand how they can utilize the services that the union provides.

On the eve of their forty-eighth year playing together, Cranshaw and Rollins have recorded again, toured Europe, and look forward to summer gigs in France, Spain, and New York (August 27 in Damrosch Park). For Bob Cranshaw, playing with Sonny has enabled him to “feel the youngness in my life. It's kept me young in spirit because Sonny always kicks ass."

From the early '60s to the early '70s, he also performed with pianist Duke Pearson. Along with his time in jazz bands and theater orchestras, Cranshaw has worked in television studios. He can be heard in vintage episodes of "Sesame Street." He is also an active member in the New York musicians' union.

Joe Henderson: The Complete Joe Henderson Blue Note Studio Sessions

Read "The Complete Joe Henderson Blue Note Studio Sessions" reviewed by Scott Gudell

by Scott Gudell
November 22, 2021

If an artist stamps his jazz passport with any one of these labels--Blue Note, Verve, Milestone--it's pretty much a guarantee that you've arrived in style. Tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson has traveled with all three and more. The 2021 reissue from the prestigious Mosaic Records focuses on Henderson's 1960s tenure with Blue Note offers a new opportunity to experience an abundance of rich and creative jazz from the decade. Big band and bop were duking it out in the ...

Album Review

Hank Mobley: The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-70

Read "The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-70" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
March 8, 2020

The music world has changed considerably since Michael Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie founded their boutique reissue label Mosaic Records back in 1983. From its inception, vinyl was still the preferred format, shortly to be overtaken by the popularity of the compact disc. At the cusp of vinyl's recent resurgence, Mosaic briefly got back into that format only to find themselves on the brink of closing up shop. Fortunately, the powers that be have forged on and recent CD boxed sets ...

Album Review

Lee Morgan: The Sidewinder

Read "The Sidewinder" reviewed by Greg Simmons

by Greg Simmons
February 13, 2020

Legend tells us that 1964's The Sidewinder was the album, and indeed the song, which saved Blue Note Records at a time when the label was struggling financially. Dashed off to fill some tape, at the end of the recording session, it peaked at number 25 on the Billboard charts—almost unheard of for a hard-bop record—stabilizing the label's finances as well as providing Lee Morgan with steady royalties for the remainder of his tragically abbreviated life. Although the ...

570

Extended Analysis

Grant Green: Matador

by Matt Marshall
December 7, 2009

Grant Green Matador Blue Note / Music Matters 2009 (1964)

This may be the reissue of 2009: a resplendent vinyl pressing of guitarist Grant Green's Matador on two 180-gram, 45-rpm records from Music Matters. This May 1964 recording was, like many Blue Note sets, not released until many years later (November 1979 in Japan in this case) and only reached the U.S. on CD in 1990. It has not been remastered since. The record ...

406

Extended Analysis

Lee Morgan: The Gigolo

by Samuel Chell
February 26, 2007

Lee Morgan The Gigolo Blue Note Records 2007

As we observe the 35th anniversary (Feb. 19) of the death of the talented trumpeter who would also become the major player in one of American music's more noteworthy Frankie and Johnny stories, the title of this Lee Morgan session and several others (The Tom Cat, The Rajah, The Procrastinator) take on a note of eponymous self-characterization, if not ghoulishly ironic subtext. Regrettable or not, the ...

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Album Review

Lee Morgan: The Gigolo

by Chris May
February 18, 2006

Hard bop's baddest trumpeter, Lee Morgan, may never quite have topped his iconic '63 masterpiece, The Sidewinder, but he came pretty damn close on a couple of occasions. The Gigolo is one of them, and it's been reissued as part of the ongoing Rudy Van Gelder remaster series. The album's menacing, visceral vibe has never sounded more powerful or engaging.

With The Sidewinder ringing cash registers across the US and Europe, there was a temptation for Morgan and Blue Note ...

459

Album Review

Joe Henderson: Inner Urge

Read "Inner Urge" reviewed by Norman Weinstein

by Norman Weinstein
July 2, 2004

This brilliant remastering of saxophonist Joe Henderson's most emotionally urgent album also raises the possibity that it is the ultimate showcase of his distinguished career. The deference to Coltrane is obvious: pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones are on board on every selection, although shifting their styles to mesh with Henderson. The deference to Getz is more subtle, coming clear on Henderson's stingingly lyric ballad feature, “You Know I Care," and his melodic recasting of Cole Porter's “Night and ...

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Bob Cranshaw

Source: Michael Ricci
December 10, 2022

All About Jazz is celebrating Bob Cranshaw's birthday today!

Birthday

Jazz Musician of the Day: Bob Cranshaw

Source: Michael Ricci
December 10, 2021

All About Jazz is celebrating Bob Cranshaw's birthday today!

Obituary

Bob Cranshaw + Kay Starr

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
November 7, 2016

Bob Cranshaw (1932-2016), a Chicago-born jazz bassist who began recording in 1957 and became a significant force in the 1960s starting with Sonny Rollins' seminal album, The Bridge, in 1962, died on Nov. 2. He was 83. At a time when even the best jazz bassists seemed interchangeable to the average listener, Bob's playing stood out with sensitivity and grace. It has been said that while jazz groups play for audiences, bassists play for the soloist, serving largely as inventive ...
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Obituary

Bob Cranshaw, 1932-2016

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
November 6, 2016

Bassist Bob Cranshaw succumbed to bone cancer yesterday at his home in New York City. He was 83. He may be best remembered as Sonny Rollins’s bassist for more than half a century, but Cranshaw’s career also included mainstay work with Dexter Gordon, James Moody, Kai Winding, Wes Montgomery, Duke Pearson, Mose Allison, Oliver Nelson, and dozens of other musicians in the top ranks of jazz. From a 2005 Rifftides post: Sonny Rollins, for reasons unclear to me, prefers the ...
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Recording

Pianist Mike Longo Reconvenes His Trio With Bob Cranshaw & Lewis Nash For "Step On It"

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity
February 8, 2014

In his distinguished and sometimes surprising career, pianist Mike Longo has established himself as an invaluable sideman, most notably with Dizzy Gillespie, and as a versatile leader of groups ranging from his 17-piece New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble to his six-man eponymous Funk Band. Longo is also a master of the trio format, and he dedicates his new CD, Step On It, to explorations of jazz standards in the company of two favorite trio-mates, bassist Bob Cranshaw ...
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Event

Jazz Interlude 15th Anniversary - Roy Haynes, Bob Cranshaw, and Jeremy Pelt

Source: All About Jazz
October 16, 2008

Benefit Honors Agnes Gund and David Rockefeller, Jr., Co-Founders of MoMA's Friends of Education, And Trustees of the Museum

WHAT: Jazz Interlude: Honoring Agnes Gund and David Rockefeller, Jr.

WHEN: Tuesday, November 18, 2008

WHERE: The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53 Street (between Fifth and Sixth avenues)

EVENT: Cocktail reception: 6:30-7:30 p.m. Jazz Performance: 7:30-8:30 p.m. Black-tie Dinner: 8:30-11:00 p.m.

The Museum of Modern ...
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117

TV / Film

New from Jazz Video Guy: John Stubblefield, Larry Willis, Bob Cranshaw, Freedom Suite

Source: All About Jazz
July 17, 2008

Jazz Videos: John Stubblefield Tribute, Uncle Sonny Rollins, Larry Willis and Bob Cranshaw

Check out the brand new featurettes from Bret Primack, a.k.a. Jazz Video Guy.

Stubbs Clifton Anderson's upcoming Doxy Records release includes “Stubbs," which he dedicates to his dearly departed friend John Stubblefield.

Uncle Sonny The latest edition of the Sonny Rollins Podcast features a comprehensive interview with Sonny's nephew, the trombonist Clifton Anderson. Meet Larry Willis A portrait of the one ...
read more

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Video / DVD