Hank Shaw was one of the first British jazz musicians to lay claim to the emerging bebop idiom. An uncommonly fiery and creative player, he is by general consensus the finest bop trumpeter Europe ever produced. Born Henry Shalofsky in London on June 23, 1926, he began his professional career at just 15, leading a dance band operating under the name of leader Teddy Foster, one of the myriad musicians called to duty in World War II. With so many potential rivals out of the picture due to the war effort, Shaw rose through the London jazz scene at breakneck speed, backing Oscar Rabin, Frank Weir, and Tommy Sampson in quick succession; in 1946, he first heard Dizzy Gillespie and immediately embraced the bebop ethos in full, remaining an adherent to its principles for the duration of his career. The following year Shaw visited the U.S. to experience the bop revolution up close, but when he was denied a work permit, he instead migrated to Canada, playing behind Oscar Peterson and Maynard Ferguson. Upon returning to London, in late 1948 Shaw joined with Ronnie Scott, John Dankworth, and other British bop upstarts to co-found the famed Club Eleven collective, and the following autumn appeared alongside them on sessions credited to Alan Dean's Beboppers that are celebrated among the very first U.K. bop recordings. With the demise of Club Eleven, Shaw signed on with Vic Lewis' progressive big band, and a year made his first trek through Europe behind singer Cab Kaye; a series of short-lived dance band gigs followed before he joined Jack Parnell in mid-1953, moving to Scott's new nine-piece combo a year later. From the mid-'50s forward, Shaw was a ubiquitous figure in U.K. jazz, a first-call session player as well as a fixture of the London club circuit. Renowned for the purity of his tone, he was also a supremely nimble player whose agility was matched only by his energy. Alongside Jamaican saxophonist Joe Harriott, Shaw cut the 1959 cult classic Southern Horizon and played in bands led by Tony Crombie, Don Rendell, and Tony Kinsey. He also led his own quartet, which regularly headlined the 100 Club. After an extended tenure with Stan Tracey that culminated in the classic 1969 LP The Seven Ages of Man, he joined pianist Bill Le Sage in a quintet dubbed the Bebop Preservation Society, a group that in 1974 toured with the American trumpeter Red Rodney. By all accounts Shaw blew the bop legend off the stage on a nightly basis, effectively rendering moot any and all arguments for the inferiority of British jazz. Shaw played with the BPS off and on for more than a quarter century, additionally spending roughly two decades with the John Burch Quartet before poor health forced him into retirement in the late '90s. Shaw died in Kent, England, on October 26, 2006. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi