Perhaps the professor emeritus of bebop saxophone, as it has endured from one century to the next. He got his start in his early teens, even taking a lesson or two from Lennie Tristano, before going to Juilliard in 1948. When he came out, he had already mastered a fomidable bebop style on the alto saxophone: fast, lean, sweet-sour on ballads and with the blues always hovering in the backgound, it was a sound which soon drew parallels with Charlie Parker, although Woods's kind of emotion had nothing of Parker's tragic power. He began leading small groups in live work, but much of his time was spent as a studio man: he is on probably hundreds of records from the 50s and 60s, besides numerous albums of his own for Prestige and New Jazz, some of them in tandem with fellow altoist Gene Quill. In 1968 he shifted base to France, where he ran his European Rhythm Machine – with George Gruntz, Gordon Beck, Henri Texier and Daniel Humair – for some four years. In 1972 he returned to the US, had the briefest flirtation with fusion, and then settled down into another sax-and-rhythm-section format, which has lasted some 30 years. Long-standing members of the Woods groups have included Steve Gilmore and Bill Goodwin, various pianists have taken the keyboard role, and Tom Harrell enjoyed a long stay with the group between 1983 and 1989, succeeded by Hal Crook and then Brian Lynch. Woods has kept up a vigorous recording regimen, for Concord, Chesky and other independents, and his number one fan, Paolo Piangiarelli, an Italian who is completely besotted with the saxophonist's playing, has recorded Woods at marathon length on dozens of sessions for his Philology label. A series of live sessions by the Harrell-era quintet has also been released by Mosaic in a boxed set. Woods has sailed imperturbably on, although he was, after an earlier affiliation with RCA, never given the imprimatur of major-label support: some in the business thought him too consistent to really make a breakout record, and perhaps that reliability has been his long suit and his vulnerable spot, since many have more or less taken him for granted. The various quintet albums (there have been some strong big-band records too) are actually a fine store of original compositions as well as a textbook example of a band kept fresh by its sheer love of playing in a familiar idiom. Woods has, like many musicians, grown deeper on ballads, and remains adroit even if a little of the old failsafe velocity has been filed away now. For a long time, his group has attempted to play without any amplification, and it has sometimes made him testy with noisy audiences: 'I don't mind a little light chat at the bar, but that's all!' He has had problems with emphysema in the new century, but recent records suggest the indomitable spirit endures.

Biography from Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia (2005).

If you'd like more information, check out The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2002) or The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (2007), both of which are still in print.