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Bobby Hutcherson - Wise One
Artist: Bobby Hutcherson
Title: Wise One
Genre: Jazz
Style: Post-Bop
Audio CD (September 29, 2009)
Original Release Date: 2009
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Kind Of Blue
Source: Original CD
Extractor: EAC 0.99 prebeta 4
Used drive: HL-DT-STDVDRAM GSA-E10L
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
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Make use of C2 pointers : No
Codec: Flac 1.2.1; Level 8
Single File.flac, Eac.log,
File.cue Multiple wav file with Gaps (Noncompliant)
Accurately ripped (confidence 2)
Size Torrent: 309 Mb
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TrackList:
1. Wise One
2. Like Sonny
3. Aisha
4. Equinox
5. All Or Nothing At All
6. Nancy (With The Laughing Face)
7. Spiritual
8. Out Of This World
9. Dear Lord
Personnel:
Bobby Hutcherson: vibes
Anthony Wilson: guitar
Joe Gilman: piano
Glenn Richman: bass
Eddie Marshall: drums
Listen to samples
http://www.allmusic.com/album/r1663720
Biography
Here's a brief biographical sketch of Bobby Hutcherson's musical career. You can skip directly to a particular section by clicking on one of the links below:
Early Years
Bobby Hutcherson was born in Los Angeles, California on 27 January 1941. He grew up in Pasdena. Hutcherson was exposed to jazz from an early age, and his family had some connections to the local jazz scene. (His brother was a high-school friend of Dexter Gordon and his sister would later date Eric Dolphy.) He started studying piano as at age nine, but he found the formality of the training stifling. In his teens, Hutcherson decided to take up the vibraphone after hearing a Milt Jackson record. He studied informally with vibist Dave Pike, but, for the most part, he is self-taught on the instrument. Hutcherson's own musical career began when started playing local dances with his friend, bassist Herbie Lewis.
After high school, Hutcherson played with local jazz musicians Les McCann, Charles Lloyd, Paul Bley, Scott LaFaro, and Curtis Amy. (Hutcherson's first full-length album as a sideman was with Amy and Frank Butler, titled Groovin' Blue.) Later, after moving to San Francisco, Hutcherson joined an ensemble co-led by Al Grey and Billy Mitchell, and the band went on to record several albums in both of the leaders' names. During this time, Hutcherson frequently played chords using a four-mallet technique (now more commonly associated with vibist Gary Burton) because there was no pianist in the group. However, since the end of the 1960's, Hutcherson has only occasionally used this technique and has focused instead on more horn-like, linear playing. Around 1960 Hutcherson began working on an album as a leader for Dick Bock's Pacific Jazz label, but he abandoned the effort after recording only four songs. (These recordings have never been released.)
The Early- and Middle-Sixties
In 1961, Hutcherson traveled east with the Grey-Mitchell sextet for a run at Birdland in New York. He decided to stay. Hutcherson was acclaimed for his work with Grey, and he continued to record with him through 1963. More significantly, Hutcherson also began working and recording with two important "New Thing" artists, Eric Dolphy and Jackie McLean. Hutcherson's work with McLean yielded the first album that made many jazz fans and critics sit up and take notice of the new vibist on the scene. The 1963 album One Step Beyond featured an amazing quintet of McLean on alto sax, Grachan Moncur III on trombone, Tony Williams on drums, Eddie Khan on bass, and Hutch on vibes. Hutcherson was also featured on important sessions by Eric Dolphy, most notably on Out to Lunch. Over the next few years, Hutcherson continued working as a sideman on several other landmark jazz recordings. He made more albums with McLean (including the astounding Action), Grachan Moncur, Andrew Hill, Grant Green, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner and others. Hutcherson was also playing in bands with Archie Shepp and Charles Tolliver during this time.
While recording his first album with Jackie McLean, Blue Note chief Alfred Lion offered Hutcherson a recording contract. (Hutcherson's relationship with Blue Note would last longer than any other artist's except Horace Silver's, ending only with the demise of the label in 1977.) Most critics consider his first album as a leader, Dialogue, to be one of his finest. (Hutcherson had recorded another album, subsequently released as The Kicker, before Dialogue, but it was not released until 1999.) Hutcherson went on to record a string of unbelievably strong records for Blue Note throughout the 1960's. His run of recordings rivals that of any other artist on the label during this legendary time. Most of these recordings feature the drumming and compositions of Joe Chambers, one of Hutcherson's key associates during the period.
The Bobby Hutcherson-Harold Land Quintet (1968-71)
In the late-Sixties, after moving back to California, Hutcherson formed a quintet with Harold Land. To this day, the dry-toned tenor saxophonist is probably most well-known for his work with the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet in the middle 1950's. Despite the fact that Land (born 1928) was a generation older than Hutcherson, the two had similar musical visions, and their collaboration produced some amazing work. (Each artist recorded in their own name; Hutcherson on Blue Note and Land on Cadet and Mainstream.) Unfortunately, Hutcherson's partnership with Land coincided with the rise of fusion and jazz rock, and there wasn't much of a market for the subtlety and balance that quintet offered. Since work wasn't regular, the group used several musicians for the rhythm section, depending on the location of the gig. (On Hutcherson's recordings, the drum chair continued to be filled by Joe Chambers.) If the timing were different, the group might easily have been recalled as one of the finest small groups in jazz history. As it was, much of the work that the group recorded didn't even get released until a decade or more later (Spiral and Medina). Other recordings by the quintet, like the superb Peace-Maker (issued in Land's name), have never even been reissued on CD. (However, it was recently released on CD in Japan.).
The Seventies
During the Seventies, there were dramatic changes in the jazz scene. Since Hutcherson resisted electronics and (in general) shied away from fusion, his music was perceived by some as less relevant. It is also true that some of Hutcherson's recordings in the Seventies were less ambitious than they had been during the Sixties. Nonetheless, despite some inconsistency, Hutcherson continued to make challenging, thrilling records throughout the decade. In general, I think his work from this period is enormously undervalued.
In 1971, Hutcherson released Head On, a large band recording featuring the compositions of Todd Cochran, a student of classical music. Much of the music is very grand and exciting, almost uncategorizable. It seemed to build on the efforts of Hutcherson's earlier, unconventional large-ensemble recording, Now! (1969). Other excellent recordings from the decade include Cirrus, with the luminous, transcendent composition "Even Later" (one of Hutcherson's best) and The View from the Inside. Sadly, except for Now!, none of these have been issued on compact disc. (Unbelievably, Inner Glow, recorded in 1975, has never been released anywhere except in Japan. Fortunately, Mosaic Records plans to release several of Hutcherson's 70's LP in a "Select" set soon.) In the last few years, Blue Note has reissued some of Hutcherson's funkier Seventies work (San Francisco and Montara). This music is more immediately appealing, even if it retains some of Hutcherson's characteristic thoughtful intensity (such as on "Procession" on San Francisco).
In 1978, after Blue Note's last gasp, Hutcherson move to Columbia. His work there wasn't as strong as it had been (or soon would be again), although Un Poco Loco, his third and final release on the label is quite good. Hutcherson also continued to work as a sideman throughout the Seventies, though less far less frequently than in the previous decade. His most notable contributions were two excellent albums with McCoy Tyner (Sama Layuca and Together), as well as some fine work with Prince Lasha (released on Lasha's private label, Birdseye).
The Eighties
The 1980's saw a resurgence in more traditional, bop-based jazz forms, and this was good news for Bobby Hutcherson. In general, Hutcherson style of playing during this period is more conservative than in his earlier work. Here he's working in a more conventional mainstream-bop mode. But his playing is never any less convincing. The changes in his style sounds like a natural evolution.
In the early Eighties, at the instigation of Dutch producer and Timeless record label owner Wim Wigt, Hutcherson joined with Harold Land, Curtis Fuller (tb), Cedar Walton (p), Buster Williams (b), and Billy Higgins (d) to form the Timeless All-Stars. The group was outstanding. Instead of just blowing without giving much thought to arrangements or interplay (like many all-star bands), the group had a fine sense of balance, a real ensemble sound. One can hear echoes of groups like the Jazztet and even the MJQ in The Timeless All-Stars. Their first two recordings (It’s Timeless: Recorded Live at Keystone Korner and Timeless Heart) are probably their finest, but Hutcherson sounded completely at home whenever he recorded with them.
Starting in 1984, Hutcherson began recording for Orrin Keepnew's Landmark label. Hutcherson's Good Bait was the very first recording issued by the label. He went on to make a series of very fine recordings, the highlight of which was a live release, In the Vanguard. Unfortunately, the label has subsequently gone out of business and the rights to the recordings have changed hands a few times. Currently, Savoy owns them, but they have chosen not to reissue the discs.
In 1985, Hutcherson participated in the re-birth of the Blue Note label by playing at celebration concert at Town Hall in New York. His work is captured on compact disc One Night With Blue Note, Vol. 1. Footage of the concert has also been released on DVD. Later that same year, Hutcherson participated in the soundtrack recording to the film Round Midnight. Hutcherson also had a minor role in the film.
The Eighties also saw a dramatic uptick in Hutcherson's work as a sideman. [In 1981 alone, Hutcherson participated as a sideman on no less than eight recordings (for Sonny Stitt, Harold Land, Chico Freeman, Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Rollins, Pharoah Sanders, and McCoy Tyner). He also released his own Solo/Quartet LP in 1981.] Other highlights from the decade include Larry Vuckovich's Blue Balkan, McCoy Tyner's La Leyenda de la Hora, John Hicks' John Hicks, Frank Morgan's Reflections, Barney Kessel's Red Hot and Blues, and Andrew Hill's Eternal Spirit.
Recent Years
During the Nineties and into the present decade, Hutcherson has made fewer recordings, although he has kept up a steady touring schedule. One recent and exciting development in Hutcherson's musical life has been his involvement as a member of the San Francisco Jazz Collective. Beginning in 2004, the octet began touring every Spring. Each tour features compositions by members of the group, as well as the compositions of one "jazz giant," selected by Musical Director Joshua Redman. In 2004, the collective featured the music of Ornette Coleman. In 2005, it was John Coltrane. In 2006, the tour featured the music of Herbie Hancock. The group has released recordings from each of its tours, Inaugural Season Live and Live 2005: 2nd Annual Tour. Both of them are excellent, although the group seems more at ease on the second set. I suppose that Hutcherson's familiarity with Hancock's music--and the man--will only serve to make the music from 2006 even better.
Along with the SF Jazz Collective recordings, here are a few more worth highlighting from the last fifteen years: Hutcherson's own Skyline, his collaboration with McCoy Tyner on Manhattan Moods, his work on the Various Artists' compilation Acoustic Masters II; plus his sideman work for Kenny Barron, Other Places and Abbey Lincoln, Wholly Earth.
Hutcherson's work remains entirely compelling. He brings something special every time he plays. In recent years, it's especially noticeable on his recordings as a sideman. If he doesn't play on a particular track, you miss him. When he does play, everyone sounds better.
review
John Coltrane, the man and his music, has long been a profound influence on the artistic path treaded by Bobby Hutcherson - almost from the very beginning of the great vibraphonist’s impressive career. Hutcherson remembers penciling on a fake moustache as an underaged teenager in his native Los Angeles so as to gain entrance to first hear the iconic saxophonist play in a local jam session preceding an engagement with the Miles Davis Quintet. “I got there early and he was in the back practicing and I was the only one sitting out there in front. That was great because nobody was there and I got to hear him practice. He practiced all the way up to the time that they played for the jam session. I never heard anybody practice like that …”
“He was playing “Giant Steps” and all those things then and I was wondering, ‘What the heck is he doing,’ because you know he really had it together. At that point he was studying out of the Nicholas Slonimsky book, the Thesaurus of Melodic Scales and Patterns which has all of those progressions in it. Trane was playing a lot of that and he was telling a lot of people about getting the book and checking it out, you know.” The experience was life changing for the young vibraphonist. “At first I was playing and I wanted to be like Milt Jackson, who of course you know is great,” he acknowledges. “And Lionel Hampton. But Trane’s thing …it was a thing of humility and love … He was a very sweet wonderful person, just like a lamb. He’d always be there for you, to answer your questions.” …
The example of that experience hit home with even greater force when Hutcherson heard the great saxophonist leading his own band years later. “I went to the Jazz Workshop here in San Francisco,” he recalls. “He was playing and it was weird – there were only a few people there and he was up on the bandstand playing, him McCoy and Elvin and Jimmy, and Trane was playing and crying and it was quite a thing to see. After the set was over, you couldn’t clap because it would be sacrilegious. Trane was at the point where he was showing that the bandstand was an altar and it was a way of praying. I had never witnessed anything like that. It made me realize that you don’t play just to try to get a hit or become famous. It’s all about a spiritual religious situation where whatever passion in playing overtakes you and it becomes an offering. At that point then you’re just hoping to be used and have the notes come through giving the message to yourself and back to God and all the people that are around there to listen. It’s all about being part of the Universe, just as small as a grain of sand and just as important as the sun coming up every morning and setting in the evening.”
Hutcherson’s philosophy of being part of a greater whole extends to his view of the value of the other contributors to this date. Of his longtime friend and frequent drummer Eddie Marshall he says, “Well Eddie, we’ve been together, we’ve played together for years; since I met him back in the sixties. He’s one of those guys who it’s just wonderful to have - his attitude, his feeling. He loves to play, he loves to call you up after the gig and tell you how much he enjoyed it. He plays very well with my instrument because he can play forceful and at the same time still make it so that you can hear me play if I’m playing quietly. He understands.”
Pianist Joe Gilman, a respected educator at the Dave Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific, is only beginning to receive the international recognition his talent merits. “Eddie brought Joe to my attention,” Hutcherson recalls. “He and I had played together a long time ago before and I had forgot all about it. He’s one of those persons who is really close to his family and that’s important because he’s going to bring the closeness of the family situation to the bandstand to make everybody feel like family.” The vibist continues, “He’s unbelievably talented! As soon as I write something down, he completely understands. He understands the chords that are contained within the scale … of the possibilities depending on the way the melody is. On how to approach it and at the same time give me space. And how to drop a color out there and fill it in the canvas and let it drip down the canvas and then say you want to play some.”
Of bassist Glenn Richman, Hutcherson says, “He’s another person that Eddie Marshall turned me on to. He’s real strong person. If something was about to go terribly wrong, you’d want him standing next to you. He’s always there to help. He’s another in that family type situation and that’s why I enjoy playing with him. When you see that family thing it, all of a sudden it’s so much easier to play. I mean because it’s a team. It’s the teamwork that’s just wonderful. Like if you ever go to a boxing match and you don’t realize that the referee’s also in the ring with the two fighters. That’s because he’s really doing a great job; he’s going about his business and it’s making everything really easy. It helps make everything so simple and that’s why I like him.” Richman, like Gilman is vastly underappreciated outside of his West Coast environs. This date should help bring wider attention to his superb playing.
Guitarist Anthony Wilson is practically family to Hutcherson. He says, “I’ve known the great Gerald Wilson, Anthony’s father all my life.…..my sister sang with his big band back in 1958. Anthony was like a little kid when I first met him. I didn’t really realize that he had grown up into such a guitarist. Gerald had called me up and asked me to play at his 90th birthday party at the Hollywood Bowl and I went into the musicians union where they were having a rehearsal and Anthony was in there playing with the big band. They had the vibes set up next to him and so he started playing this one song and Gerald said, ‘Anthony, take a solo on this one,’ and he started playing and I said, ‘Oh my gosh. Oh wow, I remember feeling like that.’ So I said I’ve got to find this young man and ask him will he come and play. Especially since you know I was such good friends with his dad and he was such an important part of my life, I knew it would be good to have him there and it was. It was wonderful.”
The music on this date is Hutcherson’s “offering” to the spirit of John Coltrane, a gratitude filled homage to the man whose life and music acutely affected the great vibraphonist’s own approach to the deep calling that has made his own life a most rewarding one. In describing his reasons for choosing this particular repertoire he says simply, “Songs that I like, things and stories that I like … These melodies have a natural order to them; the question and the answer of them - the boldness and the strength of them, things that are very natural. So that’s the reason why that I got these songs. Even when they weren’t written by Trane, some of the songs that Trane played you see those same thoughts.”
The title track, “Wise One,” is one of Coltrane’s most intensely contemplative works – first recorded on 1964’s Crescent date, it is purportedly an encore dedication to the saxophonist’s wife Naima in gratitude for her prudent counsel during the period of his spiritual awakening that was more explicitly addressed on his Love Supreme album. The boppish “Like Sonny,” is taken at a brisk tempo here. First recorded at the 1959 session that produced the classic Giant Steps record, but not released until later on Coltrane Jazz, it is of course Trane’s tribute to his fellow saxophonist, the great Sonny Rollins. “Aisha” was mistakenly credited to Coltrane when it first appeared on Olé. The beautiful love song was actually composed by Hutcherson’s friend and frequent collaborator, pianist McCoy Tyner, for his wife.
“Equinox” is one of Trane’s most spectacular compositions, a high point of his Coltrane’s Sound album and this one as well. The Latin tinged minor blues proves to be an excellent vehicle for Hutcherson, whose vibes soar with climactic intensity, inspiring equally exhilarating contributions from his colleagues. Bandleaders Count Basie and Benny Carter and vocalists Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald had already covered the popular standard “All Or Nothing At All” when Coltrane immortalized it on Ballads, ensuring its permanent place in the modern jazz repertory. Here the piece is arranged at a breakneck pace over a Latin rhythm, provoking an enlivened workout by the group, propelled by Marshall’s driving drums. “Nancy (With The Laughing Face),” this date’s second song from the Ballads album, is taken at its traditional slow dreamy tempo here, demonstrating Hutcherson’s mature mastery of the form in the tradition of his early idol Milt Jackson.
Coltrane’s “Spiritual” is another of his religiously inspired works, transforming the gospel music sounds of his family church upbringing into his own rhythmically innovative personal language. Marshall’s Elvin Jones influenced drumming dramatically opens the piece, which Hutcherson and company perform with a gratifyingly restrained intensity. Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “Out Of This World” from the Coltrane album is, like “All Or Nothing All,” taken at a much faster than usual tempo, allowing each of the quintet’s members to tastefully exhibit his instrumental virtuosity. The closing “Dear Lord,” from Trane’s posthumously released Transition record, is a beautiful devotional offering from the composer. The relaxed prayer is a most appropriate conclusion to this exceptional date.
Atop of the towering arch at Washington Square, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood where Trane first recorded “Spiritual” live at the Vanguard, is the inscription Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hands of God. These inspiring words, first delivered by George Washington to his troops, might just as easily been spoken by John Coltrane to his fellow musicians when creating the music that is recast here. Hutcherson himself says much the same in philosophizing his approach to music and life. “You do the best you can, but the main thing is knowing where you’re coming from and realizing that the magic that you’re reaching for has nothing to do with you. You’re just asking to prepare yourself so that it can come through you. You can’t possess any music and you can’t possess any song; you can’t even possess your own life. Nothing’s yours, but you can certainly give an example and direction and be an example in things that which you should do.”
Wise words indeed. |
