🎷Brad, Terry, Herbie Mann, and All That Jazz: Improv Reflections on the Uniquely American Music🎺🎶

A Brit and a Texan riff on improvised personal reflections....all about jazz!

This post is a collaboration between myself (Brad Kyle) and Terry Freedman, on an article previously posted on Terry’s “Eclecticism: Reflections on literature and life,” July 1, 2023:

All that jazz

It’s an experiment, a duet in non-fiction prose: And, like all good jazz, it’s an improv…I’ll be riffin’ on the groove already set by Terry, a UK native son. I, a stubborn Texan born and raised in Houston, may contribute a counterpoint to his melody; I might choose to harmonize on a phrase or two, or even alter the time signature a tad. We’ll see where it goes!

It’ll be easy to tell who’s who. Brad Kyle’s contributions will be denoted by italics and a “BK” before his paragraphs. Terry will be in his original typeface with no initials. The YouTube videos are of Terry’s choosing, and appeared in his original article.

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BK: Regular FR&B readers will know I was raised on rock’n’roll (seeing The Beatles at age 8 on TV’s “The Ed Sullivan Show,” February 9, 1964); faithful readers will also know my brother and I were constantly surrounded by some 20,000 jazz LPs and 78s…Dad’s collection in custom cabinetry!

So, while not “raised” on jazz, I certainly gained a tolerance (at the very least), and a definite love of much of it (Ella, Duke, Basie, and the spate of crooners who fronted bands) by osmosis, if nothing else! Often, I’d wander into the den (between listening to the rock records routinely hogging the turntable in my room) to look for a name on an album spine I’d not heard of before, and gently carry it back into my inner sanctum. Thankfully, Dad trusted me, and I cared for his LPs as he knew I looked after mine.

“Jazz? You like jazz?”

I was talking to a friend of mine at college. He was 16, I was 16, and I couldn’t believe that anyone less old than a fossil would like that kind of music.

“But it’s just a mess, a cacophony, with no rhyme or rhythm. From what I’ve been subjected to, it’s based on the principle ‘Any note will do’.”

“You’re wrong. You just haven’t heard the right kind of jazz. Come back with me after classes. And I’ll play you some jazz you will love.”

I took him up on his offer, thereby embarking on, so far, a decades-long exploration of the world of jazz.

The record he played me, which I then went out and bought, was called “Coming Home, Baby,” by Herbie Mann, from the album Herbie Mann Live at the Village Gate. Herbie Mann was a flautist and, as I was soon to discover, “Coming Home, Baby” was his signature tune.

BK: I became aware of Mann around 1969 or so (I was 14 that year), and was deep into the latest by Led Zeppelin (my first concert ever was a Led Zep show the following year), Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, and Jethro Tull. It was listening to Tull’s lead singer/flautist, Ian Anderson, that prompted me to wonder if I could somehow produce the sound he was making on his flute!

While other teens were picking up guitars after one listen of Hendrix, Page, Clapton, and/or Beck, I was drawn to Anderson’s wicked-sounding “jazz-style” flute (as I learned it was called), replete with the tonguing, raspy, and breathy embouchure favored by jazz horn’n’flute player, Rahsaan Roland Kirk:

Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-1977): The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music: “Usually, he appeared on stage with all three [saxophones] hanging around his neck, and at times he would play a number of these horns at once, harmonizing with himself, or sustain a note for lengthy durations by using circular breathing. He used the multiple horns to play true chords, essentially functioning as a one-man saxophone section.”

BK: After renting a flute, I found a flute teacher, and took one lesson to learn the fingering and embouchure. After that, I was off! My church choir singing (as well as singing along to Beatles, Monkees, and Turtles records, with harmonies) revealed to me that I must’ve had an ear for music. This made my ability to pick out the flute licks rather simple, and proved to me (and my parents) that “my” instrument was, clearly, the flute, and not the accordion which I played from ages 7-10 in the early ‘60s (earning a trophy and several ribbons at two out-of-state recitals)!

This song, a re-working of Bach’s “Bourrée in E minor,” was released on Jethro Tull’s “Stand Up” album, their second, released in 1969. I learned every note, including the harmony line:

And that brings me on to one of the things I love about jazz. The way in which different artists, and even the same artist, can revisit and reinterpret a number in many different ways. To give you a taste of this, compare these two versions of “Lily Was Here.”

Both feature the saxophonist, Candy Dulfer, but the mood of each is subtly different. In the first, despite the sombre, enigmatic tone of the video, Dulfer’s sax solo, which starts at around one minute and thirty seconds, is exuberant. She takes flight, but despite deviating from the tune and the speed of the other players keeps to the underlying timing and beat:

In contrast, this second version strikes me as being more subdued, more sombre in tone, despite the exuberance of both Dulfer and Culbertson:

It’s worth pointing out – as if it needed pointing out – that Dulfer is clearly enjoying herself. Indeed, both musicians are. They each give me the impression that they’re not exactly certain what the other one will do, and delight in that unknowing. They bounce off each other, each picking up their cue in turn.

When I listen to jazz, I find myself being carried away. It’s very visceral for me, especially when the soloist suddenly takes off. I can think of few better examples of this than Herbie Mann’s interpretation of “Watermelon Man.”

BK: “Watermelon Man” was not only the lead track on Mann’s 1978 album, “Sunbelt” (on Atlantic Records), it was written by jazz keyboardist, Herbie Hancock (now 83), in 1962 for his debut album, “Takin’ Off,” released on Blue Note Records.

According to Len Lyons’ 1989 book, “The Great Jazz Pianists: Speaking of Their Lives and Music,” “[‘Watermelon Man’] was the first piece of music [Hancock] had ever composed with a commercial goal in mind.

“The popularity of the piece, due primarily to Mongo Santamaría [the Cuban percussionist who had a surprise Top Ten pop hit in 1963 with it], paid Hancock’s bills for five or six years. Hancock did not feel the composition was a sellout however, describing that structurally, it was one of his strongest pieces due to its almost mathematical balance.”

In fact, Santamaría’s recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998:

At two minutes and twenty five seconds Mann launches into an improvisation that leads, at three minutes and five seconds, into an explosive efflorescence of sound in which he is going at a rate of knots while the horns, previously unheard, punctuate the rhythm leading, eventually, into a trumpet solo [played by the late Brazilian horn player, Claudio Roditi, who died in 2020 at 73]:

The interesting thing for me about that trumpet solo is that many of the notes are the same, yet it is by no means boring because while the same note may be repeated over and over, it’s subtly different each time[1].

In all of these jazz numbers, musicians extemporise, but always within a structure. Once you’ve listened to the soloists’ slots in a number, play it again, but this time focusing on the background instruments. What is the pianist doing? How about the bass player. Listen again, and again, and again.

As you may have gathered, jazz, at least for me, is partly a forensic affair. I find that I need to listen to a number several times, each time focusing on a different instrument. It’s astonishing how rich some of these records are. A few years ago I listened to a record I’ve listened to intently for years, and still heard something I had never heard before.

And once you’ve listened to each instrument in turn, listen again to the number as a whole, but this time differently. Note how the players are separate, but together in their separateness.

Listening carefully, aurally scrutinising, often leads to sudden realisations. “Wait! What happened there?” you exclaim. On playing and replaying that section or the whole piece you realise what it was: somehow someone is playing off the beat. This is known as syncopation, and is exemplified by Steve Gadd’s drumming in this number,

BK: “Sunrise Highs” is featured on Mann’s 1974 Family of Mann Atlantic album, “First Light” (with his group featuring Gadd, bassist Tony Levin, who later worked with King Crimson and Peter Gabriel, keyboardist Pat Rebillot, David Newman on sax and flute, and guitarist Sam Brown, who wrote the song).

Jim Newsom of AllMusic called “First Light” “one of the classiest and most unified recordings of Herbie Mann’s long career”:

Syncopation provides a layer of excitement. It’s like having a touch of chili sauce in a salad: it jolts you, in a good way, because it is so unexpected and, therefore, unanticipated.

Here’s another thing: with all these players doing their own thing, how does the lead player bring the others back to the main tune? I saw Herbie Mann at Ronnie Scott’s in London once, and he brought the others back with a simple hand gesture[2].

In some of his records, Mann brings the others back into line by quietly playing a tune until the rest seem to realise what he’s doing. You can hear him do this at around 6 minutes in his (rock) version of the Rolling Stones’ “Bitch.”

This video starts at that point, but a warning: the mellowness only lasts for a few seconds before they all go mad again!

BK: This Jagger/Richard song originally appeared on the Stones’ 1971 “Sticky Fingers” album, and this 1974 “London Underground” album (again, on Atlantic Records), features Mann fronting some very rock-involved players, including Aynsley Dunbar, now 77, on drums (at this time, the former Fank Zappa player was about to finish a couple-album stint with a pre-Steve Perry Journey; my 1974 meeting with 2017 Rock Hall inductee, Dunbar and Journey can be read about here).

Also joining Mann and Dunbar on “London Underground” are Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, the late Ian McDonald on sax (Foreigner and King Crimson ended up on his resume), and British guitarist, Albert Lee (now 79). Legendary Atlantic head, Ahmet Ertegun, served as Executive Producer on the project:

Returning to my jazz beginnings, the number my friend played to me was this one. Listen to how long the double bass [played by Ben Tucker, who wrote the song] and percussion introduction is [Rudy Collins, drums; Ray Mantilla, congas, percussion], how the flute comes in gently and then does its own thing. It’s a really long introduction, and the whole thing lasts for over eight minutes – this in an era (1961) when the average pop song was around three minutes long or less.

This record also introduced me to an instrument I hadn’t heard of before: the vibraphone, or vibes. It’s a metal version of the xylophone, but far more mellow. You can hear it in this number once Mann has finished his solo. Incidentally, the humming you can hear is the vibes player [Hagood Hardy, shown below] singing along!

(l) vibraphone. (r) Born in Indiana, the Canadian-raised Hagood Hardy was also a pianist and composer.

For a completely different interpretation, listen to Mann playing it in Standing Ovation at Newport, recorded in 1965.  There is a lovely interplay between the vibes [played by Dave Pike] and the piano (the latter played by none other than Chick Corea). This time the line-up includes two trombones [John Hitchcock, Mark Weinstein].

After they’d finished, there was a standing ovation, and so as an encore they played a shorter version of “Coming Home Baby” that was, I believe, completely improvised and, consequently, very different. It comes in straight after the main rendition. At one point the crowd is clapping the beat of the music. However, the claps reached Mann a second too late, so they were completely out of time. Mann described how he had to concentrate really intensely in order to keep to time:

And now, just to round things off, contrast that version with his disco-like version of the same song:

I hope this article has given you a hint of what is so exciting about jazz. It’s full of surprises, and far from being a form in which “any note will do,” it’s one that requires one to be a consummate musician to pull off.

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[1] Cf “I know, I know etc” in Ain’t No Sunshine, by Bill Withers

and also Chick Corea’s piano work in Standing Ovation at Newport (see below).

[2] Ronnie Scott’s was an experience in itself. Scott told some really lame jokes. Example: [This was the era of sit-ins and love-ins] “I asked one of our waitresses if she liked Dickens, and she said she’d never been to one.” A member of the audience, probably a plant but I’m not sure, shouted out, “Oh, you’re really funny; my sides are splitting; ouch, there goes another rib!” Scott responded with: “If you want me to be really funny lend me that suit you’re wearing. Somewhere in London there’s a Ford Cortina with its seat covers missing.”