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Herbie/Headhunters 1974


fasstrack

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puM38Xgz38w&feature=related

These grooves are intense. I know there isn't great love for Herbie---at least all his doings---here, but give forget the silly clothes, etc. and this a chance. The little subtle harmonic coloristic things he does under these grooves and Benny Maupin's perfect understanding of the music are worth the price of the (free!) ticket. One could almost forgive Herbie for his saying with a straight face introducing Butterfly 'we'd like to do something pretty now....for the ladies in the house'. I swear, he said that... Music's great though, it holds up IMO, where other stuff of that period is dated.

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One of the good things I can say about the recently published Mwandishi book is that it altered my understanding of the early Head Hunters music. I find I wind up revisiting the '74 stuff every year or so, and it "sounds" different every time--that is, more daring and experimental the more comfortable I get picking out (a) the technical conceits that seem to unify "classic" Herbie with post-Head Hunters Herbie and (b) the ways in which the early Head Hunters music seems to distinguish itself from the often crappy jazz funk conventions of the period.

Darcy James Argue recently posted a defense of Donald Byrd's Blue Note funk excursions, and I'd tend to agree; even taking into account the fact that this music was happening in the same political and creative atmosphere that fostered the Braxton Aristas, the pre-ECM Art Ensemble, Get Up With It, McCoy's band with Azar Lawrence, Mingus's Changes albums, Strata-East, and so on, you can't deny that the caliber of craftsmanship and vision among rare groove exponents was itself widely variable--and, in a multitude of ways, just as plugged into the crux of the times as any of the aforementioned (much less commercial) music. The Head Hunters don't really qualify as "rare groove," but they do fall within the realm of groove oriented music that actually meets the genre on its own terms and, by virtue of taking said genre seriously, redefines and apotheosizes it.

It's important to keep in mind that Head Hunters was sort of a commercial surprise, and, watching that video and listening to the first few sets of music, I can kind of see why. Even though the music is consistently tonal, metered, and reliant on straight time, it's also heavily improvisational, dynamic, and prone to fits of weirdness (Herbie's electronics and his still very undiluted harmonic vocabulary, Bennie's intermittent free jazzisms, some of the instrumentation choices, for three). There is no way music like this would chart that well these days, and it's funny to think that we often talk about it as if it would--it's really just commercial in relative terms.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puM38Xgz38w&feature=related

These grooves are intense. I know there isn't great love for Herbie---at least all his doings---here, but give forget the silly clothes, etc. and this a chance. The little subtle harmonic coloristic things he does under these grooves and Benny Maupin's perfect understanding of the music are worth the price of the (free!) ticket. One could almost forgive Herbie for his saying with a straight face introducing Butterfly 'we'd like to do something pretty now....for the ladies in the house'. I swear, he said that... Music's great though, it holds up IMO, where other stuff of that period is dated.

I like this stuff, but I feel like I'm watching "Fat Albert" with my eyes closed.

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Epist: some very keen observations there. What book is that, BTW? Re Byrd: I hear you. Not a damn thing wrong w/The Blackbyrds-an outgrowth, IIRC, of his Howard U. Teaching, as they were students. I've met and played w/him 2x. Brilliant man. Both times were jams. The second time, late '90s, was interesting as hell: while a guy was soloing he turned to me w/Harmon mute in and off-mic started playing hip pentatonics in my ear-'here, kid. Dig THIS shit. Learn something!' The time before I was in the kid jam session house band at the Jazz Cultural Theater-and he and my crazy (and brilliant too) running buddy Tommy Turrentine got it on in a friendly battle. Donald is a guy I wish I could've hung with. I was very lucky in my training. Also on my wish list while they are around and still very viable: Randy Weston and Jimmy Heath. And, if you're listening, oh Lord, Tom Harrell.

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Well, though I´m more into bop, hardbop into new thing, I really like that album and there are times I go back to that mid seventies stuff, Herbie, and the electric Miles of course.

It was just part of the time. Everybody listened to it, some people just got in touch with jazz from albums like that.

It´s great music, great players, period.

Even if my really love was Bird, Bud etc., I wanted to dig the 70s stuff also. It was just the style of that decade, like bop was in the 40´s and so on, and there were really great players.

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Yeah, that Pond book makes all the right points for all the wrong reasons in most of the wrong ways. Can't recall the last time I liked a book less that I agreed with more.

The Mwandishi book seems to be much more to the point of things. Need to pick it up soon...

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This is the book I'm talking about (as some of you have already pointed out): You'll Know When You Get There

...and this is a lengthy (and, on reflection, sort of cantankerous) review I wrote a few weeks back: Issues w/Mwandishi Book

In short, the book fills in some interesting narrative gaps in the Mwandishi band's history, but it's extremely cursory with the analysis and is largely composed of information that duplicates preexisting (and readily accessible) papers and interviews. This is not a book that either "captures the spirit" of the music or opens up new and interesting conceptual angles.

The spate of Herbie discussion in the past few months has opened my mind to the continuity in Herbie's music. I'm not necessarily of the mind that this sense of continuity forgives the excess and crassness of some of the late-70's/80's music, but it does make it impossible to write Herbie off as this irredeemable sellout with a specific "jumping the shark" sort of moment.

Check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kt2DVy80z8

...a track off of the first Headhunters "solo" album, released in 1975 (I can't get a recording date, but my assumption is either late '74 or early/mid '75)--it sounds like a Mwandishi track--or, rather, something off of The Jewel In the Lotus (which was definitely recorded in 1974). The fact that this stuff was recorded so long after Head Hunters makes me think that, although the Headhunters often subverted freer/spacier aspects in the name of "the funk," freedom and spaceiness were such timely and still relevant concerns that they couldn't be disregarded entirely.

Maybe the exigencies of Herbie's newfound success curbed the in-studio experimentation a bit, but stuff like this--and definitely music like "Vein Melter" and the tracks off of Flood--indicate to me that fat grooves were only part (albeit probably the biggest part) of what the whole Headhunters thing was about.

Edited by ep1str0phy
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It's important to keep in mind that Head Hunters was sort of a commercial surprise, and, watching that video and listening to the first few sets of music, I can kind of see why. Even though the music is consistently tonal, metered, and reliant on straight time, it's also heavily improvisational, dynamic, and prone to fits of weirdness (Herbie's electronics and his still very undiluted harmonic vocabulary, Bennie's intermittent free jazzisms, some of the instrumentation choices, for three). There is no way music like this would chart that well these days, and it's funny to think that we often talk about it as if it would--it's really just commercial in relative terms.

Some good observations indeed, though I beg to differ on one account. Head Hunters may have not been 'planned' as a commercial success, but one of the few things that the otherwise mediocre book by Stephen Pond (for the reason Jim gave) clarifies is the extent of marketing that went into the album under the auspices of producer David Rubinson, who also had Santana, the Pointer Sisters, Taj Mahal and Moby Grape under his wing, and Columbia promotional manager Vernon Slaughter. Certainly not the bog standard (=non-existent?) jazz album marketing. After EW&F this was the second time ever that Columbia targeted black R&B FM stations.

But as you say, the musical shift from Mwandishi to the Head Hunters is more seamless than often suggested. The first Head Hunters gigs were merely a few weeks after Hancock disbanded the Mwandishi band, and with Bennie Maupin and his Dolphy and Marion Brown lineage plus Bill Summers' percussion, Hancock retained much of the Mwandishi free sound on top of the Oakland funk fundament. It's really worthwhile hunting down the early Head Hunters live bootlegs, which feature loads of extended and intense free improvisations, just like this video.

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Thanks for pointing that out--and one of the few things that the otherwise mediocre Mwandishi book really accomplished was illustrating just how fraught the inside baseball surrounding the Mwandishi band was. Obviously the music was far out, but it was also a matter of Warner Bros. having no idea what do with what Herbie had concocted. It's plain upon listening to any of the three "main" Mwandishi albums, the Eddie Henderson stuff, the soundtrack to The Spook Who Sat By the Door, and even passages of The Jewel in the Lotus that that band was a lot funkier than history would have us cop to, just as Head Hunters was a lot weirder than we often give it credit for.

I often wonder about prescient music and the degree to which its epigones succeed by virtue of either (a) history "catching up" with innovation or (b) people dumbing down and simplifying an innovated "thing." Again, Headhunters is striking for just how extremely not lame it is, considering many of its distinguishing innovations have been manhandled into much, much lesser musics (i.e., crappy bar bands playing "Chameleon"). Sextant, on the other hand, could have laid the groundwork for plenty of contemporary electronica--but I have yet to hear much electronic dance music (not just crappy stuff, but consensus choices like Autechre, Squarepusher, Flying Lotus, etc.)--that approaches Sextant's level of rhythmic freedom, harmonic sophistication, and spontaneous detail. (And just so I'm not being elitist--these attributes are not necessary for superior or even "good" art--just that we're talking about descendant music that shares more than a little with what is in many ways a more complexly organized ancestor.)

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The really perplexing thing is that the author clearly had access to all of the members of Mwandishi and a multitude of entourage-type people. It was a real opportunity to do some original research, but it reads more like a "pop music" book (if there is an analog in music to "pop science"). It's one big instance of the author just saying "[topic A] is beyond the scope of this book," and it just makes everything seem really marginal.

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