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Favorite obscure Herbie cuts


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I was listening to this earlier today, and it may be my all-time favorite little-known Herbie sideman appearance. 3/4 tune, no drums, simple harmonic structure, but... oh my god. If someone who had never heard Herbie before came to me and said "So why should I care about this guy?", this might very well be the track I'd choose to demonstrate why.

 

[video:youtube]

 

Feel free to post your favorites, of course.

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Milton Nascimento is such a great choice Josh. He played some rad stuff with him. I only know 1 or 2 of those songs. What you posted here I hadn't heard. How mind blowing. 3:20 is the solo. More chicky really. I love to hear Herbie be challenged / stretched like this. I wonder what's going through his head. 'Keep it folky and more diatonic, keep it double time'. He's in control the whole time.

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The Milton cut I know with Herbie on it is this one. Not a textural tour de force like what Josh posted. But really great stuff still.

 

[video:youtube]

Kawai C-60 Grand Piano : Hammond A-100 : Hammond SK2 : Yamaha CP4 : Yamaha Montage 7 : Moog Sub 37

 

My latest album: Funky organ, huge horn section

https://bobbycressey.bandcamp.com/album/cali-native

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The Miltons album was in my regular listening rotation for years. Somehow it didn't make the transition from CD to download but this is a reminder that it should. I bought the CD without knowing Herbie was on it. I remember hearing this solo and wondering who could play like that . . . oh, of course!

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Technically amazing but it leaves me cold and bored. IMO, that kind of intensity needs interaction from the rhythm section.

 

Interesting perspective. I can see your point even if I don't feel what you're feeling (or more precisely, I don't experience your lack of feeling about it). The solo grabs the oars and pulls the rest along with it. I wouldn't want to hear this done a lot, but on this tune it's a refreshing reframing of role of a piano solo.

Gigging: Crumar Mojo 61, Hammond SKPro

Home: Vintage Vibe 64

 

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Continuing in the theme of Herbie playing with Brazilians, this solo is pretty killer â as well as the arrangement, and for that matter the entire album. I had never heard of Dori Caymmi, then worked opposite him at a now-defunct club called Kimball's East near Oakland CA (sometime in the early 1990s as I recall). Hearing him got me started on my journey into the Braz world. The record is called "Kicking Cans" and features â besides Herbie â guys like Branford Marsalis, Dave & Don Grusin, Ivan Lins, Billy Childs and others. Herbie is prominently featured on this, almost from the first bar. Solo at 2:54 if you're impatient â but the whole track is a gem.

 

[video:youtube]

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I like Herbie Hancock's Rhodes playing and sound on this album from 1970, especially this track (solo 1'30" - 2'40"). Nice work also from Ron Carter on bass, Airto Moreira on drums, and of course Paul Desmond on sax, with a cool arrangement (in 5/4) by Don Sebesky.

 

[video:youtube]

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I can imagine in the session they wonder, "what can we do with the tune after the "head"? I know, give it to Herbie, let him play..."

 

LOL

 

Really nice - thanks for sharing.

 

Jerry

 

Continuing in the theme of Herbie playing with Brazilians, this solo is pretty killer â as well as the arrangement, and for that matter the entire album. I had never heard of Dori Caymmi, then worked opposite him at a now-defunct club called Kimball's East near Oakland CA (sometime in the early 1990s as I recall). Hearing him got me started on my journey into the Braz world. The record is called "Kicking Cans" and features â besides Herbie â guys like Branford Marsalis, Dave & Don Grusin, Ivan Lins, Billy Childs and others. Herbie is prominently featured on this, almost from the first bar. Solo at 2:54 if you're impatient â but the whole track is a gem.

 

[video:youtube]

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I was listening to this earlier today, and it may be my all-time favorite little-known Herbie sideman appearance. 3/4 tune, no drums, simple harmonic structure, but... oh my god. If someone who had never heard Herbie before came to me and said "So why should I care about this guy?", this might very well be the track I'd choose to demonstrate why.

 

Feel free to post your favorites, of course.

 

Wow, never heard this before - thanks!

 

Jerry

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[video:youtube]

 

The musicality just oozes with Herbie (and Desmond)

Check out out how Herbie picks up on Desmonds last notes when he starts his solo...Brilliant!

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

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The Prisoner album is greatly overlooked due to it being perceived as a soundtrack (i.e. background music). It's sort of a transitional album that hints at what's to come, but there's some tight playing and some compelling grooves.

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The Prisoner album is greatly overlooked due to it being perceived as a soundtrack (i.e. background music). It's sort of a transitional album that hints at what's to come, but there's some tight playing and some compelling grooves.

 

I"m curious where you got the idea that the Prisoner was ever perceived as a soundtrack or background music. I"ve been aware of and have listened to this album for a very long time and have never heard it described this way. I know I wouldn"t.

 

[Edit - Maybe you"re thinking of Fat Albert Rotunda, the record that came after the Prisoner and featured mostly the same personnel?]

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Ah, both are great albums and overlooked, but you are probably correct that Fat Albert Rotunda was the one that was designed as a soundtrack but also meant to be enjoyed as a regular album.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_(album)

 

The programmatic theme that informs the album, being dedicated to the memory of MLK, may have had me thinking it was used for a TV biopic of some sort.

 

Part of why I like this album so much is that it shows Hancock's abilities as an arranger of expanded instrumentation, and especially features my beloved Bass Clarinet (pre-Bernie Maupin).

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Ah, both are great albums and overlooked, but you are probably correct that Fat Albert Rotunda was the one that was designed as a soundtrack but also meant to be enjoyed as a regular album.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_(album)

 

The programmatic theme that informs the album, being dedicated to the memory of MLK, may have had me thinking it was used for a TV biopic of some sort.

 

Part of why I like this album so much is that it shows Hancock's abilities as an arranger of expanded instrumentation, and especially features my beloved Bass Clarinet (pre-Bernie Maupin).

 

I too thought I read somewhere that The Prisoner was a score from a movie. What really made me want this album, which was out of print at the time, was that it was a continuation of Speak Like a Child album, which was/is one of my favorite albums.

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Herbie is no stranger to soundtracks. I'm pretty sure his first one was Blowup, the 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni film (which also featured the Yardbirds in a scene where Jeff Beck smashes his guitar!). Around the time of the Prisoner, he did the first Death Wish movie (starring Charles Bronson, with a quick scene of a young Jeff Goldblum in his film debut as a drugged out hoodlum), the aforementioned Fat Albert Rotunda (which was originally for a Bill Cosby TV show!), and a very obscure and somewhat controversial (at the time) film called "The Spook Who Sat By the Door." The soundtrack has an early version of the song that became Actual Proof (on the "Thrust" album), which also appeared on a Keyboard Magazine "flexidisc" where Herbie "demonstrates the Fender Rhodes"! Funny stuff, but that early "Actual Proof" (called simply "The Spook") featured Harvey Mason on drums, whereas the famous version from Thrust is Mike Clark. I found the entire movie on youtube and the opening credits have yet another version of this Actual Proof theme with strings added! The movie was directed by Ivan Dixon - remember Sgt. Kinchloe on Hogan's Heroes? Ya gotta be old like me I guess.

 

I guess you can tell I have some time on my hands these days! To return to the Prisoner â imo it's a masterpiece. "I Have A Dream" has three killer solos, from Johnny Coles, Joe Henderson, and Herbie. This record, like the one before (Speak Like A Child) was Herbie's nod to Gil Evans. He did some very unusual arranging and orchestrating (using uncommon combinations of instruments like bass trombone, alto flute, fluegelhorn and on the Prisoner â as Mark mentioned, bass clarinet). These records end the era of "acoustic Herbie" since he dove fully into synths and electronics with his Mwandishi band soon after.

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Alto

He did some very unusual arranging and orchestrating (using uncommon combinations of instruments like bass trombone, alto flute, fluegelhorn and on the Prisoner â as Mark mentioned, bass clarinet).

 

 

All my favorites. Man bass clarinet, Alto Flute Flugelhorn, what a sound! This album is indeed a masterpiece but I don't need to say that. Great call, I'm loving this Herbie Thread.

Kawai C-60 Grand Piano : Hammond A-100 : Hammond SK2 : Yamaha CP4 : Yamaha Montage 7 : Moog Sub 37

 

My latest album: Funky organ, huge horn section

https://bobbycressey.bandcamp.com/album/cali-native

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This is one of my favorite Herbie Sideman cuts for a few personal reasons.

 

I taped this off the radio in my car in the late 90s. I missed the point where the announced the tune and personnel though. And the first part of the head. Then eventually I lost tape. So for years I was trying to track this tune down based on a memory of a melody. I struck gold when I was somehow able to recall enough of it to play for Kamau Kenyatta who I was studying with, and his eyes lit up and he printed the chart out for me and there it was. I love it for everyone's playing. The gorgeous semi pop I vi VII progression and vibe and the unhilarious key of B Major. Interesting to hear them play within the 'limitations' of that.

 

 

[video:youtube]

Kawai C-60 Grand Piano : Hammond A-100 : Hammond SK2 : Yamaha CP4 : Yamaha Montage 7 : Moog Sub 37

 

My latest album: Funky organ, huge horn section

https://bobbycressey.bandcamp.com/album/cali-native

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I guess this is obscure since there aren"t many hits on YT. Not sure if this is collaboration or a competition. I guess it"s probably a bit of both.

 

For the most part Herbie plays it in or around Oscars lane. But, around five minutes in Herbie starts to play more modern. Initially Oscar doesn"t go with him and I was thinking OK that stuffs not in Oscar"s vocabulary. At first Oscar replies with double octave craziness. Around six minutes in Oscar takes the bait and plays a Herbie-ish reply. Kind of surprised me with that. It seems the audience loved that moment too judging from their reaction.

 

[video:youtube]

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From the period when Herbie and Chick performed together (and put out a couple of albums of such performances). But I don't think this particular concert was released on an album. (Well, I guess he's not actually a "sideman" here, but it is relatively obscure).

 

This stuff is transcendent.

 

[video:youtube]

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I guess this is obscure since there aren"t many hits on YT. Not sure if this is collaboration or a competition. I guess it"s probably a bit of both.

 

Whoa! I'd heard clips from that concert before, but with nowhere near that audio quality. What I'd heard was basically a Walkman-in-the-audience bootleg. Hearing it "for real" is a revelation. Thanks for that!

 

The first I ever heard about that concert was from reading an interview with Herbie from shortly after it had happened (maybe in Keyboard?), though I didn't read the interview until years later. The interviewer asked Herbie what it was like to "go up against Oscar," and Herbie's reply was something like, "Well, first of all I never thought of it as going up against Oscar. If I had thought of it that way, I would have just stayed home because I know I'd lose."

 

I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that the concert happened in New Orleans in a venue called the Blue Room in the Roosevelt Hotel, which was just across the lobby from one of my last regular gigs in The Before Time. It was also the site of the infamous Ray Charles show where his guitarist went off on him, also captured on tape and played in the vans of countless bands since...

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No, it was a Newport/Kool Jazz Festival show in NYC - I was there. Both artists played separately and then came together for the encore. It makes sense that Herbie would 'meet' Oscar rather than Oscar being able to come to Herbie.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/03/arts/jazz-festival-peterson-and-hancock-offer-harmonic-feast.html

 

Jerry

 

I guess this is obscure since there aren"t many hits on YT. Not sure if this is collaboration or a competition. I guess it"s probably a bit of both.

 

Whoa! I'd heard clips from that concert before, but with nowhere near that audio quality. What I'd heard was basically a Walkman-in-the-audience bootleg. Hearing it "for real" is a revelation. Thanks for that!

 

The first I ever heard about that concert was from reading an interview with Herbie from shortly after it had happened (maybe in Keyboard?), though I didn't read the interview until years later. The interviewer asked Herbie what it was like to "go up against Oscar," and Herbie's reply was something like, "Well, first of all I never thought of it as going up against Oscar. If I had thought of it that way, I would have just stayed home because I know I'd lose."

 

I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that the concert happened in New Orleans in a venue called the Blue Room in the Roosevelt Hotel, which was just across the lobby from one of my last regular gigs in The Before Time. It was also the site of the infamous Ray Charles show where his guitarist went off on him, also captured on tape and played in the vans of countless bands since...

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