Bobby Hutcherson - Classic Bobby Hutcherson Blue Note Sessions 1963-1970 Limited Edition Box Set [7CD] (2024)

Tracklist

1.01. If Ever I Would Leave You
1.02. Mirrors
1.03. For Duke P.
1.04. The Kicker
1.05. Step Lightly
1.06. Bedouin
1.07. Catta
1.08. Idle While
1.09. Les Noirs Marchant
2.01. Dialogue
2.02. Ghetto Lights
2.03. Jasper
2.04. Components
2.05. Tranquility
2.06. Little B's Poem
2.07. West 22nd Street Theme
2.08. Movement
2.09. Juba Dance
2.10. Air
2.11. Pastoral
2.12. West 22nd Street Theme (Alt Tk)
3.01. Aquarian Moon
3.02. Bouquet
3.03. Rojo
3.04. Maiden Voyage
3.05. Head Start
3.06. When You Are Near
3.07. The Omen
3.08. Aquarian Moon (Alt Tk)
3.09. Bouquet (Alt Tk)
3.10. Rojo (Alt Tk)
4.01. Una Muy Bonita
4.02. 84 Beat
4.03. Summer Nights
4.04. Black Circle
4.05. Verse
4.06. Blues Mind Matter
4.07. Una Muy Bonita (Alt Tk)
4.08. Black Circle (Alt Tk)
4.09. Verse (Alt Tk)
4.10. Subtle Neptune
5.01. Til Then
5.02. My Joy
5.03. Theme From Blow Up
5.04. Oblique
5.05. Bi-Sectional
5.06. Patterns
5.07. A Time To Go
5.08. Ankara
5.09. Effi
5.10. Irina
5.11. Nocturnal
5.12. Patterns (Alt Tk)
6.01. Herzog
6.02. Total Eclipse
6.03. Matrix
6.04. Same Shame
6.05. Pompeian
6.06. Ruth
6.07. The Wedding March
6.08. Poor People's March
6.09. Spiral
6.10. Visions
6.11. Photon In A Paper World
6.12. Comes Spring
7.01. Avis
7.02. Dave's Chant
7.03. Orientale
7.04. Medina
7.05. Ungano
7.06. Goin' Down South
7.07. Prints Tie
7.08. Jazz
7.09. Ummh
7.10. Procession
7.11. A Night In Barcelona

The melodically gifted Bobby Hutcherson (1941-2016) was a most open-minded, rhythmically and harmonically exploratory improviser and composer who, even as he sought to push ever further the boundaries of jazz, never lost (creative) touch with tradition. As his long-term collaborator, the potent drummer and composer Joe Chambers – many of whose intriguingly crafted pieces feature here, with the drummer appearing on all but three of the albums – said to writer Nat Hentoff in the sleeve for Hutcherson’s 1965 Components: “[Bobby] plays behind other musicians better than anyone I’ve ever heard … he knows how to use the vibes orchestrally … he knows tradition and is part of it. He can play the blues and he can go places no one’s ever gone before.”

Components is one of the 11 diverse Hutcherson releases for Blue Note which feature in this beautifully produced boxed set from Mosaic. It comes with an extensive sleeve essay from Bob Blumenthal, who some years ago contributed the “A New Look At” series of essays to Blue Note’s RVG (Rudy Van Gelder) reissue programme, which included Hutcherson’s Dialogue, Happenings and Oblique, all here. There is also a short but heartfelt “in remembrance” piece on Hutcherson from his close friend, the indefatigable producer Michael Cuscuna, who, sadly, died in April this year.

Born in Los Angeles, Hutcherson came of age at a time which, as Blumenthal notes, “might be considered the golden age for vibes”. Red Norvo, Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson were still in their pomp and Terry Gibbs and Cal Tjader successful bandleaders. Eddie Costa, Victor Feldman and Buddy Montgomery were in full flow and young players like Roy Ayers and Dave Pike were soon to make their mark. Eventually, however, it would be Bobby Hutcherson and Gary Burton (both four-mallet men who doubled on marimba) who came to exert the most individual and distinctive impact on the development of their prime instrument [In the modern period, some might include Mike Mainieri – Ed.]

Early on, Hutcherson was drawn to the flowing and sonorous “plenty, plenty soul” element in the work of Jackson. You can hear this in the relaxed, rolling and blues-shot The Kicker from 1963, the initial CD here and the most immediately and consistently enjoyable. The music breathes in classic, mellow, hard-bop Blue Note manner, with Duke Pearson evincing his subtly weighted tone and touch and Joe Henderson (ts) shaping what for me are his most satisfying contributions in this boxed set (hear him on the 1966 Stick-Up where Mc Coy Tyner and Billy Higgins also shine on Ornette Coleman’s blues-sprung Una Muy Bonita).

The poised and mellow meditation that is Mirrors, a Joe Chambers opus that the drummer would reprise in more up-tempo mode on his 1999 Mirrors, gives early indication of Hutcherson’s poetic capacity for the sort of spacious and floating, slow tempo phrasing which can conjure the most compelling moods. Hear also, e.g., the waltz that is Bouquet or When You Are Near from the 1966 Happenings and the initial entrancing measures of Comes Spring from the 1969 Medina – the last, as Blumenthal informs us, a piece inspired by sessions Hutcherson and bassist Albert Stinson had had playing Eric Satie’s four-hand piano inventions.

If Jackson was a key initial elective affinity, from early on Hutcherson pursued his own phrasing, dynamics and, especially, diversified sound (often somewhat drier, more compressed and percussive than Jackson’s). You can hear early fruits of this quest in the 1963 Blue Note releases by Jackie McLean on which Hutcherson appeared, One Step Beyond and Destination Out – both of which predate The Kicker by some months. Hutcherson’s appearance on Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch of 1964 would confirm his avant-garde credentials.

So too did the indispensable Dialogue of 1965. On the fierce mambo that is pianist Andrew Hill’s opening Catta, taut and driving unison ostinato figures precipitate some bustling tenor from Sam Rivers and strong trumpet from Freddie Hubbard before Hutcherson explodes in a solo of urgent, driving intensity over Hill’s comping vamp. Elsewhere, compare the emotional impact of, e.g., the poised yet liquid Joe Chambers waltz that is Idle While (where Richard Davis has a fine pizzicato spot), the probing shape-shifting group interplay and dynamics of the often keening title track and the tense assertiveness of Les Noirs Marchant and Ghetto Lights (both from Andrew Hill).

It’s always been a mystery to me that the late writer and critic Max Harrison did not choose Dialogue for his single entry on Hutcherson in the 1975 volume Modern Jazz 1945-70: The Essential Records. Harrison went instead for the 1966 Happenings quartet date with Herbie Hancock – included here – and declared the ballad that is Bouquet and the urgently driven Aquarian Rain “among the very finest post-Jackson vibraharp solos on record”. Praise indeed from the man who, if my memory serves me correctly, once characterised early 1970s Weather Report as the contemporary equivalent of the Palm Court Orchestras of old. Harrison – who could be at once deeply instructive and laughably high-handed – chose to end his appraisal of Happenings thus: “Alas, there is no advance to be recorded beyond the achievements of this Happenings collection, for all Hutcherson’s subsequent discs showed a catastrophic, and inexplicable, decline in quality.”

I can’t agree: far from it. Hutcherson’s unique integration of harmonically abstracted “sound wash” and pointillist detail never left him and for me, e.g., the late 1960s quintet which was co-led by Hutcherson and Harold Land – that most soulful, warm-toned saxophonist and flautist, touched but not dominated by Coltrane – recorded some of the most intelligent, painterly and vivid music (often modal in nature) to be heard at the back end of the decade. Relish here Total Eclipse (with Chick Corea in coruscating form), Spiral and Medina (both featuring Stanley Cowell) and the 1970 San Francisco (with Joe Sample from The Jazz Crusaders).

My only beef with this boxed set is that it doesn’t include the superb, exploratory and spiritually resonant Now! from October 1969. This had Hutcherson and Land with, a.o, pianists Kenny Barron and Stanley Cowell, vocalist Gene McDaniels and two vocal trios, Joe Chambers and conga specialist Candido. In his sleeve essay Bob Blumenthal rates the album, noting that it features “some of Land’s best solos of the period”. But elsewhere Michael Cuscuna argues in a short producer’s note that the music was “a departure from the norm for Bobby” – and hence out of keeping with the rest of the music presented here.

This is especially regrettable as the album has one of Hutcherson’s most affecting pieces, the rubato tone poem or spiritual that is the title track. It was composed in response to the all-too-early death of Hutcherson’s friend Albert Stinson – whose strong and expressive pizzicato bass lines can be enjoyed on Oblique. And one wonders why, among all the fine session shots of the musicians which feature in the handsome booklet which graces this release, the much rated Stinson (1944-1969) is nowhere to be seen: he’s also absent from the 1995 Rizzoli production The Blue Note Years: The Jazz Photography Of Francis Wolff.

Even if one considers only the conceptual distance between The Kicker and Dialogue, Oblique and the (in part) rock-and-funk touched San Francisco one thing should be obvious: whether or not you are drawn to the variously elastic takes throughout this boxed set on the fundamental question of swing, or the free counterpoint and substitution of colouristic and percussive elements for traditional functional harmony which together mark a good deal of this music, Bobby Hutcherson was not bound by any restrictive norms of style or genre.

Featuring as it does both a tasty diversity of blues-inflected pieces (sample West 22nd Street Theme and My Joy) and many a stimulating original with fresh voicings and a fluid interplay of melodic and rhythmic motifs, here is music of of both deeply traditional and keenly exploratory hue. Which is precisely why the soul food for the open heart and mind that is Now! should have been here.

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