Claudius wrote:That was an incredible sax solo. Such dexterity. The whole arrangement comes together so beautifully. I downloaded the whole album. Immediately before Grand Central is Wabash. This one is an Adderly lead, but also beautiful.
Yeah, it's a great session altogether. The guys on this album are the same ones who went on to make Kind of Blue with Miles Davis and Bill Evans just a few months later.
Shoutout to big Paul Chambers by the way who's one of the meanest bassists of all time, and would probably have been the undisputed number one if he hadn't died so young. I can think of maybe three players - Mingus, Sam Jones, Richard Davies - who've ever had a similar depth. Both he and Davies loved to play bass with a bow. They got more music out of the upright bass than most chamber musicians would get out of a cello.
Claudius wrote:
I’m going to switch you up. Was listening to this in the morning. Feels like so much of funk, rap and R&B have pulled bits and pieces from it. Deep, fulsome almost West African funk. Probably my favorite sample of this was Madonna’s Sanctuary.
I love that album. I think Herbie is the only one who ever was on the same wavelength as Miles when it came to constantly evolve the music and reinvent himself. Headhunters was just as responsible for fusion as Bitches Brew was, and as you say funk and electronic music at large were all built on this foundation, if not sampling it outright.
My favourite Herbie track is this one though:
It might be a tough listen the first time for jazz novices, but there's so much to love about that song. The heavy sounds, the fat bass cutting right through it (Paul Chambers again!), the insane swing and fire in the piano playing, the machine gun percussion from the drums, the odd time signatures... I've never heard anything like it. The album itself is unique too. It was almost entirely improvised over latin-inspired rhythms (the scraping sound is from something called a guiro), stemming from Hancock's wish to break away from the chord structures that he felt limited what you could do with normal jazz playing. In my opinion it's Herbie's second best album after Empyrean Isles. Can't believe he was only 23 when he made this.
