Bobby Hutcherson RIP

[soulpope]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

I dig the minor, insignificant work, just because as hard as it is to be great, it's possibly even harder to never coast or phone it in or do anything but show up and be happy on the job when the job does not involve the pursuit of greatness. That's when big ears and big heart will combine, not combat, and then make the difference.

God bless a player, whoever, wherever, whatever.

Yes ....

[BFrank]

4 hours ago, ep1str0phy said:

I've had trouble processing Bobby's passing, because he hadn't been very (physically) present in the music as of late. So much of the music he made is tied to a particular moment in jazz, although I'd imagine that the years he registered specializing in fairly centrist post-bop are far greater in number than those he spent at the vanguard of the music. It's a lesson to me that contemporary musicians, fans, and critics will be quick to engage with hagiography when it comes to this caliber of musician, because the truth of the music is both much more complex and much more mundane. Bobby was in many ways "just" a diehard gigging musician who "just" so happened to play innovative vibraphone on some of the most important and adventurous albums in the music. 

I also think it's worthwhile to articulate the degree to which Bobby's embodied work sort of undermines the heroic narrative of the jazz innovator. Unlike an Ayler or an Ornette, Bobby's sound wasn't outright heretic and he didn't emerge more or less fully realized--Hutcherson is (more like Dolphy, for example) a testament to how the gradual work of gigging and rehearsing music will often foster its own revolutionaries. Hutcherson did so much work in the trenches, some of it even on record, that I think it's sort of easy to miss that (A) there was no Bobby Hutcherson before Bobby Hutcherson and (B) there were tons of Bobby Hutchersons only after Bobby Hutcherson. The subsequent arc of jazz and free improv vibraphone is way more complex than I'm suggesting here, but it seems apparent to me that we would not have had Gunter Hampel with Marion Brown, Bobby Naughton with Wadada, Steve Nelson with Dave Holland, Bryan Carrott with Threadgill or Osby, or Chris Dingman with Steve Lehman without Bobby's influence. 

Appropos of a different conversation, I think Larry Young is a useful point of comparison. Like Larry (who was styled early on as a kind of secondary Jimmy Smith), a lot of Bobby's first music on record sounds like it could have been played by someone else--the vibraphone contributions to This Is Billy Mitchell are kind of sub-Milt Jackson-type stuff. That being said, like Young, Bobby discovered a kind of impressionistic softening and abstraction of earlier stylists that signaled a new way forward for both his instrument and jazz ensemble dynamics in general. 

Bobby's playing on the really epochal abstract stuff--like Out to Lunch, Evolution, or Dialogue--teeters between diamond hard and sustained, resonant, and pulsing. Other people were working in parallel compositional and conceptual veins--great players like Gary Burton, Walt Dickerson, or even Roy Ayers--but Bobby inhabited this duality of tonal precision and utter abstraction that is just mind-boggling. In this way, he was a perfect match for a certain school of inside-outside player that was both tonally literate and conceptually free (e.g., Dolphy, Moncur, Herbie Hancock, Andrew Hill, etc.)--but with these elastic chops that could either dive hard into the pocket (Let 'Em Roll, Idle Moments) or way out (the stuff with Archie Shepp). 

Hutcherson could play a little or a lot, but he always seemed to play what was exactly appropriate for a given context. One of the two times I met Hutcherson was backstage at this ridiculous all-star benefit that I somehow found my way onto. In-between my five minutes of stage time and taking photos for Steve Turre, I found Bobby backstage and began to wax prolific about Out to Lunch (i.e., "You changed the way I see music," "It's one of my favorite records," etc. etc.). Bobby echoed something he had said in the press a while back (at the Blue Note sort-of reunion thing a while back, where Hutcherson played "Hat and Beard" in a Dolphian quartet with James Newton), which is that he couldn't believe he played so much on that record. It's weird--Out to Lunch is absolutely a maximalist album, but it has moments of tenderness and sublime rhythmic hookup that a lesser chordal improviser would have completely disfigured. 

Hutcherson was clearly still proud of that music, and it must have felt like a lifetime ago for someone who had left the sound of the 60's somewhere in the dust. That being said, anyone who heard Hutcherson in the last couple decades of his life could hear that he hadn't lost the soft impressionism of his youth (even though he often engaged with a virtuosic prolixity that was probably closer to Lionel Hampton than the stuff on Street of Dreams). The entirety of that man's work--"early" and "late"--stands as a monument to the power of the practice of music--or, rather, Bobby's music serves as a reminder that the very act of making music will both reward and renew itself. 

Nice essay, ep1str0phy!

[Gheorghe]

Love everything he played, he was a genius. And I was lucky to see him once with Jackie McLean, Billy Higgins and his long time friend Herbie Lewis. That was a hell of a group and to bad they didn´t make a record. Only saw parts of it on Italian RAI.

[soulpope]

1 hour ago, Gheorghe said:

Love everything he played, he was a genius. And I was lucky to see him once with Jackie McLean, Billy Higgins and his long time friend Herbie Lewis. That was a hell of a group and to bad they didn´t make a record. Only saw parts of it on Italian RAI.

This was an excellent combo indeed ....

[Gheorghe]

Yeah, Wiesen 1983, still remember the tunes they played: Blue´n Boogie, Salt Peanuts, What´s New, Star Eyes. They came on stage, cooked and that it was. One of the best live performances I ever heard.

[skeith]

One of my all time favorites!!

[skeith]

I believe that the last time I saw him perform was a duet with Andrew Hill at Lincoln Center in NYC at least 10 years ago.  Memorable!

[clifford_thornton]

I know this thread is about Hutcherson, but ep1str0phy should write more. I'd publish it.

[relyles]

1 hour ago, clifford_thornton said:

I know this thread is about Hutcherson, but ep1str0phy should write more. I'd publish it.

Agreed! I'd buy the book.

[A Lark Ascending]

Sad news - have enjoyed many of his records and side-person appearances. 

Edited August 17, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[Hardbopjazz]

 

[soulpope]

9 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Yeah, Wiesen 1983, still remember the tunes they played: Blue´n Boogie, Salt Peanuts, What´s New, Star Eyes. They came on stage, cooked and that it was. One of the best live performances I ever heard.

Those were the days .... was this ever broadcasted via radio (Walter Richard Langer) ?

[xybert]

Sad to hear of Bobby Hutcherson's passing. His name on a record is always a good sign.

[Eric]

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

2 hours ago, xybert said:

Sad to hear of Bobby Hutcherson's passing. His name on a record is always a good sign.

 

exactly.  u see his name on it and its like, oh this is going to be a really forward, progressive album

[robertoart]

On 17 August 2016 at 11:08 AM, Eric said:

Well said.

Here here. 

[MomsMobley]

effi (also an example of Stanley Cowell composer and James Spaulding colorist)

Harold Land so goddamn good on those collab lps

[The Jazz Aficionado]

The Great African-American Classical Art-Form

Keeping The Idiom Alive mourns the loss of a great musician, Bobby Hutcherson. We wanted to share this personal Remembrance of Bobby Hutcherson, he was the Jazz vibraphonist for more than a generation; like Milt Jackson before him and Lionel Hampton. He played with intellect and soul, a bebopper with a free imagination, informed by the blues and peppered with playfulness. A relentless practice, he took his craft with the utmost seriousness, yet he was cool and easygoing and soft to the touch, both on and off the stage.
Bobby’s smile was the closest thing to seeing the Buddha. How could you not smile back and feel warm inside? That smile was present in his music, too, from his first notes to his last. As much as his music, I will remember Bobby’s smile and carry it with me. Thank you, Bobby, for the music, for the smile, for the memories. 
Thanks for your great music. BAM
RIP my dear friend, supreme and innovative musician Bobby Hutcherson.
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[Soulstation1]

Hutch + Joey D

[bluesoul]

Appreciation: Bobby Hutcherson connected some of the highest points in jazz

[JSngry]

What's that about losing his cabaret card? Never heard that until now.

[paul secor]

It's mentioned in the NY Times obit also: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/arts/music/bobby-hutcherson-dies-jazz.html?_r=0 Probably something he didn't advertise.

[JSngry]

Damn, that's some stupid shit, way to go Cabaret Card Cabal. Assholes.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Damn, that's some stupid shit, way to go Cabaret Card Cabal. Assholes.

The thing that's weird is that the year he lost his card, 1967, was the last year you needed one. They abolished that system later that year. So if he had hung around NYC a little longer, he could have played in clubs again.

But then again, he wouldn't have made all those great recordings with Harold Land so...

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

The thing that's weird is that the year he lost his card, 1967, was the last year you needed one. They abolished that system later that year. So if he had hung around NYC a little longer, he could have played in clubs again.

But then again, he wouldn't have made all those great recordings with Harold Land so...

This is what I was thinking, that the Asshole Regime must have come to an end very soon after he lost his card. He might have even had an idea that change was going to happen but LA beckoned, to his overall benefit I would say.