Today is Bobby Hutcherson's seventy-fifth birthday. I am pleased to see it recognized, at least among my circle of friends and weirdos I don't really know on Facebook. I was VERY pleased to watch this episode of 'A Night in the Life' featuring Bobby, in which he beautifully discusses aspects of his own history as well as describes his day-to-day life. (Watch it here.)
I have been trying to make music on the vibraphone since I was about fifteen years old, and for the first decade or so I was at it, my nearly entire focus was on jazz music. Bobby was not the first vibraphonist I ever heard; I'm sure that distinction goes to some mix of Lionel Hampton (with Benny Goodman) and Arthur Lyman (with Martin Denny.) I have the strange sensation my Dad had a stray Cal Tjader record in his collection, the origins of which are a mystery, and may have involved a woman. As I began to take the vibes more seriously, I dutifully (and rewardingly) listened to a lot of Milt Jackson's recordings; my favorites are not with the rather predictable Modern Jazz Quartet, but with Monk, with whom he paired so well and played so differently than with anyone else. I enjoyed the small amount of Victor Feldman's vibes playing there is to find, and marveled at the novelty of hearing Red Norvo's trio with Charles Mingus and Tal Farlow. I was of course blown away by Gary Burton's innovative four-mallet techniques and fluidity, as I am now, and always dug the aggressive bebop fire of Dave Pike (Milt Jackson gets called the 'bebop vibes player' because of time and place and associations, but he always sounds more like a gospel singer or an organist's right hand than like Bird and Diz on the vibes, to me,) and the undeniable individuality of Walt Dickerson and his tiny, lightning-fast mallets. (I was also into latter-day heroes like Joe Locke, Steve Nelson, and Stefon Harris, but they're of a more recent generation, and unavoidably have less mystique as a result.)
Bobby Hutcherson has easily had the biggest impact on me of any of these great players, and his are, to be honest, the only vibraphone-led albums I find myself wanting to listen to, some ten years after being so fully immersed in both the jazz and vibes worlds. He recorded on Blue Note with a who's who of great and influential musicians; most of his records from the 60s feature the piano playing of either Herbie Hancock or McCoy Tyner, his drummers Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, until he started making collaborative records with the deeply interesting (and apparently quite hard to deal with) Joe Chambers. This is all pretty easy to look up, so I shan't go on, book report-style. All I'll say is, the writing on Components, Oblique, Total Eclipse... he's just got a deep talent for making memorable melodies over challenging harmony, in a way that I think often gets attributed only to Wayne Shorter and Herbie. The music on those albums has that wonderful and now-lost blend of easy-to-understand, almost Horace Silverian composition, combined with a freedom in the solos that allowed for real stretching. (Makes sense, Bobby's earliest well-known sideman roles in New York were with Eric Dolphy on Out to Lunch and Archie Schepp live at Newport.)
But beyond (and perhaps more important than) these great recordings, Bobby had a profound affect on me when I saw him play live. The first time was probably in 1999 or 2000, when I was still a teenager, mentally if not legally. He played music from his only Verve album at the time, Skyline, at the old Iridium, by Lincoln Center. (That album remains one of the absolute best acoustic jazz albums from that era; great writing, and Bobby was on fire.) His command of the instrument, his presence in the room while still being able to be transported; his focus! I could not believe how well he played, but it was so much more than that; it was the look in his eyes, it was the weight and magic in the way he stood. I seem to remember chatting with him nervously after (I tend to get quite bratty around celebrity; Bobby Hutcherson is one of the few people who I know I can expect will pull the air from my lungs when I see him walk into a room I am in,) and found him to be a very gentle, charming, quiet man. None of that was evident while he was playing. He moved like someone was controlling him with a force he was a little bit afraid of. (I use past tense only because it's been a number of years since I've seen him live.) And it made the music feel so full of power, and potential, and danger. On another occasion at (was it the Jazz Standard?) I remember his apparent possession was even deeper; clicking his mallet handles like some kind of ritual rattle, and bringing them together on giant bombs of rhythmic cadence during other people's solos, as if he was willing grand moments into being, as if he could feel them coming 30 seconds ahead of time. Felt like magic. Maybe it was.
Now Bobby is older, and keeping mostly close to home in the Bay Area, an oxygen tank always nearby, enjoying flowers and sunshine, apparently immune to the aging jazz musician's syndrome, the symptoms of which are talking a ton of shit and wondering why they're not more venerated. He should be; for me, he's speaking the kind of truth and playing the kind of music that people only seem to expect to hear from Wayne Shorter (whom I love dearly, mind you,) and the recently departed Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. But he seems to be happy about where he is on his seventy-fifth birthday. I've no great witty conclusion to this blatant fan-post, other than to encourage to listen to Bobby's brilliance on the following:
Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch
his own Components and Oblique on bluenote
his record with Tommy Flanagan called 'Mirage,' featuring some of the most beautiful marimba playing ever done
the aforementioned 'Skyline,' still quietly one of the best jazz recordings of the 1990s,
and an Abbey Lincoln record from 2000 called Wholly Earth where all of his subtlety, power, warmth, spirituality, and sense of humor comes into play.
Happy Birthday, Bobby. Thanks so much for all you've given me. May you live as long as you want to.
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