JAM: December 2001/January 2002 Issue: Folly Jazz News

Doug Tatum

Next Up: Herbie Mann and Ahmad Jamal

The next concert of the Folly Jazz Series will feature the Herbie Mann Quartet on Saturday, December 8. (Please note that there will not be a JazzTalk prior to this concert.)

Long before people talked about "World Music," jazz's premier flutist, Herbie Mann was exploring the rhythms and harmonies of the various musics of the world. In the process, he garnered a reputation as one of the most eclectic figures in music, readily mixing a wide range of styles to create music that crossed boundaries in every sense of the word. Herbie Mann almost single-handedly established the flute as a solo instrument in jazz, but he started out as a clarinetist and saxophonist.

Ahmad Jamal

Mann was born in 1930 in Brooklyn, New York. When he was nine, his mother took him to hear Benny Goodman, and Herbie was inspired to take up the clarinet. As a teenager, he branched out into playing the tenor saxophone, which became his primary instrument, with his playing heavily influenced by Lester Young. As is common for saxophonists, Mann also learned to double on flute. At the time, the flute was usually used in studio recordings in a minor role to add orchestrational "color" to arrangements.

After he served a stint in the army, Mann returned to New York in the early 1950s and found that the music scene was overcrowded with saxophonists, all in competition for the same gigs. It was at this point that his career took a turn that would change everything. In early 1953, a friend approached him with the news that a jazz flute player was needed to record with a then-unknown singer named Carmen McRae. Even though Mann knew next to nothing about jazz flute playing -- a style which had virtually no precedents in the American music scene -- he convinced the producer to add him to the date. By imitating on the flute the style of trumpet players such as Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, Mann quickly developed a distinctive sound.

Through the 1950s, he recorded extensively as a sideman while continuing his mastery of the flute. He formed an Afro-Cuban sextet in 1958 that featured four drummers. With this innovative new sound, Mann began to make a name for himself in the jazz world. After recording several albums for Verve, Mann signed with the Atlantic label. In 1962, his live album Herbie Mann at the Village Gate was his first major hit, selling over half a million copies. A song from that release, "Comin' Home Baby," placed in the Top 30 on the pop charts.

In the early sixties, he became interested in bossa nova -- a musical phenomenon then little known outside of its native Brazil. He soon came in contact with some of the giants of Brazilian music, including Sergio Mendes and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Brazilian music, with its combination of pulsing rhythms and beautiful, varied melodies and harmonies, was the style Mann was looking for. After a tour in Brazil, his band became one of the first groups to play bossa nova and went on to record a number of albums with Brazilian musicians. One of these included an English version of the hit "One Note Samba," on which Jobim made his singing debut.

The next genre that Mann gravitated towards was rhythm and blues. Fascinated by its possibilities, he went south to record in Memphis, drawing inspiration from some of the greatest R&B studio musicians of the time. The result was Memphis Underground, a 1969 album that was his second great hit of the decade.

In 1971, Mann recorded another hit, "Push Push," and formed the group Family of Mann in 1972. Over the years, he has continued to explore a wide variety of musical styles, grafting elements of pop, rock, R&B, soul, reggae, and Middle Eastern onto jazz to reach a wide audience. The release by Rhino Records in 1994 of an anthology of his recorded work, The Evolution of Mann, has brought the flutist some measure of the attention his work merits. Despite the focus on global music, one of the albums he is most proud of is Peace Pieces: The Music of Bill Evans, a straightahead CD recorded in 1995 for his own Kokopelli label and reissued on Lightyear (distributed by Warner Bros.). Also released on Lightyear are Mann's America/Brasil and 65th Birthday Celebration, both recorded in 1995 live at the Blue Note in New York, and featuring handpicked musical friends such as Claudio Roditi, Paquito D'Rivera, Bobby Watson, Tito Puente, Ron Carter, and David "Fathead" Newman.

In 1997, Herbie was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He has received treatments and is doing well, with his cancer now in remission. Out of his experience has come the desire to help spread awareness about the deadly disease and its very easy detection and prevention. He has formed a nonprofit foundation called Herbie Mann's Prostate Cancer Awareness Music Foundation to help spread the word (herbiemannpcamf.com). Herbie also has a music web site at herbiemannmusic.com.

Celebrated pianist-composer Ahmad Jamal will perform with his trio on Saturday, January 19. Throughout his career, Jamal has been a continually evolving, uncompromising, and uniquely original stylist. Born in Pittsburgh in 1930, Jamal began to play the piano at age three. His personal favorites and early influences were Art Tatum, Erroll Garner, and the Nat King Cole Trio.

A professional pianist from before his teenage years, Jamal has always managed to break through to reach a wider audience than most jazz artists. His influence on other artists is broad, beginning with such pianists as Red Garland, Cedar Walton and Benny Green, to name but a few. The most influential of his advocates was Miles Davis, who often cited Jamal's influence on his own music.

About his music, Jamal states, "I'm a storyteller… It's always exciting for me to sit down at the piano, and every time I do, something new happens, something surprises me, or I surprise myself. I played, 'Poinciana' last night and it was like a new song. That's the reason there's no such thing as old music. The wonderful thing about music is that it's ageless."

For more information about the Folly Jazz Series or to request a brochure, please call the Folly Theater at 816-474-4444.

Doug Tatum is the Executive Director of the Folly Theater.

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