![\"herbie_mann_bw\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/herbie_mann_bw.jpg\")
Previously-Unheard 1969 Live Tapes from Jazz Flautist and his Band<\/b><\/p>\nPreviously-Unheard 1969 Live Tapes from Jazz Flautist and his Band<\/b><\/p>\n
Nominally a jazz musician, flautist Herbie Mann<\/strong> (1930-2003) enjoyed crossover appeal and success that brought his music to a much wider population than simply jazz aficionados. Mann released dozens of albums, and restlessly explored different styles of music. He sold a lot of records, won numerous DownBeat<\/em> polls, and was a reliable concert draw for decades. But along the way, his interest in different musical forms sometimes worked against him: today many regard him as little more than a dilettante at best, and at worst a shameless, commercially-driven hack.<\/p>\n That’s largely unfair. He did churn out some rather disposable pop, especially in the 1970s, with hit singles like \u201cHijack\u201d (#14 on Billboard<\/em>‘s Hot 100, and #1 on their Disco Action chart) from 1975’s Discoth\u00e8que<\/em> LP), but he was a true innovator, an artist who was always looking for the cross-fertilization of genres that is vital to music’s ongoing development.<\/p>\n A new 2CD set from Real Gone Music should help rehabilitate Mann’s undeservedly tarnished reputation among jazz lovers, and among musically adventurous listeners in general. Live at the Whisky 1969: The Unreleased Masters<\/em> compiles previously unreleased tapes from Mann’s week-long engagement at Hollywood’s famed Whisky a Go Go. The set features performances of Mann with his stellar band \u2013 bassist Miroslav Vitou\u0161<\/strong>, who would later go on to found Weather Report<\/strong>; vibraphonist Roy Ayers<\/strong>; saxophonist Steve Marcus<\/strong>; drummer Bruno Carr<\/strong>; and avant-jazz electric guitarist Sonny Sharrock<\/strong><\/a>. And the set’s second disc includes a rare gem: Sharrock’s wife Linda Sharrock<\/strong> joins the band onstage for some free-form avant-garde vocals that some have likened to the early work of Yoko Ono<\/strong>. By design, this new 2CD set has no overlap with the music released in 1969 as Live at the Whisky A Go Go<\/em>.<\/p>\n The archival project of rescuing these performances from obscurity came to light thanks to the efforts of Pat Thomas<\/strong>, producer of many reissues and author of Listen, Whitey: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power<\/em> and (with soul jazz legend Les McCann<\/strong><\/a>), Invitation to Openness: The Jazz & Soul Photography of Les McCann<\/em>.<\/p>\n Thomas explains how the project came about. \u201cI had been a big Herbie Mann fan. And his live albums, of course, are only 30-40 minutes. So it was obvious to me that they didn’t go in and record four songs and leave. I thought that since this was a small club gig, it would be more interesting than, say, a show at Madison Square Garden.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas \u201cbugged the powers-that-be at Atlantic Records,\u201d but says their response was along the lines of, \u201c’Oh, we can’t find the tapes,’ blah blah blah. So when I moved to L.A. and started doing more reissues and more research, I hooked up with Bill Inglot<\/strong>; he’s done a million research projects for Rhino and other labels. He told me, ‘I found the tapes you’ve been looking for.’\u201d<\/p>\n That entire week of shows at the Whisky had been taped by famed engineer Bill Halverson<\/strong>, who recorded Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young<\/strong>‘s 4 Way Street<\/em>. \u201cThe tapes sounded great, and were really easy to mix,\u201d says Thomas. \u201cWe pulled the tapes out of the vault. Brian Kehew<\/strong> \u2013 who does a lot of mixing; he mixed that big Yes<\/strong> box set [Progeny: Seven Shows from Seventy-two<\/em><\/a>] \u2013 and I mixed the tapes.\u201d<\/p>\n What they found was that the tapes from the first night didn’t even feature the band’s leader. \u201cThat first night, Herbie was sick, so the band played without him,\u201d Thomas says. \u201cI was really hoping that there could be some wild jams, just based on the fact that they didn’t play a real set. But unfortunately, they noodled! They got levels on their instruments and didn’t really play.\u201d<\/p>\n But as Thomas and Kehew dug deeper, their efforts paid off in a big way. They discovered \u201ctwo versions of\u00a0 ‘If I\u00a0 Were a Carpenter’\u00a0 that are really just extended jams. I could hear that Herbie was really stretching out. And the most surprising thing was that Linda Sharrock was in the audience, and Herbie brought her up onstage. They did these Sonny and Linda Sharrock songs from the album Black Woman<\/em>, songs that they had only recorded in the studio three weeks earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"herbie_mann_whisky_rgm\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/herbie_mann_whisky_rgm.jpg\")
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