BLP 4244

Bobby Hutcherson - Stick-Up!

Released - April 1968

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, July 14, 1966
Joe Henderson, tenor sax #1,2,4-6; Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; McCoy Tyner, piano; Herbie Lewis, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

1764 tk.16 Verse
1765 tk.27 8/4 Beat
1766 tk.34 Summer Nights
1767 tk.36 Una Muy Bonita
1768 tk.40 Black Circle
1769 tk.41 Blues Mind Matter

Session Photos

Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 

https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Una Muy Bonita	Ornette Coleman	July 14 1966
8/4 Beat	Bobby Hutcherson	July 14 1966
Summer Nights	Bobby Hutcherson	July 14 1966
Side Two
Black Circle	Bobby Hutcherson	July 14 1966
Verse	Bobby Hutcherson	July 14 1966
Blues Mind Matter	Bobby Hutcherson	July 14 1966

Liner Notes

AS these notes are written, early in 1968, Bobby Hutcherson can look back on an eventful and rewarding year of progress in his fast-moving career. However, he is no doubt less concerned with reviewing the past than with contemplating the future, which looms brighter than at any time since he originally emerged on the West Coast scene in 1960.

Happenings, a consistently inventive quartet session, outpaced all other vibes-led albums in the Down Beat readers’ poll for the best record of 1967. Stick-Up, which employs a completely different rhythm section, while strengthening its ensemble with the addition of Joe Henderson’s urgent and compeIling tenor, promises to establish itself as one of the most significant volumes in Hutcherson’s discography both as composer and soloist.

Though Bobby has continued to conduct his pendulum-like career between West and East Coasts, the present session was taped while he was working around New York. Much of his time from late 1967, however, was spent in Southern California co-leading a group with Harold Land. His work with the latter, as well as his participation in a vibraphone workshop at the Pacific Jazz Festival, earned him added respect and many new fans. Several of the original compositions written specially for the Stick-Up date are now a permanent part of his in-person repertoire.

Reflecting on this session in his typical, amiable manner, Bobby spoke with special enthusiasm of his partnership with Joe Henderson. (They were teamed most successfully under Henderson’s leadership in Mode for Joe, Blue Note BST-84227 4227.)

“Joe and I first played together on the Idle Moments album with Grant Green,” he recalls. “We also gigged together very happily for a week at Slug’s. Later on Joe was out in California and we got together again, working at Memory Lane and the Monterey Festival. He’s my idea of the perfect tenor player to work with, because he can adapt to just about any musical situation."

Of McCoy Tyner, well known for several previous appearances in albums under Henderson’s direction, Bobby observes: “When McCoy spent all those years with John Coltrane, he didn’t seem to vary much from that particular bag, because the whole quartet had such a strongly defined personality; but the fact is, of course, that just like Joe Henderson he can fit in very well with all kinds of groups.”

Herbie Lewis is an old friend. “We grew up together, went to school together; in fact, when I got my first set of vibes, he had a trio in school and the first gig I ever played was with him. We’re even sort of related — my brother married Herbie’s aunt — and we’re very close, personally and musically. He’d been back in New York about six months when we made these sides, and I was very much impressed by the strength and maturity of his work.”

Billy Higgins, another transplanted West Coaster who has spent most of the 1960s around New York, first came to Bobby’s attention during a series of jam sessions held at Zucca’s in Hollywood in the mid-1950s. Later, of course, he rose to national prominence as a member of the precedent-setting Ornette Coleman Quartet. “I also heard Billy playing with Paul Horn,” Bobby says, “and gigged with him myself a few times around Los Angeles.” One of the first and most impressive percussionists to work in avant garde contexts, Higgins rounds out a rhythmic section that cannot be faulted on any count—subtlety, drive, intensity, consistency.

As on Happenings, the compositions, all but one of them, are by Bobby. Last time the exception was a Herbie Hancock work; this time it is Ornette Coleman who is the ringer. His Una Muy Bonita (Spanish for “a very pretty one”) is one of the earlier Coleman works.

The performance combines a Latin rhythmic pulse with more than a suggestion of the blues. As Bobby points out, “We did it with a more funky feeling than Ornette.” The delineation of the head by tenor and vibes in unison is an attractive sound and one that gives the group its essential ensemble character. The main strain in the theme is eleven bars long — or more correctly 10½, since the third measure has only two beats.

A noteworthy aspect of this track is the suspense, the feeling of tension and release, accorded to ensembles and solos alike by Billy Higgins’ deft manipulation of the passages in which the rhythm section ploys a series of four breaks. During the blowing choruses this occurs at measures 17-20, giving a sense of continuity to the powerful solo by Bobby, the muscular Henderson tenor, and the penetrating, blues-conscious Tyner piano.

The Hutcherson original 8/4 Beat has a modal feeling not unlike that of a number of Miles Davis originals. The basic line runs to 14 bars. Listening to it for the first time since the session, Bobby reacted: “Wow! That’s a good tune!” almost as if listening to a composition by some other writer. He decided immediately to put it in the books of his current combo.

Summer Nights stresses Bobby’s facility for creating pretty ballad moods. “It was in New York,” he recalls, “and I had the vibes set up in my room. Around 2 a.m. I walked past them and a theme entered my mind. I started playing, kept going for two or three hours, slept for maybe three hours, then went on again until i had the tune finished at noon. I must have been feeling sad that day!"

With Joe laying out for this number, Bobby has the spotlight to himself except for a tasteful interlude by McCoy. Summer Nights is as pensively pretty a contribution to this set as When You Are Near was to the Happenings date.

Black Circle, at first hearing a boppish theme with a plethora of eighth notes, actually is a complex and challenging piece; Bobby even characterized it as ”weird, with some hard changes.” He wrote it on the piano one day in California. “I could feel Joe playing those low notes coming Up; I knew it would be a good effect. I wrote the line first, then sort of got the chords from the tune, rather than the other way around. The line, in fact, suggests a variety of things that you can go to — it has a sort of evasive sound, one that can be harmonized in a lot of different ways. It’s a kind of violent melody for such a gentle instrument as the vibes.” Bobby recalls that a greater than average share of rehearsal time went into the preparation of Black Circle, because so much subtlety was required in the way of shading.

Verse earned its title not by sounding like a song without a chorus, but because, as Bobby says, “it suggests a verse in the literary sense — a poem.” The rubato thematic passage that opens and closes Verse suggests a touch of Gershwin. Notice particularly Herbie Lewis’ effective work, both bowed and pizzicato. Bobby is very relaxed, harking back on this track to his original Bags influence. Joe Henderson is a late entry, but upon his arrival is responsible for a remarkably variegated solo, first soft and pliant, then rough and “outside,” returning finally to the low-key mood of the composition.

McCoy has the last solo, and as Bobby commented on listening to this graceful performance, “Once his notes start flowing, you know they’re going to keep on coming in just the right mood.” The waltz beat is gently emphasized throughout by Billy Higgins. He had just bought a brand new cymbal; Bobby recalls that the session was halted at one point to enable him to install it, because the sound seemed just right for the music.

Blues Mind Matter again makes ingenious use of the tenor-and-vibes combination. The sinuous line is nine bars long, but the blowing passages are in 12-bar units. Bobby, Joe and McCoy share the credit. Though he wishes there had been more time to stretch out, Bobby can console himself with the thought that this compact, succinct series of blowing choruses will get substantial air play.

Summing up his feelings about this session, Bobby observed that “I believe we managed to maintain that night club feeling, which is something you have to aim at when you’re going to make a record date, unless you’re such a heavy musician that no matter what you do, it’s bound to turn out well.”

In the case of Stick-Up one might add that the session did achieve the feeling he refers to; however, whether or not he is willing to admit it, Bobby by now is that heavy a musician.

—LEONARD FEATHER

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER