GXF-3061

Bobby Hutcherson - Oblique

Released - 1979

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, July 21, 1967
Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; Herbie Hancock, piano; Albert Stinson, bass; Joe Chambers, drums.

1922 tk.2 Subtle Neptune
1923 tk.7 My Joy
1925 tk.16 Theme From Blow Up
1926 tk.20 Oblique
1927 tk.25 Bi-Sectional
1924 tk.28 Til Then

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Til Then	Bobby Hutcherson	July 21 1967
My Joy	Bobby Hutcherson	July 21 1967
Theme From Blow Up	Herbie Hancock	July 21 1967
Side Two
Subtle Neptune	Bobby Hutcherson	July 21 1967
Oblique	Joe Chambers	July 21 1967
Bi-Sectional	Joe Chambers	July 21 1967

Liner Notes

Born in Los Angeles on January 27,1941, Bobby Hutcherson obtained the background in piano and percussion that makes for a perfect vibist. In the late fifties, he gigged around Los Angeles with Curtis Amy, Carmel Jones and Charles Lloyd among others. He guested with the Les McCann trio on two tunes for Pacific Jazz, and, in September of 1961, recorded four titles for the company under his own leadership with a quintet that included tenor saxophonist Walter Berton. That session was never issued.

A gig with the Billy Mitchell-Al Grey quintet brought him his first widely known record dates and, more important, brought him to New York where his impact among musicians was immediate. He worked frequently in the quintets of Eric Dolphy and Jackie McLean. It was with McLean that he came to the attention of Blue Note Records. During 1963 and 1964, he participated in several classic albums, such as McLean's One Step Beyond and Destination Out, Grachan Moncur's Evolution, Andrew Hill's Judgement and Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch. Another classic date of the period was Grant Green's Idle Moments, a intimate exercise in creativity that was recorded on November 4, 1963 with Green, Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, Duke Pearson, Bob Cranshaw and Al Harewood. Pleased with the amazing chemistry of this sextet, Alfred Lion of Blue Note took the same personnel into the studio on December 29, 1963 for Bobby Hutcherson's first album as a leader. But luck was not with them on that day, and that session, like the Pacific Jazz date, remains unissued.

1965 proved a far more fruitful and accelerated year for the vibist. Aside from Blue Note dates with Jackie McLean and Grant Green among others and Impulse dates with Archie Shepp, Charles Tolliver and Grachan Moncur, Hutch cut two masterpiece albums under his own name: Dialogue and Components. An important common thread to these two albums was the drumming and unique compositions of Joe Chambers.

In fact, Joe's playing and, in most cases, his compositions would be present on all but one of Hutch's New York recording dates for Blue Note which spanned 1965 to 1969. Chambers was raised in Philadelphia and got his earliest professional experience on the road with name R & B bands before settling in New York to contribute his creative playing and writing talents to the jazz scene there. His first major breakthrough came of Freddie Hubbard's Breaking Point record, which also contained his tune Mirrors.

Schooled privately in piano and percussion, Chambers studied composition at the Philadelphia Conservatory, American University in Washington D.C. and with Hall Overton and his brother Steve Chambers, a distinguished modern classical composer in his own right. As a drummer, Joe joined the inner circle of Blue Note regulars for many years.

In February, 1966, Hutch made his third Blue Note album in a quartet setting with Chambers, Herbie Hancock and Bob Cranshaw. The result, Happenings, featured one Hancock tune with the remainder penned by Bobby. The absence of Chambers' compositional concepts brought the album into a more conventional realm.

On July 21, 1967, Hutch assembled the same quartet with the brilliant young Albert Stinson replacing Cranshaw and produced this beautiful album, released here for the first time. The presence of Stinson and the balanced program of compositions by Bobby, Herbie and Joe provides a well rounded program that covers an incredible amount of territory.

Albert Stinson, born in Cleveland, Ohio on August 21 1944, was an astonishing bassist in technique and invention, who worked in Los Angeles with Terry Gibbs, Frank Rosolino, and Charles Lloyd before beginning a long and fruitful relationship with Chico Hamilton. His recorded output is tragically small, making this album all the more significant. Touring with Larry Coryell, Stinson died on the road from an overdose in June, 1969.

Herbie Hancock, who appeared on Components as well as Happenings, contributes his Theme From Blow Up to this album. Although he composed the entire score to Antonioni's film Blow-Up and recorded the soundtrack album, this is the only wholly jazz interpretation of any of the material from the film that he ever attempted.

Chambers' Oblique is a unique line with an insistent rhythmic urgency. Hutch and Hancock manage to swing and flow within its unusual context. Joe executes a polyrhythmic drum solo of incredible technique and musiciality. His Bi-Sectional takes us even further out with some absolutely astonishing moments of counterpoint and collective interplay. Stinson gives us the luxury of a powerful, if brief, bass solo. After a piano-bass dialogue, Bobby moves to the drums for a section of percussive explosions between him and Chambers on tympani. As Bobby moves back to the vibes, Joe switches to the gong and finally back to the drums. The discipline and intelligence with which these men deal with freer forms puts a great deal of the music of the sixties into perspective.

As Chambers told Nat Hentoff in discussing the Components albums, "What I'm working more and more in is a fusion of free counterpoint and complex rhythm patterns that will create a sound — a core — around which each part will rotate. And with no definite rhythm... It's time that's felt collectively...Bobby knows how to accompany. He plays behind other musicians better than anyone I've ever heard. And in addition to his facility, he knows how to use the vibes orchestrally. Also he's superb in terms of creating and sustaining atmospheric passages. And of particular importance to my writing, Bobby knows exactly what to do to be an independent voice. He has the capacity to keep going in his own direction while never losing his rapport with the other voices. Another thing about Bobby is that he knows tradition and is part of it. In his playing, you can hear what's gone before him. He can play the blues and he can also go places no one's ever been before."

Of Bobby's own compositions. Til Then is the most haunting and memorable. Originally titled Moomba, Bobby recorded the tune again ten years later on his Knucklebean album. Around that time, I sent him a copy of this session. He loved the performance and expressed disappointment that this session was never released. Reminded of his own compositions, he rerecorded Til Then.

Where Til Then has a samba flavor, Subtle Neptune is more overtly a samba throughout. My Joy is an unusually baroque Hutcherson composition in 12/8. Hancock gets off his strongest solo on the date, as does the amazing Stinson.

In 1968, Bobby Hutcherson formed a quintet with Harold Land, which recorded under Land's name for Cadet and Mainstream and under Bobby's name for Blue Note. Throughout 1968 and 1969, Joe Chambers was an integral part of the band, playing and often contributing tunes. Thereafter, the quintet was based totally on the West Coast where the rhythm section changed frequently.

Oblique is a definitive and typically broad based statement of Bobby's creative period in New York City and a sterling representation of Blue Note's final 'classic' year before Alfred Lion departed, and the corporate mentality eroded the quality of the label. Oblique is also a welcome addition to the scanty discography of one Albert Stinson, bass virtuoso and victim of the jazz life.

—Michael Cuscuna

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT OBLIQUE

If you were a young vibraphone player in the 1960s, placing yourself in ensembles completed by piano, bass, and drums had to be a daunting proposition. Milt Jackson, the dominant voice on your instrument, was into his second successful decade with the Modern Jazz Quartet; and when Jackson was not weaving his lines amidst the compositional and comping schemes of MJQ musical director John Lewis, he was wailing more informally on albums that often employed the identical quartet configuration. If you hoped to take the vibes in new directions, and to gain notice for your own voice, better to find other settings for your music.

The careers of the two vibes giants who emerged in the '60s bear this out, albeit in different ways. Both Bobby Hutcherson (most prominently with Jackie McLean and Eric Dolphy) and Gary Burton (with Stan Getz) earned some of their earliest acclaim as sidemen in bands where they served in place of a pianist. Burton maintained this approach on most of his own recordings, frequently employing guitar as a second chording instrument before settling on the format in his pioneering 1967 fusion quartet with Larry Coryell. Hutcherson was hardly as keyboard-averse, working frequently with pianists and even the occasional organist in the recording studio. When his own Blue Note sessions were held, however, Hutcherson was also inclined to avoid the setting that Jackson, Lewis, Percy Heath, and Connie Kay seemed to have patented.

Fortunately, there were exceptions. Hutcherson possessed both his own voice and his own way of relating to a keyboard partner; and his Blue Note affiliation ensured contact with pianists who could explore ideas outside the MJQ's realm. As Hutcherson's discography grew, he formed special bonds with three pianists in particular: Andrew Hill, McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Hancock. All three were featured on Hutcherson albums, and the first two thought enough of the vibist to feature him in quartet sessions of their own (hear Hill's Judgment! and Time for Tyner, both of which are also appearing among the RVG Editions series). Hutcherson only made two quartet dates under his own name for Blue Note, however, and in both instances his pianist of choice was Hancock. The pair had first recorded together in 1962, as part of the Al Grey—Billy Mitchell sextet on the Argo/Cadet disc Snap Your Fingers, and Hancock had also made significant contributions to Hutcherson's 1965 album Components. Nearly two decades later, they would each make significant contributions as both actors and players in Bertrand Tavernier's film 'Round Midnight. But the clearest indication of their affinity came in 1966, on Hutcherson's quartet disc Happenings.

This album is something of a sequel to Happenings, and while it carries less of a straight-ahead feeling as Michael Cuscuna points out, it mirrors the earlier album by featuring a Hancock composition as its most accessible track. There are clear structural connections between "Theme from Blow Up" and "Maiden Voyage," which had appeared on Happenings in the first of what would become countless cover versions, and it is quite possible that Hancock's theme from the popular Michelangelo Antonioni film would have enjoyed similar cachet if this album had been released at the time it was recorded. Hutcherson continued to perform "Theme from Blow Up" in the quintet he co-led with Harold Land (they play it on a recording made at the 1969 Juan-les-Pins festival), and drummer Joe Chambers included the piece on his 1976 album New World.

With the exception of "'Til Then," the rest of the compositions heard here did not appear again on record. In the case of Chambers's contributions, this may simply be an indication of how challenging and truly oblique they are. Chambers was Hutcherson's most constant partner during the vibist's Blue Note years, as both drummer and composer, and their relationship stretched well into the period of the Hutcherson—Land quintet. A proper evaluation of the music Chambers contributed to Hutcherson's albums is long overdue. Bassist Albert Stinson also deserves some posthumous respect for his excellent work here and on the few other recordings he made prior to his tragic death. He and Hutcherson were members of John Handy's quintet at the time of the present recording, and can be heard on the saxophonist's Columbia album New View, recorded a month after the present music.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2005

75th Anniversary CD Reissue Notes

Among the unissued sessions that I discovered in the Blue Note vaults, this was one of maybe 10 albums that I was shocked that they were left behind because they are so great. "Oblique" was Bobby's sixth session for the label, but like his first date "The Kicker" it was not released at the time of recording. "Oblique" Was Bobby's second quartet and it paralleled his first ("Happenings") in many ways. Herbie Hancock and Joe Chambers were the pianist and drummer respectively. Each album carried a nodal Herbie Hancock composition (here it is "The Theme From Blow Up" and each featured material that ranged from simplistic beauty('Til Then" and "My Joy") to dark and challenging ("Oblique" and Bi-Sectional").

These are musicians that communicate and operate at a very high level and that informs all of the music made here. The newcomer in the group is Albert Stinson, the stunning bass virtuoso who first came to prominence with Chico Hamilton in 1962. At the time, Stinson and Bobby were members of John Handy's quintet. In less than two years, this amazing musician would be dead, making this extraordinary session an important part of his legacy.

- MICHAEL CUSCUNA