Jazz Musician Herbie Mann Went Back to His Roots

[MaxwellSt <MaxwellSt...>]

FORWARD, JULY 11, 2003  

Jazz Musician Herbie Mann Went Back to His Roots
By JONATHAN MOSKOWITZ

The CD cover of "The Best Of Herbie Mann" features a shot of the late jazz 
flutist, taken some time in the mid-1960s. The very picture of an urban Jewish 
hepcat, Mann stares out of the photo looking cool and disinterested. Some 
people might argue the cool part, but no one could ever accuse him of being 
disinterested.

Mann, who died last week at the age of 73, was a man of voracious musical 
curiosity, and he couldn't stop himself from trying new sounds.  Brought up on 
swing, he played bebop, Afro-Cuban jazz, rhythm and blues, reggae and disco, 
and 
collaborated with everyone from Bill Evans and Sarah Vaughan to Duane Allman 
and Stereolab. He helped bring bossa nova to the masses, pioneered jazz-rock 
fusion and did more than anyone to make the flute a credible lead instrument in 
jazz. At times, his idiosyncratic career path alienated him from the critical 
establishment, 
and when he had hits — in 1970, for instance, he scored five of the top 20 
jazz albums — that establishment was quick to dismiss him as being too 
accessible and commercial.

Born Herbert Jay Solomon in 1930 in Brooklyn, Mann was initially inspired by 
a Benny Goodman concert he saw when he was 9 years old. Mann always said his 
parents took him to the concert in order to stop him from banging on the 
family's pots and pans, his favorite mode of musical expression at the time.

Goodman apparently had the desired effect, because young Herbert soon took up 
the clarinet and tenor sax, with flute thrown in for good measure. After 
serving in an army band from 1948 to 1952, he returned to New York to find the 
city chock-a-block with tenor saxophonists.  Fortunately, Dutch accordionist 
Mat 
Mathews came looking for a flute player to help on some sessions with Carmen 
McRae, and Mann stepped in. 
By incorporating Latin rhythms and mixing them with the bop innovations of 
Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, Mann created his own sound, and a blueprint 
for 
jazz flute that later players would follow.

Rhythm was always the motivating fascination for Mann. After leaving 
Matthews's quintet in the mid-1950s, he played bop and straight jazz, but he 
found 
himself drawn to Afro-Cuban music. When he formed the Afro-Jazz Sextet in 1959, 
he performed with as many as three percussionists and four trumpeters behind 
him, in addition to the basic combo of vibes, bass and drums. The sound was 
more 
African than jazz, 
and it launched Mann on a stylistic exploration of what would now be called 
world music. He was one of the first North American musicians to play bossa 
nova, inspired by the 1959 film "Black Orpheus" and its soundtrack by Luiz 
Bonfa 
and Antonio Carlos Jobim. The laid-back pulse of the Brazilian style, its 
combination of intricate multi-rhythms and melodic playfulness, provided the 
perfect frame for his soaring flute solos.

But even though it remained a touchstone of his style, bossa nova soon gave 
way to other sounds. His 1962 hit "Comin' Home Baby" was built around a blues 
dance beat, while the seminal 1969 album "Memphis Underground" featured 
avant-garde guitarist Sonny Sharrock and soul-jazz percussionist Roy Ayers. By 
the 
early 1970s, he had incorporated Middle Eastern, Turkish and Japanese music 
into 
his work, and formed the group Family Of Mann, which gave him the disco hit 
"Hi-Jack" with Cissy 
Houston in 1974.

Mann continued to discover new music well into the 1990s. But it wasn't until 
he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 that he turned to his own 
ethnic background for inspiration. In 2000, he released "Eastern European 
Roots," a 
collection of folk tunes and originals that incorporated klezmer and other 
strains of Jewish music tradition. In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News 
that was widely quoted following his July 2 death, Mann said: "I've played 
Cuban music, but I'm not 
Cuban. I've played Brazilian music, but I'm not Brazilian. I've played jazz, 
but I'm not African-American. What I am is an Eastern European Jew. I love all 
the music I've played, but I wanted something that is mine."