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from the you-know-they've-got-a-hell-of-a-band dept.
I really dig music that has a vibes player--going back to Hamp and Red and coming forward to Joe Locke and Warren Wolf. My all-time favorite musician is Milt Jackson. A close second is Bobby Hutcherson.
SFGate (sister-site of the San Francisco Chronicle) reports
Vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, one of jazz's greatest improvisers and a deep, sweet-souled musician who played with enormous feeling, fire, and grace, died Monday Aug. 15 at his home in Montara on the San Mateo County coast. He was 75 and had battled emphysema for many years.
Over his prolific 55-year career, Mr. Hutcherson, a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, performed and recorded with many of the greatest jazz artists of his time, including tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, pianists Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Cedar Walton[1], and drummer Billy Higgins[1].
Mr. Hutcherson produced a singularly beautiful sound on the vibraphone, a resonating metal-and-wood percussion instrument used mostly for novelty effect until jazz musicians like Lionel Hampton made it swing in the 1930s. The lyrical bebopper Milt Jackson made it sing with a richness, warmth, and grit that inspired a kid from Pasadena to take up the vibraphone and expand its expressive range.
[...] He unleashed joyously unbounded solos shaped on the fly with long ribbons of melody, bluesy ostinatos, and the declamatory single tones he hammered out with a slicing body English that made them shimmer and swell.
He could also play ballads sublimely, the way he does with "I Loves You Porgy" on his 1994 duet recording with Tyner, "Manhattan Moods", by sounding the melody with little or no embellishment.
[...] "Bobby can play one note and generate 10 times more energy than someone who would play 50 notes in that space", Stefon Harris, one of many vibraphonists inspired by Mr. Hutcherson and the one who followed him in the SFJazz Collective, said in 2012.
"He took this pile of metal and wood and really turned it into a vehicle to express his individuality. He transcended the instrument."
[1] Members, with Bobby, of the supergroup The Timeless All-Stars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @03:07PM
In the list of jazz vibes players. He's in his early seventies and should have many good years ahead of him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @08:07PM
I was trying to get the ends of the timeline--the guys who originally figured out that you could make vibes swing and some guys who were born kinda recently and are still working.
Yeah, Gary is very much still playing and very much in demand.
One recording that comes immediately to mind is his performance with the Mack Avenue Superband, based in Detroit.
His stuff with Chick Corea was recently in regular rotation on my jazz station.
Gary worked with George Shearing very early in his career.
(George liked to have a vibe player in his ensemble.)
I first noticed Warren Wolf playing with pianist Aaron Diehl.
Recently, Warren has started putting out recordings with his own name on the front of the album.
Steve Nelson is an active player of note.
Peter Appleyard's cover of "Air Mail Special" (usually associated with Lionel Hampton) is currently in rotation on KJazz.
Buddy Montgomery played vibes (and piano) in a band with his brothers Monk and Wes.
Lem Winchester (formerly a cop) had just gotten out his first album when he shot himself in the head while demonstrating a trick with a pistol.
Cal Tajder's "Soul Sauce" is a favorite.
Tito Puente played vibes at one time.
Yeah, there is absolutely no shortage of guys who have played|are still playing vibes at noteworthy levels.
Trivia: Red Norvo and his wife, singer Mildred Bailey, were called Mr. and Mrs. Swing.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @08:16PM
n/t
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]