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The Headhunters: The Stunt Man
by Doug Collette
With the half-century anniversaries of Herbie Hancock's work with the Headhunters having passed in roughly the last year--Head Hunters (Columbia, 1973) and Thrust (Columbia, 1974)--it is appropriate the current configuration of the group has continued regular activity. In fact, under the fitting tutelage of drummer Mike Clark and percussionist Bill Summers, the band has issued two albums of new material in this span of time. Speakers in the House (Ropeadope, 2022) is an album of dashing panache and ...
Continue ReadingThe Headhunters: Speakers In The House
by Doug Collette
Herbie Hancock's Headhunters (Columbia, 1973) remains one of the seminal works of the jazz fusion era. The group's heavy emphasis on rhythm not only separated it from its guitar-oriented peers of the era, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the middle-period Return to Forever, but also from Weather Report: grooves became increasingly more prominent as that band evolved, but never to the depth of Hancock and company's all-encompassing funk. That solid foundation is more than enough distinction for the first ...
Continue ReadingThe Headhunters: Speakers In The House
by Chris May
Although it appears to have been self-released in limited numbers in 2019, this Ropeadope release of Speakers In The House is effectively the Headhunters's first album since Platinum (Owl) in 2011. The band continues to be led and produced by its two Herbie Hancock-era members, percussionist Bill Summers and drummer Mike Clark, who together have kept the outfit intermittently active since Hancock moved on to other things in the mid 1970s. Summers played on the band's debut, ...
Continue ReadingTony Adamo: Was Out Jazz Zone Mad
by Nicholas F. Mondello
The translation of “Adam" from Hebrew--from which the surname Adamo springs--means from the “ground" or “soil." It also derives from the Hebrew word for red, a la “red clay." Perhaps that is why any work from Tony Adamo is rare earth--gritty, and flaming crimson. Was Out Jazz Zone Mad Adamo's latest, his first for Ropeadope, is all of those things and more.Adamo is the Heavyweight Champion of “hipspokenword," wherein lingo meets vocalizing at the corner of jazz and ...
Continue ReadingTony Adamo: Was Out Jazz Zone Mad
by Chris M. Slawecki
Some African cultures preserved their history not by the written but by the spoken word, kept by oral cultural historians known as griots. On Was Out Jazz Zone Mad, vocalist Tony Adamo aspires to serve in this same role, as a verbal historian of both official and unofficial African-American jazz and blues culture. This type of jazz jive might wear quickly thin but Adamo writes about jazz and jazz musicians with such detailed intimacy and vision that his words snap, ...
Continue ReadingBennie Maupin: The Jewel In The Lotus
by Budd Kopman
For the collector, a first-time issue on CD of any of ECM's early releases is most welcome. Which ones are chosen for release--and when they are issued--may well appear to be arbitrary to the outsider, despite a certain plan internal to the label.That The Jewel In The Lotus, first released in 1974, has finally been issued on CD is worth celebrating for two reasons: first, the music is of the highest quality; and second, Bennie Maupin has not ...
Continue ReadingBennie Maupin: The Jewel in the Lotus
by AAJ Italy Staff
Non mi stupirebbe che, in una delle tante trasmissioni televisive che si occupano di misteri, proponessero un servizio sul perché The Jewel in the Lotus di Bennie Maupin sia rimasto per così tanto tempo privato dell'onore della ristampa in CD. Artista appartenente alla scena di Detroit, Maupin ha attraversato in modo poco appariscente, ma in realtà intenso, le vicende del jazz contemporaneo a partire dalla seconda metà degli anni Sessanta, comparendo a fianco di Marion Brown, McCoy Tyner, Lee Morgan, ...
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