Ten Supreme Fender Rhodes Albums

In 1965, reeling from the impact of Motown and the Brit invasion led by the Beatles, and about to be hit by the triple whammy that was acid rock and the rebel culture that went with it, jazz was on the back foot. Its relevance as entertainment, art form and spiritual sustenance was under threat, at least for people under thirty years of age. And then along came Harold Rhodes and the Fender Rhodes. The electric piano was not a recent invention—Wurlitzer had introduced one in 1954—but the Fender Rhodes had something, several somethings, several zeitgeisty somethings, that turned it into the sonic equivalent of a Star Wars lightsaber in the hands of mid-1960s jazz musicians. A trippy, bell-like resonance, particularly evident in the upper register, grit and grind in the bass register, and pronounced percussive visceralism. The Fender Rhodes could be tuned, tweaked and distorted as much or as little as a player desired. It looked cool, it sounded amazing—and you could turn it up. With one onboard, a jazz group could now compete with just about anything rock might throw at it. Salvation was within reach.

The Fender Rhodes was not alone in riding to the rescue of jazz. The spiritual jazz movement introduced by John Coltrane in 1965 with A Love Supreme (Impulse!), and taken up after his death in 1967 by Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, also did much to reforge jazz's relevance to the younger generation. The widespread adoption of the electric guitar, and the bass guitar, did the same. But the Fender Rhodes was the super-ace in jazz's deck of cards.

This article salutes Ten Supreme Fender Rhodes Albums (plus an eleventh for luck). They are not necessarily the supreme Top Ten—there are too many contenders for any ten to be that, and we all have our personal favourites. They were released between 1967 and 2006, but mostly in the years immediately each side of 1970, when the Fender Rhodes was still a novelty with a mojo that thrilled musicians and audiences alike. The two new-millennial albums in the list are great in their own right but they are also included as evidence of the Fender Rhodes' continuing contribution to jazz long after the first flush of novelty had worn off.

Except for one small temporal exception, the albums below are discussed in chronological order of release. And for brevity, the Fender Rhodes is referred to throughout simply as the Rhodes, despite the Fender prefix not being dropped by the manufacturers until 1974.

Joe Zawinul Plugs In, Turns On And Plays An Ace

The Cannonball Adderley Quintet
Why Am I Treated So Bad!
Capitol
1967

A white Austrian more than holding his own in what was at the time, alongside Horace Silver's unit, African America's funkiest jazz band, Joe Zawinul first stoked the zeitgeist's smouldering electric-piano fire on Cannonball Adderley's Domination (Capitol, 1965) and, in a small group setting, on the 1966 sessions for Adderley's hit album Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! (Capitol, 1967). But on those discs Zawinul played a Wurlitzer. He really began the blaze when he switched to Rhodes for Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!'s follow-up, Why Am I Treated So Bad!.

Zawinul plays the Rhodes on three tracks: the extended opener "Mini Mama," "Why Am I Treated So Bad" and the brief closer, "The Scene." Like Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!, the album was a faux club recording. Producer David Axelrod actually recorded both discs in Capitol's Los Angeles studios in front of an invited audience. The free bar may have helped, but the enthusiasm of the assembled friends and associates sounds real enough.

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! has the edge on sound quality, but Why Am I Treated So Bad! is by a short neck the most exciting disc. Partly this is down to Zawinul's realisation of the Rhodes' potential to get libidinous, partly it is down to the material on which the instrument is deployed. "Mini Mama" (6:41), written by Curtis Fuller, comes across like the Ray Charles band performing a tweaked instrumental version of "What'd I Say." "Why Am I Treated So Bad" (7:49), written by Pops Staples, sounds like the love child of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" and Zawinul's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy." Yeah, baby, yeah.

In 2006, Stateside released a remastered version of "Why Am I Treated So Bad" on the 2xCD Adderley compilation Walk Tall: The David Axelrod Years, which includes other choice Rhodes tracks of the period. Check the YouTube below.

Miles Davis Shuffles The Pack And Raises The Stakes

Miles Davis
In A Silent Way
Columbia
1969

If Cannonball Adderley and Joe Zawinul were first at the table with the Rhodes, then Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock were a close second. Hancock played Rhodes on Davis' Miles In The Sky (Columbia, 1968), recorded seven months after Why Am I Treated So Bad!, and then on Filles De Kilimanjaro (Columbia, 1968).

Next up was In A Silent Way, and now Davis raised the stakes, using two Rhodes players, Hancock and Chick Corea. The album ventured beyond the funk sensibilities explored on Adderley's album and tapped into the full spectrum of the Rhodes' mojo—its aforementioned trippy, bell-like resonance, particularly evident in the upper register, its grit and grind in the bass register, and its percussive character, something Corea, a drummer himself, was adept at marshalling.

In the liner book for The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions (Columbia, 2001), Zawinul says of Davis' discovery of the Rhodes: "Miles liked it from the very beginning because it opened other ways of expression. He used to come to the clubs constantly where we played with Cannonball and record only the parts with the Rhodes—on the breaks he would call me out on the street to play it for me!"

Zawinul played Rhodes on some of the In A Silent Way sessions, though on the material selected by Davis and Macero for the original LP, he is heard only on organ, with Hancock and Corea on Rhodes. But "In A Silent Way" would re-emerge soon enough with Zawinul on Rhodes, on Zawinul (Atlantic, 1971). See below. In the meantime....

Miles Davis
Bitches Brew
Columbia
1970

Never one to do anything by halves, Miles Davis raised the stakes again on Bitches Brew, deploying Joe Zawinul (on the left channel) and Chick Corea (on the right channel) on Rhodes throughout the album and adding Larry Young (down the middle) on a third Rhodes on "Spanish Key" and "Pharoah's Dance."

A credible argument can be made asserting that Davis and Teo Macero's high-water-mark electric collaboration was In A Silent Way, and a cogent polemic can be put forward holding that Davis over-reached himself on Bitches Brew (see the article Miles Davis & Don Cherry: Which One Is The Grifter? here). But it cannot be denied that Bitches Brew's use of the Rhodes reached heights never previously attained on record (and subsequently only rarely bettered). Add to that Macero's wizardry with the post-production, and Bitches Brew probably ranks as the supreme Rhodes album of its era.

It is said of the Velvet Underground's seminal first album that only a few people bought it on release but that every one of them was inspired to form a band. Bitches Brew was not an immediate commercial success either, but it too was the catalyst behind many new bands. Among those that emerged from the collective lineup were Weather Report, Mwandishi, Mahavishnu, Circle and Return to Forever. Legions more were formed by other musicians.

Joe Zawinul Doubles Down On His Winning Streak

Joe Zawinul
Zawinul
Atlantic
1971

With Wayne Shorter and Miroslav Vitous in the lineup, the band on Zawinul is the immediate precursor of Weather Report. Keen to avoid it being categorised as jazz, jazz-rock, jazz-fusion or anything else, Zawinul billed the album as "Music for two electric pianos, flute, trumpet, soprano saxophone, two basses and percussion." Hancock was the second keyboard player, his Rhodes—customized with an Echoplex foot pedal—coming through the left channel and Zawinul's through the right. The trumpeter is Woody Shaw.

Zawinul was the composer of "In A Silent Way" and he was not happy with the way Miles Davis simplified its harmonic structure by eliminating some of the chord changes. Zawinul restores these on the Zawinul version and the 4:47 performance follows his original structure. In truth, the adjustments add little to the piece, which is delightful but no substitute for Teo Macero's extended and post-produced version on Davis' album.

But Zawinul is nonetheless a breathtakingly beautiful album and the twin Rhodes exert as magical a pull as they do on In A Silent Way. There are two extended pieces, opener "Doctor Honoris Causa" (13.45), composed by Zawinul in honour of Hancock, and penultimate track "Double Image" (10:37), which features Shorter. Saxophone and trumpet voicings throughout the album are close to those on In A Silent Way, suggesting Zawinul and/or Shorter may have had more to do with the arrangements on that album than is usually supposed.

Zawinul closes with an exquisitely crafted miniature, "Arrival In New York" (1:59), a soundscape inspired by Zawinul's first impressions of the city when as a boy he arrived there by ship. It is, consciously or otherwise, in the tradition of Moondog's "Fog On The Hudson (425 West 57th Street)," from On The Streets Of New York (Mars, 1953), and Charles Mingus' "A Foggy Day," from Pithecanthropus Erectus (Atlantic, 1956), both noble ancestors.

Freddie Hubbard And Stan Getz Place Their Bets And Come Up Winners

Freddie Hubbard
Red Clay
CTI
1970

Produced by Creed Taylor and recorded by Rudy Van Gelder at his Englewood Cliffs studio, Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay has more in common with Cannonball Adderley's Why Am I Treated So Bad! than it does with In A Silent Way or Zawinul. Red Clay is fundamentally old-school hard bop, performed by a quintet including four masters of the style: Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Joe Henderson and bassist Ron Carter. But Hancock is playing a Rhodes and the lineup is completed by drummer Lenny White, who was at the time making his name in fusion contexts.

In their solos, Hubbard and Henderson make few concessions to the new wind blowing through jazz, though both simplify their lines and harmonic vocabularies a little. Only White's drumming directly references jazz-rock, jazz-funk and fusion, and it is the rest of the band's relaxed attitude towards being on trend that made Red Clay a hit and has given it legs.

The original four-track Red Clay LP featured Hancock's Rhodes on three high-temperature tracks, "Red Clay," "Suite Sioux" and "The Intrepid Fox," and organ on "Delphia," which swings between cooler balladeering and double-time funkified passages.

Stan Getz
Captain Marvel
Verve
Recorded 1972 / Released 1975

Chick Corea came along on two occasions in the late 1960s/early 1970s to haul Stan Getz out of musical and substance abuse-fuelled sloughs of despond. The first time, playing acoustic piano, was in 1967 on Sweet Rain (Verve). The second time, on Rhodes, was in March 1972 on Captain Marvel, on which Corea brought along bassist Stanley Clarke and percussionist Airto Moreira, both of whom, with the addition of singer Flora Purim and saxophonist Joe Farrell, had a month earlier recorded Corea's Return To Forever (ECM). The drummer is Tony Williams. All but one of the tunes, Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," are Corea originals.

As with Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay, much of the enduring appeal of Captain Marvel lies in the leader's reluctance to dumb down the qualities that had made him great. Sure, Getz—at the time battling alcoholism while without his knowledge being doped with Antabuse by his wife, which caused severe physical reactions—responds to Corea's heated Latin plugged-in fusion, and to the ferocity of Williams' drumming, with extrovert and assertive playing, but he does so while remaining himself. Like Hubbard, Getz is performing on his own terms. (It has to be said that both players later, shall we say, loosened their principles, lured by the mighty dollar, but thankfully, these were only temporary aberrations).

Captain Marvel presents tough take-no-prisoners music and Getz burns with passion and existential anger throughout side one, on "La Fiesta," "Five Hundred Miles High" and "Captain Marvel," and on side two's opener, "Times Lie." Only on the brief "Lush Life" (2:26) and closing "Day Waves" does he reduce the heat (though "Day Waves" and the album close with a final gale-force flourish, as though Getz is telling the world, "See?").

When Captain Marvel was recorded, Getz was negotiating his departure from Verve in favour of a more lucrative contract with Columbia. This explains the three-year hiatus between the recording and release of the album and also its release on Verve in some territories outside the US, where it came out on Columbia.

The Aces Crawl Up And Down Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock's Sleeves

Chick Corea & Return To Forever
Light As A Feather
Polydor
1973

In October 1972, seven months after recording the Stan Getz album, Corea, Stanley Clarke and Airto Moreira, along with Flora Purim and Joe Farrell—the quintet now formally constituted as Return to Forever—recorded Light As A Feather. Joyful and high spirited, it is an album of transcendent and uplifting beauty.

The music itself belies the title Light As A Feather. It may lack the edge Getz brought to Captain Marvel, along with any suggestion of muscle-car machismo, but Light As A Feather has core strength and sinew aplenty. On the title track and elsewhere, Corea and Farrell deliver burning extended solos, but crucially, at other times, such as on "Captain Marvel," which is focused on Farrell's flute and Purim's wordless vocals, the vibe is gentle and softly spoken. Moreira's drumming adds to the rainbow emotional spectrum. More frequently heard playing percussion, he brings to the drum-kit impressionist subtleties which were not in Williams' toolkit. "500 Miles High" also inhabits a wider canvas than it did on Captain Marvel.

Herbie Hancock
Head Hunters
Columbia
1973

Head Hunters' sound is defined most strongly by the Hohner D6 clavinet—one of four keyboards Herbie Hancock plays on the album along with Rhodes, ARP Odyssey and ARP Soloist synthesizers. The only Rhodes showcase on the four-track disc is the closing "Vein Melter." Despite this, Head Hunters has become an emblem of first generation Rhodes albums. Partly it is the cover art. But objectively accurate or not, the association is appropriate, for most of the other keyboards cresting at the time had come along in the Rhodes' wake and owed much of their acceptance to it.

Talking about Head Hunters in 1996, Hancock said, "By the end of 1972, my feeling was that the sextet had reached its peak...I began to feel that I had been spending so much time exploring the upper atmosphere of music and the more ethereal kind of far-out, spacey stuff. Now there was this need to take some more of the earth and to feel a little more tethered...The one thing that made this album original was that it didn't have a guitar. The guitar was extremely popular back then...But I had heard about the clavinet. It had a guitar-like sound...I thought maybe if I played the clavinet in a rhythmic way like a guitar, I wouldn't have to use a guitarist." Indeed, it would have taken a guitarist of Jimi Hendrix's epic magical-realist talents to go head to head with Hancock's keyboards.

Curiously, Hancock's desire to get away from "the more ethereal kind of far-out, spacey stuff" on Head Hunters does not align with his use of the Rhodes on "Vein Melter." This is as celestial and out there as anything he played on In A Silent Way. Evidence that music, like history, does not unfold in a straight line.

New Millennium, New Game, New Rules

Brian Blade Fellowship
Perceptual
Blue Note
2000

Decades before the dawn of the new millennium, the Rhodes had left its novelty years behind. It had become "just" another instrument available to jazz musicians. It was no longer remarkable in itself but instead had become something to be critically assessed on the context in which it was played and on who was playing it.

Brian Blade's Fellowship's luminous Perceptual sets the contextual bar high. Calling the band's music "jazz" is like calling Lady Liberty a statue. It is that, but it is also so much more, and a beacon of hope with it. The music is better described as electric Americana with an accent on jazz. Some of the textures are Pat Metheny-esque and each track is more a soundscape than a conventionally structured song.

The core unit in Fellowship comprises co-founders Blade and Jon Cowherd, who is heard on Fender Rhodes, acoustic piano and pump organ (Cowherd had played Wurlitzer electric piano on Fellowship's eponymous debut on Blue Note in 1998). There are two saxophonists, Myron Walden and Melvin Butler, and two guitarists, Dave Easley and Kurt Rosenwinkel (three guitarists counting Daniel Lanois, who guests on two tracks). The Rhodes is only occasionally the centre of attention but when it is played it is at the heart of the band's sound.

As a bonus, Joni Mitchell guests on the haunting, monumental "Steadfast," the penultimate track. Her presence reminds us that there are few degrees of separation between musicians on parallel courses: Blade began playing on Mitchell's albums in 1997. Wayne Shorter, who in 2000 recruited Blade for his Quartet, had begun guesting on Mitchell's albums in 1977.

Nik Bartsch's Ronin
Stoa
Stoa
2006

With little warning, Switzerland, best known in 2006 (aside from the admirable Hat Hut label) for hosting the increasingly irrelevant Montreux Jazz Festival, whose headliners that year included Simply Red, Solomon Burke, Deep Purple, Sting and Bryan Adams—turned out Nik Bärtsch and his Zurich-based band, Ronin.

Stoa, Ronin's debut, is the album James Brown might have made if he had appointed Steve Reich musical director of the Famous Flames, though without the satin cape and emotional extremities. It is minimalism, Jane, but not as we know it: simultaneously cerebral and on the good foot. Bartsch plays Rhodes and acoustic piano, fronting a quintet completed by bass clarinet, bass, drums and percussion.

Bärtsch calls the music "Zen funk," but a more useful description is perhaps "visceral minimalism." It subscribes to minimalism's mission to explore the Einsteinian deep space of music-as-math, shuffling and stacking a deck of pre-composed melodic modules and intricately interlocking rhythms. But Bärtsch humanises the astro science with earthy funk-inspired bass ostinatos and kick-ass drums.

Remarkably, pretty well every note heard on the album had been scored, right down to the smallest detail, even including Kaspar Rast's drums, which sound spontaneous (Rast and Bärtsch had been playing together since they were twelve, which explains some of it). All the music is created in real time (Bärtsch created the band primarily to play live), with no loops and no overdubs. It is digital-age music performed with analog-age sensibility.

Which adds up to Ten Supreme Fender Rhodes Albums.

One For Luck: Donald Byrd Deals Another Royal Flush

Donald Byrd
Black Byrd
Blue Note
1973

Donald Byrd's Black Byrd took up where its immediate predecessor, the groove masterpiece Ethiopian Knights (Blue Note, 1972), left off, and maxed the concept out. Indeed, Black Byrd is so funky that many in Byrd's contemporary audience, who had come to him during his hard bop years, abandoned him from here on in. The album has David T. Walker on blues drenched guitar, fresh from sessions with Marvin Gaye recording Let's Get It On (Tamla, 1973), Chuck Rainey and Wilton Felder are on electric basses, there is a Byrd cameo on electric trumpet and Harvey Mason is on drums. There are more backbeats and ostinatos than can be thrown a stick at, there are v-o-c-a-l-s, and the album was produced by the Jackson 5's Motown producers, brothers Fonce and Larry Mizell (who had studied under Byrd at Howard University).

The album made number 88 on the Billboard chart. "The jazz people started eating on me," said Byrd in a 1982 interview. "They had a feast on me for ten years. 'He's sold out.'"

But boy oh boy, does Black Byrd hit the spot. And at the heart of its spectacularly well-engineered mix, in which every instrument shimmers in its own spotlight, there are twin keyboardists Joe Sample, on Rhodes and acoustic piano, and Fred Perren, on Rhodes and synthesizer. Sample's Rhodes is crucial to the music, even though it does not dominate it. It is enough for Black Byrd to quality as our Eleventh Supreme Rhodes Album.

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