When news breaks that an influential jazz artist has died, the expectation is that they probably played a saxophone or a trumpet or a piano, maybe a guitar – but rarely the vibraphone, that pearly toned instrument more familiarly associated with the chiming loops of Steve Reichian minimalism, or with sultry dinner-jazz canoodling.
Bobby Hutcherson, the Californian jazz original who died aged 75 on 15 August, was a vibraphonist who transformed the sound of his instrument. As a sideman he brilliantly complemented other leaders, and as a leader he reinvented the jazz thinking behind improvising on this often-overlooked instrument. His predecessors were mostly swing players and beboppers – enthralling ones too, such as Benny Goodman sideman Lionel Hampton and the Modern Jazz Quartet’s blues-steeped bopper Milt Jackson. Hutcherson, though, fearlessly dived into the unpredictable crosscurrents released in the 1960s by the loose, mode-based music that followed Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and early John Coltrane. He was so articulate in challenging musical settings that some of the best young players of his generation – including the saxophonists Joe Henderson and Sam Rivers, pianist/composer Andrew Hill and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard – were ready recruits to a string of terrific recordings led by Hutcherson for the Blue Note label in the 1960s.
The Kicker (1963)
Hutcherson worked at first with the swing-to-bop trombonist Al Grey in a band that often required him to play with four mallets, to mimic a pianist – thus pioneering a new vibes-chords technique in parallel with his contemporary Gary Burton – and the job took him to New York’s Birdland in the early 60s. Hutcherson’s Blue Note career began then, and this sprightly uprated-bop title track – recorded in 1963, but not issued until 1999 – features the tenor saxist and the song’s composer Joe Henderson and posthumous acid-jazz hero Grant Green on guitar.
Out to Lunch (1964)
If the saxophonist and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy hadn’t died in 1964 at the age of 36, on a European tour with Charles Mingus, he might have become as famous an influence as John Coltrane. Hutcherson’s relationship with this conceptual visionary reflected the vibraphonist’s musical sophistication, and his sense that the new free music required patience and alert listening along with soloistic assertiveness.
Una Muy Bonita (1966)
A highlight of Hutcherson’s remarkable Blue Note run was the 1966 album Stick-Up!, with McCoy Tyner on piano, Joe Henderson on tenor and Billy Higgins on drums. The method on this Ornette Coleman tune falls somewhere between Tyner’s free-Latin sensuousness and Coleman’s harmonic freedom – the latter at least as big an influence as Coltrane had been.
Total Eclipse (1969)
As a player drawn to the potential of open musical spaces, Hutcherson had an ideal partner in the tenor saxophonist Harold Land, a sympathetic collaborator early in his career. They resumed their relationship in 1969, and it not only marked Hutcherson’s growing confidence as a composer, but also the appearance of the young Chick Corea as an influential contributor.
Montara (2014 version)
Hutcherson made a memorable return to Blue Note in 2014 at the age of 73, co-leading a quartet alongside the great soul-saxist David Sanborn, with organist/trumpeter Joey DeFrancesco and drummer Billy Hart. He was a little restrained by this time perhaps, but with his powers to listen and react still sharp, his musical voice remained unmistakable.
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