Herbie rides again ...
Funny that the news of Herbie Hancock's Grammy win for best album comes on the day that British jazz lovers are reeling from the announced closure of theJazz, the radio station. Funny peculiar, that is.
GCap's decision to close its allegedly unprofitable digital stations Planet Rock and theJazz is both a PR disaster and short-termist, given that all the FM stations are due to close in a few years time. And Hancock's River is just the kind of "credible cross over" album that theJazz took pride in bringing to its young, rapidly growing audience.
River is inspired by the music of Joni Mitchell: it includes two jazz standards as well as beautifully played covers of classic songs such as Both Sides Now and the title track. Edith And The Kingpin sung by Tina Turner is a revelation - a reinterpretation that adds new meaning to Mitchell's near-perfect original. The band on River incorporates several jazz A-listers, both old and young: veteran Weather Report saxophonist Wayne Shorter and new star Lionel Loueke, a West African prodigy from Benin. The Grammy fall-out will do Loueke's forthcoming album for Blue Note no harm at all.
As for whether River is the "best" album, I can't help feeling that it got there through a bit of well-meant fudging from the jury. Maybe that's why Atonement got best picture at the BAFTAs.
Hancock has been good at straddling the jazz-pop line right from the start of his career, when he wrote Watermelon Man. Unlike cross over figures such as Herbie Mann, Candy Dulfer and Kenny G - actually a figure of fun in jazz circles - Hancock has always been cool. Even when he's made below par albums, they're better than much of the competition. However much money he makes, whatever annoying celebrities he hangs out with and despite or even because of his long standing obsessions with technology and Buddhism, we all love Herbie, jazz fans, hip-hoppers and movie buffs alike.
So if the judges felt like giving a pat on the back to Herbie, Joni, Wayne, Tina and even Norah Jones - not that she's short of Grammys - then River was a quick, uncontroversial fix. And that's controversial.
