You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Most Copied Pianist In Jazz

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Adam and Peter discuss the one and only Herbie Hancock and his influence.Want to watch the video in full? Check it out HERECheck out Ron Carter's Chartography HEREHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Yo, Adam. Yo. I'm going on a search. Search for what? What do I like to search for? What are some other things? You know me. What do you like to search for?

Well, if I check your search history, I'm going to... Oh, don't do that. What do you search it for? What are you looking out for? Today, we're searching for Herbie. We've been trying to search for Herbie. Finally. I'm Adam Ennis.

And I'm Peter Mark. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Music, Jazz, Life, Advice, coming at you. Oh, there you go. Coming at you, sponsored by Open Studio at Open Studio at Jazz.com for deeper dive and all this. Peter, we've been talking about searching for Herbie for months. I know.

But you wanted to go on like a full-on card trip adventure documentary searching for Herbie. And I was like, we probably know someone that knows him. So we can just call him if we wanted him? And also what's ended up happening is just wait for him to come to us. He's going to be coming, well, we're hoping right here at this desk. That's TBA. Maybe. Maybe.

But he's going to be very close to here. Like within 50 yards, right? in just about six or seven weeks, which we're super excited coming to the music at the intersection. Festival right here on the streets of Grand Center. So, yeah, we're excited.

I've been having fun looking at some videos and some posts about their summer tour. They're over in Europe right now. Herbie Hancock and his wonderful group with Lionel, Lueke, James Genes. I saw Terrence Blanchard on there. You know, just always killing it, always doing his thing.

We love Herbie. We love Herbie. And, you know, that's what this episode is all about, is all about Herbie's sort of template, which is a crass way of saying his style of playing. Template. Yeah. Is that like a template?

Template. Template. How do you say it? Template. Template? Yeah, I don't know. How do you say gala? Gala.

Come on. Oh, more on the gala. More on the gala. Yeah, yeah. I love how we look up here when we're saying. I know. Like, they're, yeah. But yeah, so this is, we're calling this the most copied pianist in jazz.

He's one. Is that hyperbole? No, I think from modern. musicians, Herbie is the most copied pianist. If you go to any jazz gig right now at any jazz club around the world, there's a good chance. The pianist has some kind of direct Herbie influence happening in their playing. So not everyone, but that's why we're saying he is probably the most copied right now of, at least for our generation, it was like everybody sounded like Herbie for a minute. Right. If everybody sounds like Herbie, nobody sounds like Herbie.

Right. That's right. So much that people like Ethan Iverson have written blog posts about this phenomenon. Really? And or something or he, I forget, he wrote something about it. Like, shout out to the meth blog. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the do the math. Do the math. That's your personal blog, which I love reading because it's all over the place. But, but. But. But. You are in Missouri. No, and other people have talked about like, you know, was it Mulgrew or someone who said, like I went to a jazz club and everybody sounded like herbie or something like that. Yeah.

really one of the most copied musicians in our lifetime. Right. By us, too, by the way. We're not immune. And I mean, I always wonder about, like, we saying, the most copied pianists, the most influential pianos. That's two different things, right? Because I would actually, I would say I would put out there maybe almost like we could

look at, I would look at Herbie Hancock as the most, you know, possibly influential just musicians and forces in jazz, beyond just piano. Yeah. But then copying. and certainly influential to pianist, absolutely. Yeah. So this is going to be fun, though, because we're going to go back and listen.

We had a little bit of a back and forth, a little bit of a disagreement over what era, Herbie. Should we divulge that to our dear listeners? Yeah, let's talk about it. So we chose a video from 1964 playing with Miles Davis playing Autumn Leaves. Yes. Ultimately, because it's very accessible,

and it's a very young Herbie. Yes. Still in the dawn of his career, right? And he still has, during the age of Aquarius, I believe. He still has the herbisms that we will see that he carries to this sound today, and the herbisms that are so incredibly copied by pretty much every pianist or a very large chunk of the piano population after him.

Right. And I kind of wanted to go a little bit more recent or just, you know, maybe from the 80s, 90s, whatever, as opposed to 60s or 70s, because I feel like that the later eras and the current era for Herbie Hancock, you've got all the herbieisms, obviously, but then you've got just the depth and breadth of this amazing life in music and all those nuances that were added on. But that's okay. We're going to go with your ideas. You're still disagreeing. We're on the podcast. You're still disagreeing about the choice. Our listeners like to hear about this. No, I... But this is what makes it fun. Listen, there's no bad era of Herbie, including the current

era, but I think it's fun to go back and check him out when he was just a young lad. with the Miles Davis Well, and then remember the other version I wanted that you shot down as well. We should call this episode five different ways Adam shot down Peter's ideas. Is there anything wrong with listening

to Herbie play Autumn Leaves with Miles? No. Got the Maestro on there. You got Tony Williams. Come on, man. We're in that period of the podcast with some of our non-deer listeners referred to as the useless dribble.

Yeah, let's keep it going. Let's keep it going. Shout out useless drivel. Put it in the comments. No, but the other idea. I had was from 1963, which was from the, of course, the live concert at Lincoln Center, My Funny Valentine, ultimately, or is that from four or more? I think that's My Fun and Valentine.

Oh, no, we were talking about all of you. It was a different too. All of you. All of you from that. But we wanted to get some video. We wanted to get some video. So this is cool, of course. Check the tape.

Check the tape. So this is 1964 in Milan. That's, of course, the maister, Ron Carter, Wayne Turner. I have it queued up to right before. Kirby's solo. Okay. So this is something... Already.

A theme is developing and it's vibe. Right. And if we had more time, we could take it back and I encourage you. We'll link to this video, of course. You know,

because this is as much coming out of what Wayne played. Such a great little segue. Yeah. Something like that? I think it's like that clustery, you know, thing. Yeah, up to the 11th on top.

Actually, I don't think it has it doesn't double the 11. That's what we can do. So it's like, and then down the whole stuff. up. I've heard Herbie do this a lot, but just check out the way he does it. The dynamics there. All those airy chords that have on the tonics.

Herbie is a number one. Shout out Winn Kelly. We can talk a lot about the harmonic and melodic concept and how, you know, this is a very, this is a time, every time is a time of evolution. Everything is always changing. And this is when this sort of style away from functional harmony, even on a functionally harmonic tune using more of like a modal system to tackle it. It's really his rhythm, though, that starts to change away from just like all of these

little bebop undulations and ducks and dips and things. And it's this like plane that happens up and down the keyboard. And him and, I feel like him and Wayne are very on the like same spectrum, different instruments for that rhythmic evolution of the music. Yeah. Yeah. And then you jump forward to their wonderful duet recording, one plus one. one plus one.

You really, you know, see that fully realized synthesis years later. So exciting to track these careers. Yeah, you can pay attention to the rhythm, sort of the rhythmic language he's playing here versus someone like Winton Kelly or Red Garland and how different it feels.

It feels, you know, much more progressive than what they were doing. At the same time, I would say like his sense of swing and groove is even closer connected than I, than we realize with Winton Kelly specifically. Certainly Red Garland as well. But I mean, like, some of the phrasing of these lines. The duck get on. Yeah.

Like, just from a grew standpoint. But it's almost like he's taking that and kind of going, hmm. You know, like, look at it from a different angle. It's like Picasso's guitar. It's like, it's in the shape of a guitar. But it's kind of weird. Where Winn Kelly would have a realistic looking guitar. This is like a little bit skewed version of that.

Yeah, yeah. It's super exciting, man. Like that, like, at the micro level, bit bit it. Like it's very like traditional swinging, bluesy, a lot of bebop stuff. But like, he's already. And this is like just the beginning, I believe, the second chorus. He's done like two phrases so far, Peter. Yeah, exactly.

And but I mean, he's stretching over the bar lines and like, you know, phrases that are going over like seven beats and things. And then with like odd three beats missing and stuff. Yep. But then he's using these traditional elements like to pull it to pull it in. And then it's very similar, I think, to the way Ron Carter is walking. It's like some of it's very, you know, it'll be like omitting some roots on the ones. It's the same concept you could take from like Paul Chambers to Ron Carter, like this, it's a, it's a cubist almost version of the same stuff. Yeah.

I mean, that's like... And again, the airy way he's harmonically and melodically dealing with the tonics of these progressions, because obviously Autumn leaves is dealing with a major cadence and a minor cadence. And he is obscuring the tonics more than, I think, the generation before him. Yep, absolutely. And then it's just like, even with his left-hand comp and super light and then boom. you know, like really jabbing on like some dominant things to give it some excentuation to really what he's setting up thematically in the right hand. All of these things are the things that people copy.

Yeah, I know. These are the things when you want to get this sound. It's not even known as the Herbie sound because it became so ubiquitous after this. Right. But it is starts here. Back it up a little bit. Let's hear a little more of in a row without interrupting. Yeah.

Drivel? Without the drivel. The Meister is feeling through this part too. Almost like being in love quote. Not being afraid to not resolve things. That's exactly right. Let it float. Go up one more higher than you would expect.

So let's just talk about one thing that I think it's mixed, miss sometimes with Herbie's playing. And this is up till today, like the use of something super simple and standard that's not like a double diminished or some kind of crazy thing where you're like, I mean, even like how he kind of is placed in those first chords,

it's kind of like, wow, that's a lot to play at the beginning the solo. But then check out when he's just going to the like he uses that at the kind of at the right places in terms of like a counterpoint to some crazy stuff. And that's just the second, third, and the fifth. What do you call that? It's just like a cluster. Cluster chord. Yeah. For like a G minor, A, B, flat, and D. Yeah. And then I don't know if this is exactly what he played, but I know that he's done this in many other situations that I've transcribed, but you can hear him to obscuring the tonics by using more of a diminished sound. Even when he's doing that cluster, he'll be like

Right, diminished on top of the minor. Yeah. Yeah, because he's, I mean, like that kind of. Something like that. I'm not sure that's exactly what he's doing. So that's another thing, you know, and I mean, Witt and Kelly did this in a different way, but like playing around with this like this,

the minor on, obviously it's G minor, but you've got the minor seven and the six. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but he goes down, I think he goes on this stick.

Ah, so that's a really extended line that has a couple of like, yeah, we're almost there. So he goes down here somewhere as he's going, something like he's in this zone here. Yeah. Probably like a half step down maybe he might be thinking. Yeah. Let's just check out because that's a long line.

And you know, now that's the end of the line. Then he's doing the other thing. But like that's longer. It's almost the whole A section. It's the whole A section up until that G minor going to the first ending. Like that's longer than we typically would recommend. It's like, okay, if you're playing piano, when are you going to breathe? But this, you're talking about Wayne Short or Herbie connection.

Wayne was great at this playing these like really long phrases, but they were not really one phrase. I mean, you could say there would continue. No, there's small breaks that are happening. There's small breaks. Those are breaths in the music, and it's because of how he crafts, he makes that one continuous phrase into a story. Yep, exactly. So it's like somebody that can write with this, like, run on sentence, but it doesn't feel like a run on sentence.

No, there's still like this set up body resolution kind of thing that happens. Yeah, and he's got a couple places where it's like he's messing with our expectations over these very standard chords. This is super exciting. He's just, you know. Garland there. Man, he's just, you know, he doesn't, like, resolve it down. He stays up there on that D-flat, even as the C minor starts. It's all, like, fluid.

Like, the form is fluid, even as he's playing this very traditional kind of stuff. And using these structures to still obscure things, like he did that. I forget what the setup was, but, like, so on the F, like, a suss thing. Yeah, yeah. Doing chromatic thing. I don't think it was something like that. Something like that. But that obscures that dominant seven,

so it's not just like... Right, exactly. You know. Exactly. And then, look, for drummers out here or anybody just interested in drums, if you want to talk about textbook, right-hand ride symbol technique,

look at Tony Williams' hand. Greatest of all time. Like, learn from that. Look at that. I mean, you can learn from piano just like, look how natural fluid that movement is dancing. little chromaticism there

harmonically So there is going So that's like the half step above going to the G Even though it's really still that 2-5-1 Like typically the the The substitution would be the E-flat But he goes up to A-flat there which is cool It goes back to it

And then thematically here to see setting up these arpeggios. Long big phrases. Repetition. Now here's the payoff. Yeah, and then it's like, boom, bang. It's not, butoom bang. It's like boom, bang.

It's after the one. Like the breakdown. When you talk about some beautiful solo architecture, human nature says, your ego says, we've got energy built. Let's keep the end. energy keeping going forward. Breakdown. So great.

And the artistic mind says, no, let's, let's slow this down a bit. Unbelievable. I mean, what is he? Like it. What is he, like 25 there maybe? Yeah, he's young. Crazy. Maybe even younger. I mean, Tony Williams might have been a teenager still at this point.

Crazy, man. I think he's probably 63. The herbieisms and the amazing artistic grace that he gives his audience to follow along, there's so much repetition amongst phrases, but again, in obscure ways. that it draws you in, especially at this time, that language, a lot of that language is still used by our favorite pianists today. And like I said, I think he's probably the most copied pianist from his time forward. Yeah. I can't think of someone else in the modern era who's more copied. Right. And I'd say there's, and there's been more like just sort of unconscious

copying of Herbie than probably any point of. Yeah, influential copying. Copying sounds kind of negative, but everybody copies. Herbie's copied people to get where. he is. The tentacles of his artistry are so, you know, they're so ever present in the jazz piano scene that even people that are like, I don't really like Herbie or I don't listen to Herbie or something. They still got Herbie in their play. Yeah, because there's so many different directions that it comes from. Yeah, even young musicians who maybe don't listen to a lot of Herbie, but the people they listen to a lot of Herbie.

And I should just say, full disclosure, we're doing a huge disservice to this solo because we took it out of context. Yeah, totally. Like, I mean, it's still a great solo. And we also kept stopping. it after what happened before and where it goes into is really interesting and you can go check out there's a number of different versions i would say as great as this version is i would still say there's the the record uh miles in europe which was from the same year yeah and it says 64 i want to say this is all 63 i'm not sure ron carter has a wonderful book photography yeah right chartography which is like comparing the different baselines that he played during

these couple of months it's incredible it's incredible to see all the baselines ron carter played on autumn leaves Yeah, and why, yeah, and his breakdown in terms of why he's playing them and how it changed from night to night. But I would say, for me, my personal favorite Herbie solo during these several months of them playing this was on the live in Europe record. We'll link to that. And that has been called a number of different things, but it was live from the Antib Jazz Festival outdoors and the beautiful beach, the Cotezoude, as it were. That sounds like a really fancy party, like a gala. It sounds like a gala Segway, another French word

Now we're getting Frenchy Say mon ami Tell us about Gaila So Gala stands for Gentlemen and Ladies Agreement It is listen I love the authority you're saying Because like 20 minutes ago

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It is required that you adhere to the agreement. Which is the gala, the gentleman and ladies agreement, which means that we provide the podcast. We do indeed. We bring the fire. 100%. We bring the flames, baby. We bring the flame emoji. Yeah, yeah.

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