Herbie Hancock über Donald Byrd (bei dem Herbie seinen ersten wichtigen Job hatte), aus Ben Sidran’s Talking Jazz, hat jemand drüben bei Org transkribiert:
Sidran: There was something different about your little approach there, though…the rhythm in Watermelon Man was a little different.
Hancock: I had originally just conceived it as a kind of funky jazz tune. That’s all. But either just before the record was released or just after, I got a gig with Mongo Santamaria. I played with him one weekend…. Donald Byrd and I lived on the fifth floor (of a building in the Bronx), walk up, no elevator…it was in those days. Now, this incident happened in 1963…anyway, I played this gig with Mongo…one night, we played in the Bronx…Donald Byrd and I were roommates, and Donald came by to hear…Donald was like my older brother, and he used to laugh at me a lot, because I was kind of young and green to New York, but he kind of watched over me. So he came by the gig, and between shows, he and Mongo got into this very serious conversation about relationship between Afro-Cuban music and Afro-American music, you know, “slave ships went to both places, where’s that link between the two,” and Mongo had never found it. So I sort of half listened to the conversation, it was a little too heavy for me, and Donald says “Herbie, why don’t you play Watermelon Man for Mongo?” I said “Wha? Play Watermelon Man for Mongo? What’s that got to do with what you…” “Play it.” ‘Cause I conceived of it as a kind of funky jazz tune. So I went and started playing it, and Mongo gets up and says “Keep playin’ it,” and he walks over to his congas. As soon as he started playin’ the congas, it fit like a hand in a glove, just perfectly. And little by little, his band members joined in, the bass player starts watching the notes I was playing with my left hand, and checking out the form, so he picked up the bass line, and then the horn players picked up the melody line, and somebody starts soloing, and little by little, the people…it was a supper club, so little by little, people got up from the tables and started getting on the floor…pretty soon, everybody was dancing, and screaming and hollering, ‘cause they loved the tune. And then, after that, Mongo said “this is a wahira,” which is a type of country song they sing in the mountains. And I said “a wha-what?” I had no idea about any of this. He said “can I record it?” I said “sure.”
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #158 – Piano Jazz 2024 (Teil 1) - 19.12.2024 – 20:00; #159: Martial Solal (1927–2024) – 21.1., 22:00; #160: 11.2., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba