ein längerer Artikel über Bobby Hutcherson aus der Sonntagsausgabe des San Francisco Chronicle (15. Jan. 2012):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/15/MNAH1MNR5O.DTL
daraus:
„I love playing with Bobby. He’s an exceptionally gifted jazz improviser,“ says [Sonny] Rollins, the towering tenor saxophonist.
„It’s always a lot of fun to play with him, always enlightening, emotional as well as intellectually challenging. Bobby is a very honest person. He couldn’t play the way he does without that honesty. He has an innocence that’s childlike in a way. He’s a great player and a great person, and that helps boost humanity a little bit.“
Hutcherson taught himself to play listening to records and working with his friend Herbie Lewis, the bassist, who told him music was a way to make money and meet girls.
In high school, they jammed with hip young Los Angeles musicians such as Dolphy, who was dating Hutcherson’s sister, and saxophonist Charles Lloyd. They played dances and hot spots such as Pandora’s Box on the Sunset Strip. After graduation, Hutcherson joined a band led by Count Basie alumni Al Grey and Billy Mitchell, which took him to New York. Among other places, they performed at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater, where they played for amateur night.
„We had to accompany (amateur) singers behind a cheesecloth so we wouldn’t get hit with eggs and rotten tomatoes,“ Hutcherson says. He stayed in New York after the band broke up, driving a cab to pay the rent. In no time, he was working with some of the most creative young musicians on the scene, appearing as a sideman and leader on a slew of classic Blue Note recordings, including Dolphy’s wild „Out to Lunch,“ Grant Green’s bluesy „Idle Moments“ and his own fiercely swinging „Stick Up!,“ his first date with Tyner.
A lot of that music reflected the energy and intensity of those tumultuous times, „the black revolution that was going on in the country,“ says Hutcherson, who used to listen to Malcolm X speak in Harlem before heading downtown to rehearsals.
With the royalties from „Ummh,“ the funky hit on his 1970 album „San Francisco,“ he bought an acre of land in Montara, where he liked to go to the beach. He built a modest, wood-beamed house across the road from a cypress-studded meadow. The place provided a respite from the hectic touring and smoky clubs.
„Bobby can play one note and generate 10 times more energy than someone who would play 50 notes in that space,“ says the brilliant young vibraphonist Stefon Harris, one of countless vibes players inspired by Hutcherson. „He took this pile of metal and wood and really turned it into a vehicle to express his individuality. He transcended the instrument.“
Joshua Redman, the celebrated saxophonist who worked with Hutcherson in the SFJazz Collective, puts it this way: „We talk a lot about how music expresses universal values, experiences and feelings. But you don’t often witness that so clearly and so profoundly as you do with Bobby. His music expresses the joy of living. He connects to the source of what music is about.“
For Hutcherson, who listens to Ravel and Debussy but never his own records, the thrill is just being part of the music.
„Eric Dolphy said music is like the wind,“ he says. „You don’t know where it came from, and you don’t know where it went. You can’t control it. All you can do is get inside the sphere of it and be swept away.“
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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