Be transported to Copacobana with Herbie Mann's commemorative album America/Brasil (Wienerworld)
Ambassador for the jazz flute and pioneer for world music, Herbie Mann releases Brazilian flavoured album recorded at The Blue Note in New York to mark what would've been his 65th birthday.
Was it the name of the record label that caught your attention? I'm guessing this, as jazz flute is an acquired taste – even for a jazz lover like me. However, I'm a massive lover of Latin, particular Brazilian, beats in any genre of music.
Influenced by the great Joao Gilberto, Mann bought the Bossa Nova to North American crowds, who were starting to embrace rock n roll – jazz needed something new. Along with the likes of Stan Getz, Mann opened up a new jazz sub-genre, that proved us with real jazz, it has no rules or boundaries.
This seven track instrumental album features a Latin flute version of Billie Holiday’s Summertime. Apart from this, the album is packed with all the Brazilian promise and jazz rhythms that you’d find in any New York or Rio jazz club.
Opening with Keep The Spirits Singing, it certainly does. It’s sprinkled with sort of hooks that get rolled out for every World Cup. It’s Samba magic. You don’t even notice the flute, if I'm being completely honest.
Peri’s Scope is the sort of the jazz funk that would grace Howard Moon’s collection – the sort they talk about on the Fast Show. Nice. The territory of black polo-necked wearing men, smoking thin cigarettes and talking about the colours and the shapes jazz evokes. Smooth.
This is everything you’d expect from a jazz album. Its impressive double bass, sexy strings, perfect percussion and brilliant brass all fuse together to make music for a warm summer's evening in a beer garden. One track fuses into the other with sheer effortless perfection. It’s the sort of album I would put on when reading… or hosting a dinner party… or seducing a lover. An album for all seasons.
Jazz was the first rock n roll – it experimented, it was sordid, it was rebellious and an arena for the cool cats and tastemakers of the time. It was since replaced by actual rock n roll, thanks to Elvis, and that was end of that. Jazz was locked in the history vaults of time and became the stomping ground for the pretentious intellectuals. Herbie Mann isn't well-known, but his importance to bringing a world flavour to jazz when it needed it the most shouldn't be forgotten.
First published 13/03/13
Was it the name of the record label that caught your attention? I'm guessing this, as jazz flute is an acquired taste – even for a jazz lover like me. However, I'm a massive lover of Latin, particular Brazilian, beats in any genre of music.
Influenced by the great Joao Gilberto, Mann bought the Bossa Nova to North American crowds, who were starting to embrace rock n roll – jazz needed something new. Along with the likes of Stan Getz, Mann opened up a new jazz sub-genre, that proved us with real jazz, it has no rules or boundaries.
This seven track instrumental album features a Latin flute version of Billie Holiday’s Summertime. Apart from this, the album is packed with all the Brazilian promise and jazz rhythms that you’d find in any New York or Rio jazz club.
Opening with Keep The Spirits Singing, it certainly does. It’s sprinkled with sort of hooks that get rolled out for every World Cup. It’s Samba magic. You don’t even notice the flute, if I'm being completely honest.
Peri’s Scope is the sort of the jazz funk that would grace Howard Moon’s collection – the sort they talk about on the Fast Show. Nice. The territory of black polo-necked wearing men, smoking thin cigarettes and talking about the colours and the shapes jazz evokes. Smooth.
This is everything you’d expect from a jazz album. Its impressive double bass, sexy strings, perfect percussion and brilliant brass all fuse together to make music for a warm summer's evening in a beer garden. One track fuses into the other with sheer effortless perfection. It’s the sort of album I would put on when reading… or hosting a dinner party… or seducing a lover. An album for all seasons.
Jazz was the first rock n roll – it experimented, it was sordid, it was rebellious and an arena for the cool cats and tastemakers of the time. It was since replaced by actual rock n roll, thanks to Elvis, and that was end of that. Jazz was locked in the history vaults of time and became the stomping ground for the pretentious intellectuals. Herbie Mann isn't well-known, but his importance to bringing a world flavour to jazz when it needed it the most shouldn't be forgotten.
First published 13/03/13
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