A Long-Awaited Vibing on Hutch Posted by floodwatch

Bobby Hutcherson: Montara and Little Angel From: Montara [Blue Note 1975] Madlib: Montara From: Shades of Blue [Blue Note 2003] There was a post from Codec recently on the excellent Feed Me Good Tunes about certain albums "tracking you down" and subsequently taking possession of your daily existence. As I was reading it I immediately identified with his plight, since something similar has been happening to me recently. For him it was Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein (a fine rescue); for me, Bobby Hutcherson's Montara started crashing on the couch in my living room a few weeks ago and hasn't left yet. As one of Blue Note's top sellers in the '70s, this record is hardly a rarity, but in terms of must-haves, it's really a no-brainer. Sadly, it has taken me years to realize this. Montara and I met innocently enough on a day when I happened to have an extra $10 to spend at my local Newbury Comics store. There it was, staring out at me from the "Wicked Cheap" section, one of my notorious "back burner" picks: those records that you always have the intention of acquiring, but something else always seems to take precedence over it. I was dumbfounded when I arrived home and played it, feeling a sort of bittersweet regret, as if I so much time had been lost without it embracing my eardrums all these years. I've always thought that if Hutcherson had chosen a more popular instrument with which to channel his talent, his impact on jazz would have been enormous. As it stands, the vibraphone has carried the curse of not being taken as seriously as, say, the tenor sax or piano. His closest contemporary would be Gary Burton, a giant in his own right, yet Hutcherson was more actively involved in the post-bop "new thing" of the mid-'60s, cutting his teeth on classic Blue Note sessions with Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, and Jackie McLean. He briefly swam in the waters of commercial fusion before taking a short detour into Latin jazz with Montara in 1975. This sort of thing had been done before, of course, but Hutcherson approached these rich, Cuban grooves and sophisticated charts as if he had been playing them for decades. It also didn't hurt that he enlisted players like Willie Bobo, Blue Mitchell, and the underrated Ernie Watts for the session. The title track has me longing for late summer afternoons, a gorgeous, breezy ballad that is unhurried and casual, with a particularly lyrical statement from Hutcherson on marimba. Eddie Cano's gentle washes of electric piano blend in flawlessly with the persistent conga pattern, and the fades that bracket the track give a sense of it being locked in an infinite continuum, like it's been playing forever. (Madlib's reworking of this track from Blue Note's Shades of Blue is an interesting comparison, as he suppresses the song's Latin elements for a rough breakbeat and a vocal hook.) The simple but intelligently-crafted theme of Eddie Martinez's "Little Angel" is established by the horns before the leader rips into perhaps his best solo on the album, executing rapid-fire 32nd notes with precision. I really can't recommend Montara highly enough, though I'm sure many readers here are already intimately familiar with this album. So in the spirit of Codec's post I ask: are there any "back burner" records - the ones that you had always meant to get your hands on - that took way too long to discover you?