Flautista! - Herbie Mann

Flautista
Herbie Mann Plays Afro-Cuban Jazz
Cover Photo: Garrett/Howard
Art Direction: Sheldon Marks
Verve Records MG V-8336
1959

Personnel:
Herbie Mann, Flute and Bass Clarinet
Johnny Rae, Vibraphone and Marimba
Carlos Valdés, Conga Drum
Jose Luis Mangual, Bongos
Santos Miranda, Drums and Timbales
Knobby Totah, Bass

Available from online vendors so I will not be posting a sample. Presented here to share the cover art and jacket notes excerpt.

From the back cover: The wedding of jazz melodies and harmony with Afro-Cuban rhythms is a process that has evolved during the past decade as a result of concerted efforts on both sides of the since-removed musical fence. While Machito, Tito Puente, Joe Loco and others found a new stimulus in the incorporation of jazz concepts, simultaneously jazz-men from Kenton and Rogers and Rugolo to Charlie Parker were becoming increasingly fascinated by the rhythmic challenges of Latin and Afro-Cuban music. (The terminology remains a little haphazard: many musicians use "Latin American" and "Afro-Cuban" as a virtual synonym but prefer the latter term.)


The advent of Herbie Mann on this scene is of more recent origin and has evolved from an occasional flirtation into a full-time romance. Born in April 1930 in Brooklyn, Mann studied clarinet, later developing a reputation as a jazz tenor saxophonist. He had dabbled with the flute, but had no idea of playing jazz on it when he was asked to team up with Mat Mathews, the Dutch accordionist whose quintet he joined in January 1953.

At that time Herbie had heard Jungle Fantasy, a strange and enchanting record featuring the flute of the last Esy Morales. For two or three years, after working with Mathews during most of 1954, he tried to develop the jazz ideas he had previously confined to the saxophone and the seemingly irreconcilable values of the Morales approach.

Gradually he became aware that of the various recorded efforts he was dedicating to the flute, those with the exotic rhythmic undercurrent invariably became the most popular. Among then was the much-requested Evolution of Mann in his pervious Verve LP, the MAGIC FLUTE set (Verve MG V-8247). As a direct result of the plugging of these items by Symphony Sid and other disc jockeys, he assembled an Afro-Cuban combo for a one-night stand at Birdland. Before long he found himself in demand for dates of this type, as well as for recording sessions of which his composing and arranging talents were required to be slanted in the Afro-Cuban direction.

The outcome of these developments, naturally, was Herbie's decision to form his own Latin-type band on a permanent basis. "I realized what had been staring me in the face all along," he said recently. "The flute, in the mind of the average layman, has more direct association and logical place when it's linked with this type of music. When I played straight four-four jazz on flute, they couldn't quite see that the instrument and the music belonged to each other. But this new approach was a way of appealing to the jazz audience and at the same time bringing in a large fringe element of people who normally wouldn't have been receptive to jazz."

Herbie's group opened early in June 1959 at Ralph Watkins' Basin Street East, a plush club off Lexington Avenue in Manhattan that had only recently been converted from an earlier existence as Casa Cugat. Presumably able to hang on to some of the crowd who had frequented it during the Cugat era, and at the same time bring across many of those who had dug him at Birdland, Herbie was an immediate hit at the club and has since returned there several times. By now he is also firmly associated with the Afro-Cuban groove that his career as a jazz tenor player seems like something in another, long forgotten world. – Leonard Feather (Author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz)

From Billboard - November 30, 1959: Flautist Herbie Mann and a group of Afro-Cuban rhythm men get together for an occasionally interesting album of Afro-Cuban music featuring Mann's flute work. But mostly it is rather uninspiring. Tunes are almost all originals, except for the oldie, Duke Ellignton's and Juan Tizol's "Caravan".

Todos Locos
Cuban Potato Chips
Come On Mule
The Amazon River
Caravan