The personnel on Patato, Stolen Moments & Mushi Mushi is: Herbie Mann, flutes; Dave Pike, vibes; John Hitchcock & Mark Weinstein, trombones; Chick Corea, piano; Earl May, bass; Bruno Carr, drums; Carlos "Patato" Valdes, conga drums.
The same personnel is heard on Comin' Home Baby, except that Ben Tucker, bass, replaces Earl May. Patato, Stolen Moments & Comin' Home Baby were recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, R. I. on July 3, 1965. The recording engineers for these tunes were Buddy Graham & Frank Laico.
Mushi Mushi was recorded at the Village Gate in New York on May 24, 1965. The recording engineers for this tune were Tom Dowd, Phil Iehle & Joe Atkinson.
From the back cover: That was one great standing ovation they gave Herbie Mann at Newport! And it was well deserved, too, for the emotional jazz that Herbie and his new octet propelled moved just about everyone in the capacity crowd of 15,000 jazz fans – from the least initiated, who'd come primarily to feel the music, to the more sophisticated, who'd heard and felt much of it before, but who were still eager to listen to something fresh and vital and, of course, musically worthwhile.
When it was over, on that July 3rd Saturday night, they got up and cheered and yelled for more, and Herbie had to return for an encore of Comin' Home Baby ("we'd never done one on this tune before," Herbie explained later), and even after that, m.c. Mort Fega had to use some potent persuasion before the next act could come on. For sheer audience response, Herbie shared the four-day festival honors with the Sinatra-Basie segment, and when you consider that Frank hadn't made an in-person appearance in the East for close to 15 years and that he responded with a whale of a performance, you can get a pretty fair idea of Herbie's impact.
How come Herbie broke it up so big? Well, for one thing the group was really "on" that evening – one of those jazz phenomena that defies analysis. But it was cooking all right. And the sound of the group – now much guttsier than before because of the two trombones – was better adapted to reaching a large audience than Herbie's lighter, though still swinging units ever had been. Not that the others hadn't been effective, too. But this one, as you can hear on these tracks, gave Herbie much more support, and, of course, the low tonal register of the trombones helped to make his flute sound just that much more brilliant.
In addition, Herbie's new group savors less of a Latin flavor. Instead, it favors more of what he describes as "the boom-chitty approach. That's basically what the drummer's doing-he's giving out with a rhythm and blues feeling, so that what we're doing now is more like Watermelon Man and Side- winder and the things Ray Charles does."
Herbie's current group is also blessed with a very potent rhythm section. Chick Corea, Mann's original pianist, is "back on loan from Blue Mitchell," as Herbie puts it, and he, plus bassist Earl May, drummer Bruno Carr and conga drummer Carlos Valdes, jell wonderfully well. Valdes is also known as "Patato," and it's for him that vibist Dave Pike, long a Mann mainstay, composed the first of the four tunes on this record. "It has the feeling of Patato," says Herbie. "He's a wild personality and a funny cat. He's exciting and he's pixie-ish at the same time."
Oliver Nelson's Stolen Moments features much of Corea's fleet, swinging piano. Interestingly, Mann's group, which is constantly searching for new approaches to tunes it has been playing for a while, had been doing this tune as a bolero for sev- eral weeks before the festival. But for an audience composed primarily of jazz enthusiasts, Herbie decided for this occasion to perform the tune once again with its original, more pronounced jazz feeling.
Mushi Mushi is a Mann original. What does mushi mushi mean? "It's just the way the Japanese say 'hello' on the phone. I heard it when we were there and it sounded like a good title for a tune." Actually the theme is the blues, as are three of the four selections on this record. This one, by the way, was NOT recorded at Newport. It was cut a few weeks before the festival at the Village Gate, but it is included here because Herbie's set at Newport wasn't long enough to make up a complete long-playing disc. The personnel is exactly the same, which means that in addition to Herbie, Pike and the rhythm section it includes trombonists John Hitchcock and Mark Weinstein. This is the order, by the way, in which the two solo on this and most of the sides – first Hitchcock, with the light, biting tone; then Weinstein, with the roaring, rocking attack.
Of all the tunes, as you will hear from both the performances and the crowd reactions, Comin' Home Baby came off the most exciting. For the occasion, Herbie called upon its composer, bassist Ben Tucker, who'd played earlier that evening as part of Billy Taylor's Trio, to join in, and the section in which Herbie and Ben duet turned out to be something else again. There's one section especially that captivated everyone – the one when Herbie seems to be humming and blowing at the same time. Actually, as he explained later, he was merely blowing – or overblowing, to be exact-and it was the excess of air pouring into his instrument that gave it that gutty, growling sound.
The crowd response was stupendous. First they cheered and whistled, and then they rose up and screamed for more. Herbie had already left the stage, with no idea of returning, when producer George Wein grabbed him and yelled, "Get up there again! Give 'em two minutes more of the same thing! Hit 'em again!" Which is precisely what Herbie did, with the crowd getting into the act this time via some spontaneous hand clapping – and on the 2nd and 4th beats at that! Because of the spatial – difference occasioned by the size of the festival park, some of the hand clapping sounds arrived back at the stage a portion of a beat behind that which Tucker was setting. "I had to do everything I could," Herbie noted later, "to listen to Ben and not let the audience throw me. It was a weird feeling all right."
Weird, maybe it was. But to those of us who were there listening it was tremendously exciting too – an exceptional performance-one that most definitely earned Herbie Mann his Standing Ovation at Newport. – George T. Simon - Author of "The Feeling Of Jazz"
Stolen Moments by Oliver Nelson
Mushi Mushi by Herbie Mann
Comin' Home Baby by Ben Tucker & Bob Dorough
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