{"id":2377,"date":"2011-05-28T16:28:26","date_gmt":"2011-05-28T20:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2377"},"modified":"2015-09-26T13:48:21","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T17:48:21","slug":"sharing-comin-home-baby-and-the-hill-o-morro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2377","title":{"rendered":"Sharing: Comin’ Home, Baby and The Hill (O Morro)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theme Songs Page<\/a> |Previous Theme Song<\/a> | Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

Sharing<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Comin\u2019 Home Baby, by Ben Tucker, performed by Herbie Mann (1966), encountered 1967<\/h3>\n

Buy it here<\/a> |View it here<\/a> (earlier performance)<\/p>\n

The Hill (O Morro), by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius deMoraes, performed by The Tamba 4 (1968), encountered 1968<\/h3>\n

Buy it here<\/a> | View it here<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the great things about the coming-together of college classes is simply this: The records get shared.<\/em> Now I know I\u2019m dating myself by saying it that way.\u00a0 And these days it\u2019s equally dating to say \u201cthe tapes get shared\u201d or \u201cthe CDs get shared.\u201d \u00a0But isn\u2019t this slightly anachronistic phrase the simplest, most generic way to say it?\u00a0 Would you prefer \u201cthe music files get shared\u201d or \u201cthe playlists get shared\u201d or \u201cthe downloads get shared\u201d?\u00a0 Each phrase has something unhelpfully limiting about it.\u00a0 Choose your own phrasing, then, but then move on and think about my point, which has probably been valid one way or another since collegians first started rooming together in the Middle Ages and teaching each other ditties on the lute and the recorder.<\/p>\n

No one, particularly in the space of the 18 years they\u2019ve taken to ready themselves for college, gets to experience or learn to treasure all that the vast trove of music has to offer.\u00a0 As the ancients put it, Ars longa, vita brevis<\/em>.\u00a0 But pool a bunch of brief 18-year stretches of musical experience and you\u2019ve got something collective, ready to pool.\u00a0 Put a bunch of 18 year-olds in one space and the pooling begins.<\/p>\n

What I Was Hearing<\/h3>\n

All over my dorm I was hearing new things, or hearing old things in a new way.\u00a0 Take my roommate Billy.\u00a0 He was the one who first made me aware of Burt Bacharach as an auteur and performer in his own right.[1]\u00a0 I first heard Wives and Lovers<\/em> on Billy\u2019s Reach Out<\/a><\/em> LP (1967).[2]\u00a0 Billy also focused me on the Mamas and the Papas, who had simply been part of the Top 40 wallpaper to me before that.\u00a0 A bright and earnest young man from down the hall made me listen to the Byrds beyond their big hits.\u00a0 And I would hang in the record stores, especially a place called Jerry\u2019s, on Walnut Street,[3] and just note what the sophisticated kids were buying: Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull, Cream, Dylan, Big Brother, the A Man and a Woman<\/em> soundtrack.<\/p>\n

One of the most dramatic discoveries for me was courtesy of a guy a dorm block or two over named Steve Morris. I don\u2019t remember how we met, but I can guess. Steve played the flute really, really well. I\u2019m guessing I heard the sound of his instrument coming from his window, then traced it to the dorm room it came from, and, if memory serves, invited myself into his room.\u00a0\u00a0 I not only heard him play, but listened while he put on one of his<\/em> records, Herbie Mann\u2019s incendiary performance of Comin\u2019 Home, Baby<\/em> at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival.\u00a0 This would have been close to my introduction to jazz flute.\u00a0 My one previous experience had been two or three years before listening to the college-age son of my parents\u2019 friends, playing Swingin\u2019 Shepherd Blues<\/em>.[4]\u00a0 I\u2019d liked that a lot.\u00a0 And here, with Herbie Mann\u2019s record, I was suddenly happening upon the Mother Lode.<\/p>\n

Though Steve was not destined to be a great friend, he was palpably marked to be a musician of some consequence,[5] and if he was excited about Comin\u2019 Home, Baby<\/em>, it was an endorsement of my own instant rapture.<\/p>\n

I can describe it, but you really have to hear it to believe it.\u00a0 This was the nearly 11-minute capstone of Mann\u2019s July 3, 1965 set at that edition of the Festival.\u00a0 Mann rocks out backed by vibes, two trombones, Chick Corea on piano, drums and conga drums, and the composer, Ben Tucker, on bass.\u00a0 First Mann solos, zooming around like a mosquito, making this simple blues pattern sparkle with all kinds of colors, with just Tucker giving rhythm and the hint of a chord pattern for about three minutes, followed by a couple of minutes of solos from the sidemen, followed by more of Mann.\u00a0 The crowd goes wild, and Mann leaves the stage.\u00a0 Per the George T. Simon liner notes: \u201cHerbie had already left the stage, with no idea of returning, when producer George Wein grabbed him and yelled, \u2018Get up there again! Hit \u2018em again!\u2019\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure that this story isn\u2019t a bit of showbiz hokum (what star leaves the stage after a set that kills without planning to provide an encore?), but it captures the intensity of the moment.<\/p>\n

What I Was Sharing<\/h3>\n

People shared with me, I shared with them.\u00a0 I can remember proselytizing for my own discovery, the Tamba 4, whose album We and the Sea<\/em> was, so far as I can recall, something I just picked up in the campus bookstore.\u00a0 Probably what attracted me was the cover, a gorgeous thing in what I subsequently discovered was the trade dress of the CTI \u201cimprint\u201d within A&M Records<\/a>: big photos wrapping around from front to back covers, leaving room for only one commensurately-sized photo of the performer(s) on the back.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what this particular cover photo, a sailboat captured from above, adrift on a golden sea,[6] had to do with the music, but of course when I got the shrink wrap off and could listen to the record itself, it stood on its own merits.<\/p>\n

And believe me, it was meritorious. The big number is Jobim and deMoraes\u2019 The Hill (O Morro)<\/em>, in the original Portuguese (I am told) an evocation of Rio\u2019s hillside favela<\/em> slums (though you barely get a hint of that in the standard English translation<\/a>).\u00a0 I don\u2019t think there was any intention on Tamba 4\u2019s part to use the jazz setting of this song to convey any particular message.\u00a0 Instead, it is to blend some distinctly highbrow, north-of-the-border piano styling with Jobim\u2019s plaintive southern hemisphere melody.\u00a0 The liner notes mention Ravel, Debussy, and Gershwin; I think those are very apt comparisons.\u00a0 Luiz E\u00e7a, the keyboard man, builds an astonishing set of classically-inflected variations on Jobim\u2019s line.\u00a0 The most astonishing moment of all comes at about 4:45 into this nearly 8-minute song, when E\u00e7a, slowly ditching the accompaniment of the other three musicians, sneaks his way up to a pianissimo E three octaves above middle C, and then slides down with a sudden vertiginous drop, as if going down a roller coaster, with a driving beat in the left hand and a silky tour up and down and up and down the treble clef with the right.\u00a0 You think a little bit of Art Tatum, it\u2019s so ornate, but as with Tatum at his best, the show-offiness is all in support of real thematic variations.<\/p>\n

I had never heard anything like this at all.\u00a0 I knew (though I wouldn\u2019t have used this vocabulary for it at the time) that it was at once sophisticated and of the vernacular.\u00a0 And it was a bit of my own unique taste that I brought to the great record sampling.\u00a0 I remember guys standing in the door of my dorm room chatting while I was playing these songs.\u00a0 Sometimes they would pay attention, sometimes not.\u00a0 But my dorm room had a certain flavor, of which this was a part (along with a picture of David Hemmings in Blow-Up<\/em> and a poster some friend at the Daily Pennsylvanian<\/em> copied for me in the photo lab: a hippie-ish young man holding a burning piece of paper (evidently meant to be a draft card), with the legend at the bottom: FUCK THE DRAFT).[7]\u00a0 I was adding my little bits to the cultural stew, and taking my little bits out.<\/p>\n

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[1]\u00a0\u00a0 Having previously been familiar with his tunes in the hands of others, like Walk on <\/em>By, discussed in an earlier posting<\/a>, but not so much that he was the common thread.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2]\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, I know full well that the Hal David lyrics<\/a> are jaw-droppingly old-fashioned where it comes to gender roles within a marriage.\u00a0 No one would write that song today.\u00a0 But it\u2019s still beautiful and wistful within its own frame of reference.\u00a0 Definitely Don Draper music.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3]\u00a0\u00a0 Don\u2019t think this was a relative of the Jerry\u2019s vinyl emporium in Pittsburgh, which has, per its website<\/a>, only been in business for \u201c33-1\/3 years,\u201d which wouldn\u2019t make it reach back far enough \u2013 although that number is obviously a joke.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4]\u00a0\u00a0 So far as I can determine, Swingin\u2019 Shepherd<\/em> was originated by Moe Koffman, one of its composers, in a 1958 hit record<\/a>.\u00a0 It was covered by a lot of other people, including Ella Fitzgerald<\/a>, before my new idol Herbie Mann got to it in a 1967 LP, The Beat Goes On<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5]\u00a0\u00a0 He was one of the founding members of Wax, a Philadelphia band that was a name to conjure with for a while.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[6]\u00a0\u00a0 For some reason in more recent reissues, the gold has been turned orange.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what that\u2019s all about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[7]\u00a0\u00a0 A sentiment I’ve revisited and explored more respectfully, but to the same conclusion, elsewhere in this blog<\/a>.\u00a0 At the end of the year, in a pale and simultaneously intentionally and unintentionally ironic imitation of the draft card burnings which were going on around the country, I and my friends burned our Freshman Commons cards.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

Theme Songs Page<\/a> |Previous Theme Song<\/a> | Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All over my dorm I was hearing new things, or hearing old things in a new way. One of the most dramatic discoveries for me was courtesy of a guy a dorm block or two over who played the flute really, really well. I\u2019m guessing I heard the sound of his instrument coming from his window, then traced it to the dorm room it came from, and, if memory serves, invited myself into his room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,968],"tags":[2070,2764,2068,2753,2778,2736,2763,2409,2688,1942,2767,2745,2769,2775,2751,2735,2762,2772,2771,2721,2414,2774,2752,2747,2779,2785,2784,2780,1573,2770,2776,1943,2737,2759,2761,2760,2777,2749,2757,991,2765,2739,2748,2773,2756,2750,2744,2734,2743,2782,2768,2741,2746,2781,2766,1023,2738,2758,2740,2754,1941,2783,2742,2755],"class_list":["post-2377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs","tag-2070","tag-a-man-and-a-woman","tag-antonio-carlos-jobim","tag-ars-longa","tag-art-tatum","tag-ben-tucker","tag-big-brother-and-the-holding-company","tag-blow-up","tag-bob-dylan","tag-burt-bacharach","tag-byrds","tag-cds","tag-chick-corea","tag-claude-debussy","tag-college-life","tag-comin-home-baby","tag-cream","tag-creed-taylor","tag-cti-imprint","tag-daily-pennsylvanian","tag-david-hemmings","tag-debussy","tag-dormitories","tag-downloads","tag-draft","tag-draft-card-burning","tag-draft-cards","tag-ella-fitzgerald","tag-george-gershwin","tag-george-t-simon","tag-gershwin","tag-hal-david","tag-herbie-mann","tag-jerrys-records","tag-jethro-tull","tag-jimi-hendrix","tag-luiz-eca","tag-lute","tag-mamas-and-papas","tag-maurice-ravel","tag-newport-jazz-festival","tag-o-morro","tag-playlists","tag-ravel","tag-reach-out","tag-recorder","tag-records","tag-sharing","tag-standing-ovation-at-newport","tag-steve-morris","tag-swingin-shepherd-blues","tag-tamba-4","tag-tapes","tag-the-beat-goes-on","tag-the-byrds","tag-the-draft","tag-the-hill-o-morro","tag-the-mamas-and-the-papas","tag-vinicius-demoraes","tag-vita-brevis","tag-walk-on-by","tag-wax","tag-we-and-the-sea","tag-wives-and-lovers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2377"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5506,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377\/revisions\/5506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}