Watermelon Man
Herbie Hancock walks through a West Los Angeles recording studio at a gala for the club Sam First and hears about twenty musicians playing his own tunes back at him. Meshell Ndegeocello's "Synonym" lands today on Blue Note, fifteen covers built on one rule, and Stanley Jordan's trio takes Baltimore.
LioraA jazz club held its fundraiser in a recording studio, and the man they honored heard his own tunes in every room. Today's record is fifteen covers with one rule. Later, a supper club, late 1962, and an empty dance floor. It's Friday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Friday, October 2nd. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: DownBeat reports that a September gala for the Los Angeles club Sam First
LioraHerbie Hancock walked through a recording studio in West Los Angeles last month and heard other musicians playing his own tunes in room after room.
DownBeat's Gary Fukushima reported it this week. The night was a September gala for the Los Angeles club Sam First. The honorees: Hancock, and the jazz producer Darlene Chan.
In 1968 Geordie Hormel bought a twenty two thousand square foot former Masonic Temple for a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. An heir to the Hormel meatpacking fortune, he paid for it with television and Capitol Records work, and called it The Villages.
Hormel was among the first in the United States to see what the Fairlight sampler could do. He learned about it from Herbie Hancock. He became its first American distributor.
LioraAbout twenty musicians played, spread across several studios at once. The pianist Adam Hersh: I think I've listened to Herbie more than any other artist.
And Hancock. I walk into a place like this, and go from room to room, and all I'm hearing is people doing different arrangements of tunes that I recorded. I'm going on eighty six years old, but this is the first time this has happened.
Two. Listen to This: Meshell Ndegeocello's "Synonym" is out today on Blue Note, her third for the label
LioraToday's record came out today. "Synonym," Meshell Ndegeocello, on Blue Note. Her third for the label.
Fifteen covers, one rule. Every duet pairs two people of the same gender. Her words, on the label's own page: this project is an expression of queer liberation as a synonym for liberation of all kinds.
The guests. Cynthia Erivo on "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)." Chaka Khan on "Islands In The Stream." WILLOW on "Hunger Strike."
Here is the tip. Blue Note prints the band as well as the guests. Bela Fleck on banjo. Elena Pinderhughes on flute. So listen under the famous voices.
LioraOne more, in the government's handwriting. The Library of Congress put Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunters" into the National Recording Registry in 2007. Its own essay, by Bob Gluck, says how the title track opens. Bill Summers blowing across the top of a beer bottle, simulating the sounds of a Pygmy wind instrument.
Later, on The Bridge: a supper club, late 1962, with an empty dance floor. Herbie Hancock is the fill-in pianist in Mongo Santamaria's band, and, as he tells it, his roommate Donald Byrd says, Herbie, why don't you play "Watermelon Man" for Mongo. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: A supper club, late 1962, with an empty dance floor
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouA supper club, late 1962. Herbie Hancock is twenty-two, a pianist from Chicago, filling in for the weekend with a Latin band led by the Cuban conga player Mongo Santamaria. This is Hancock's story, told more than once, and the details shift a little. Telling it to the musician Ben Sidran, he put one of those nights in the Bronx, where he and his roommate, the trumpeter Donald Byrd, lived.
Hancock has never played Latin music. Mongo says he'll just teach him some simple montunos, the Latin patterns. The band's piano player has just left. Hancock found out many years later who that was. Chick Corea.
The room, in his words, is "pretty dead." People sit at their tables, talking and drinking. The dance floor is empty.
LioraChick Corea's chair. So where does "Watermelon Man" come in?
SekouHancock wrote it. It's on his first album, for Blue Note, recorded that May at Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey, with Dexter Gordon on tenor saxophone and Freddie Hubbard on trumpet.
He asked himself how to write "something that speaks to my own experience as a black person from Chicago." The answer was a memory of the South Side in the 1940s: a watermelon man coming through the alleys with his wagon, calling out in a sing-song cry, "Watey-mee-low." In the album's notes, Hancock said, "The wheels of his wagon beat out the rhythm on the cobblestones."
Byrd brought him to New York in 1961, and Byrd told him to start his own publishing company instead of signing his rights over to Blue Note. Hancock did. Hancock Music.
On one of those nights with Mongo, Byrd comes by to hear him.
LioraByrd's in the room. Then what?
SekouAt the break, Byrd and Mongo get into a conversation about Afro-Cuban music and African American jazz. Then, as Hancock tells it, Byrd says, "Herbie, why don't you play 'Watermelon Man' for Mongo." Hancock says, "What?" He wasn't sure, he wrote later, how his "funky little jazz tune" fit that talk. He plays it anyway. Mongo says, "Keep playing," and gets up on the congas. In Hancock's words, "Pretty soon they were all dancing and screaming."
LioraDoes Mongo want the tune?
SekouIn Hancock's telling, Mongo asks, "Can I record this?" Hancock says, "Absolutely!"
On December 17, 1962, in New York, Mongo recorded it, without Hancock. In the spring of 1963 it was a Top 10 hit on Billboard's Hot 100. By one account it sold over five hundred thousand copies and earned Mongo a gold record. Hancock's own single, on Blue Note, never made the Hot 100, though his website says Mongo's hit gave his debut album a boost.
His memoir lists Byrd's advice that paid off: "to publish my own songs and play 'Watermelon Man' for Mongo Santamaria."
In 1998 the Grammy Hall of Fame inducted Mongo's single, not Hancock's original. At Hancock's Kennedy Center tribute in 2013, Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea played "Watermelon Man." Chick Corea, whose chair he filled that weekend.
LioraHe wasn't sure his funky little tune belonged in that conversation. Mongo heard that it did.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Keystone Korner Baltimore has the Stanley Jordan Trio with Kenwood Dennard and Wes Wirth
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Baltimore.
Keystone Korner bills it on its own front page. Four time Grammy nominated guitarist Stanley Jordan, with Kenwood Dennard and Wes Wirth. Six and half past eight. Forty five to fifty five dollars plus fee, per set.
Now the sweep.
In Chicago, the Green Mill has the Hinda Hoffman Quintet, eight to midnight, twenty dollar cover. Scott Burns on sax, Ron Perillo on piano, Dennis Carroll on bass, Ben Esposito on drums.
In Detroit, Cliff Bell's has the trio Spare Parts, half past seven and half past nine, twenty five dollars.
In Austin, the Elephant Room runs two. The Ephraim Owens Group at six, Doctor James Polk's CenterPeace at nine. The bar's own weekly table says ten dollars on a Friday and no cover before eight, so the early set is free.
LioraIn New York, the Blue Note has Robert Glasper at eight and half past ten. Twenty dollar minimum per person.
Five. One More Note: October 2, 1930: Duke Ellington's band cut four Victor sides in New York billed as the
LioraOctober 2nd, 1930. Ninety six years ago today, Duke Ellington's band spent an afternoon in a New York Victor studio under somebody else's name. The archive credits all four sides to the Cotton Club Orchestra, and lists Ellington as director.
Johnny Hodges. Cootie Williams. Juan Tizol. The real band.
Two of the songs are Eubie Blake and Andy Razaf songs, and both went out on one disc, Victor 23017.
The ledger line, on every card: Watson, present.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Friday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.