Bobby Hutcherson: Components (Blue Note Tone Poet series) [BLUE NOTE / EMI]

Why you'll love it

This Tone Poet edition is curated by Joe Harley and mastered by Kevin Gray straight from the original analog tapes. The band is a Blue Note dream team, with Freddie Hubbard, James Spaulding, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Joe Chambers.

This edition

• Blue Note Tone Poet series
• 180g vinyl
• Mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog tapes
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Components is really two albums sharing one sleeve. Bobby Hutcherson wrote side one, four tunes in a warm, swinging post-bop vein, and handed side two to his drummer Joe Chambers, whose four pieces head out toward the avant-garde. Alfred Lion recorded the lot at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs on June 10, 1965, and Blue Note issued it the following year.

Hutcherson's half includes the brisk title track, the ballad "Tranquillity" and "Little B's Poem," written for his young son Barry and later a jazz standard. On Chambers' side, "Movement," "Juba Dance," "Air" and the brief "Pastoral" open up space, colour and texture, with Herbie Hancock doubling on organ and Hutcherson switching between vibraphone and marimba. Freddie Hubbard and James Spaulding are at home in both worlds, swinging hard on one side and stretching out freely on the other.

Nat Hentoff's original liner notes said different listeners could find widely different visions in "Movement." After years of playing it in the shop, we can confirm the staff have never once agreed.

Also at Kops: more Bobby Hutcherson on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note, a reissue of the 1966 album.