Jazz Great Herbie Mann Has Dies at 73

Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2003 10:35:15 -0700
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,90953,00.html
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
SANTA FE, N.M. — Herbie Mann (search), the versatile jazz flutist who
combined a variety of musical styles and deeply influenced genres such
as world music and fusion, has died. He was 73.
Mann, who had battled prostate cancer since 1997, died late Tuesday,
according to a friend, Sy Johnson. A funeral home in Santa Fe said it
was making arrangements with Mann's family.
Mann had moved to Santa Fe in the late 1980s after spending most of
his life in his native New York City.
Mann always performed different styles, then combined them. He did
bebop and cool jazz, and toured Africa, Brazil and Japan listening for
new music.
"I just think he was a wonderful Pied Piper of jazz, drawing our
attention what's happening around the world and the country," said
Johnson, a New York City composer who had known Mann for some 40
years. He called Mann "a guy who loved music of all kinds an and eager
to explore it all."
Family of Mann (search), formed in 1973, played world music before it
was called that. Mann's best-selling Memphis Underground was a
founding recording of fusion.
If a genie offered Mann anything he wanted, he said in a 1995
Associated Press interview, he would choose a big band including three
rhythm sections for straight-ahead jazz, Brazilian music and soul.
"I'd be able to play all that music; I wouldn't have to play any one
thing all the time," he said. "And I would always like to try to
evolve the music to another step. Once you reach the point where you
play it perfectly in a genre, to me it gets boring. Then I want to try
to evolve by combining things."
When he left Atlantic Records (search) in 1979 he started producing
his own records, and later he launched his own label, Kokopelli. In
all, he made more than 100 albums as leader.
Touring, he said, was "a killer, the hours and food. I always thought
if you made good records your records could do the traveling for you."
Album titles reflect Mann's versatility: At the Village Gate (1962);
African Suite (1959); Brasil, Bossa Nova & Blues (1962); Latin Mann
1965; Memphis Two Step (1971); and Eastern European Roots (2000).
"As much as I love music, I never really thought it was my life. I
thought it was the vehicle I used to express my life," he said.
Born Herbert Solomon in Brooklyn in 1930, he started his career when
he was 15, playing in groups at Catskill Mountain resorts for the
summer. He studied saxophone but preferred flute. In the 1950s, after
three years in the Army playing with the Army Band in Trieste, Italy,
Mann toured France and Scandinavia.
He credited visits to Africa and Brazil in the early 1960s with
changing his musical outlook.
"When I came back (from Africa), I hired (Babatunde) Olatunji, a
Nigerian drummer living here, and we started doing music based on
African motifs," he told the AP.
As for the Brazil tour, he said, "Revelation doesn't touch it. Up to
that point, the ethnic music I had heard had 14 drums playing
different parts but the melodies were very simple. Then I saw the
Black Orpheus movie and heard multiple rhythm parts along with the
most beautiful melodies in the world.
He returned and recorded with Brazilian musicians, including Antonio
Carlos Jobim and a 19-year-old Sergio Mendes.
At 70, he put out a CD called Eastern European Roots.
"I've played Cuban music, but I'm not Cuban," he told the Rocky
Mountain News. "I've played Brazilian music, but I'm not Brazilian.
I've played jazz, but I'm not African-American. What I am is an
Eastern European Jew. I love all the music I've played, but I wanted
something that is mine. ... I had been writing this music for years,
but I never thought there was a place for me to play it."
"I'm playing better than I've ever played," Mann said in the 1995
Associated Press interview.
"As far as I'm concerned, almost everything I've done in the past has
been on the surface or just a hair below," he said. "Now I'm getting
serious."
His last live gig was May 3 at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival (search), where "he got a standing ovation for five minutes,"
Johnson said.
"He had a lot of plans," Johnson said. "His time may have been limited
and he knew it, but he was a man of energy and an active life that
would constantly churn up things," Johnson said.