Live, from the Mega-Lo Mart, the Jazz Messenger (Part One)

There are some very cloying, annoying tracks on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's "South of the Border" album, but one track stands out as being innovative, funky, kitschy (of course), but also shockingly effective. (I would play you the Youtube copy, but--tellingly, for Alpert's commercial saavy--it has been removed due to copyright restrictions.)

The track, a cliche of instrumental pop, begins with a high, bright guitar lick on one of the chords' upper extensions, before a gnarly, hyper-rhythmic statement of the theme with the trombone voiced over trumpets in seconds beneath it. The effect is very tight and abrasive, not unlike an Art Blakey front line.

Then comes the bridge. Herb Alpert plays the melody over a soaring wordless choir (far enough back in the mix as to not make me vomit) on, it sounds to me, flugelhorn. The sound is so silky, so covered, the melody so long, the vibrato so natural, that I really begin to understand what a strong player Alpert is, and how he can shift styles--from bullfighter, to goofy faux-Mariachi, to Raphael Mendez, to Al Hirt, to something between Caruso and Harry James--all at a moment's notice.

And that's the point. You only have a moment's notice. (See Alpert's quote on the left side of this page about needing "the hook.")

The beautiful bridge on Girl from Ipanema made me think of, naturally, Chuck Mangione. Chuck Mangione being--should we be surprised?--an A&M recording artist. I'm going to try to see later if Alpert had any role in Chuck Mangione is also among the most unfairly dismissed brass musicians of the past century. While his recordings are dated, isn't/wasn't most jazz/fusion of the 1970s? Do we listen to the Weather Report and think, wow, that could have been written yesterday? No, with the Weather Report we listen through the synths and such to try and appreciate what were some of the most innovative music being written.

Mangione's history also makes him difficult to dismiss. Born and raised in Rochester, NY, Mangione attended hometown Eastman School of Music from 1958 to 1963. Little-known fact: while at Eastman, Mangione wrote an Afro-Cuban tinged composition brass quintet and solo trumpet for some young trumpet whiz-kid who went on to become solo cornet of the President's Own Marine Band and, later, a legendary pedagogue in the Eastern Iowa area.

Strange but true.

Mangione was part of Rochester's jazz scene and sufficiently impressed no less than Dizzy Gillespie, who recommended him for an opening in drummer Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. As a trumpeter/flugelhornist in this legendary long-running hardbop collective, Mangione was in shockingly good company, occupying a chair that had been held by Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Donald Byrd, the acrobatic Woody Shaw (who also parlayed musical integrity into fusion success through funky records for the CTI label in the 70s), Wynton Marsalis, and Terence Blanchard.

Mangione came back to direct the Eastman Jazz Ensemble from 1968-1972, which is important, because these were formative years of the jazz ensemble as a genre in academia (and in universities, its rise parallelled that of the brass quintet). Can you imagine your jazz director hitting it big, big, bigtime with a number one hit? John Rapson really looks like Mangione, and his melodies sometimes have really strong hooks. Stranger things have happened.

There is a terrific LP with Mangione's band and the Rochester Philharmonic. Yes, it's too earnest by half at times, perhaps, but the melodies are absolutely soaring, and the arrangements are very daring for their times. And you know what? Quite lovely, and so well-played.

Fast-forward, 1977. Contract with A & M records. The Bee-Gees occupy a supermajority of the top ten list, and here comes "Feels So Good," shorn of its long improvisational vamps to fit on a three-minute single, to fill a void and please audiences who want melodies and pretty music. Check out this interview with Mangione about the phenomenon and his recent cult status due to King of the Hill (which will be covered in my next post). His attitude towards success, though, is so healthy and actually refreshing. From that interview:

Question: Is it true that "Feels So Good" put your two daughters through college?
Mangione: Yeah, and then some...[but] I do not mind having written the song at all. I just wish that I had written it in a different key, as the high d is hard to play. I am glad that I wrote something that brought joy to millions of people.

And now the man-on-the-street knows what a flugelhorn is. It's a win-win situation.