The effect of an album

Over the course of my CD collecting years I have obtain a fair amount of listening material. Starting with my early obsession of punk rock records including local and national acts, to my Miles Davis record grabbing in High School, to my religious allegiance to Blue Note in college, my conversion to Impulse in Grad school, and my search for new and original music in adulthood, I have been delving my ability to listen to every sound I can find.

Some albums of course I often return to with a consistent feeling of awe and amazement. One such album is Herbie Hancock's The Prisoner from 1969, featuring Johnny Coles, Joe Henderson, Garnett Brown, Buster Williams, Tootie Heath and others mixing the sounds of then Herbie's sextet which pre-dates the Mwandishi band with a nonet sound with added bass trombone, alto flute and bass clarinet.

I remember buying this album very late in my Herbie collection. I must have been 23 or so and I had been so eager to obtain all of Herbie's catalog, and two albums from the blue era were left: Speak Like a Child and The Prisoner.

A friend had burnt me a copy of Speak Like a Child and I can still feel the disappointment I had felt when I first listened to it. It is another sextet album with Thad Jones on Flugelhorn and he didn't even solo! None of the horns soloed in fact and I remember that driving me crazy. I had read how Herbie used the horns as a textural effect and during that period I was so mad. I felt like it was a tease of an album. Later as my ears matured I grew to love the album and one of its tracks, "Toys" became my favorite jazz composition to play.

I was hesitant to get the next album for fear of more disappointment, so for a year or so I put off getting it. When I finally did, and I am sure it was victim of impulse buying, I loved it. It was the first time I had heard Johnny Coles and thought his playing was so perfect for the sounds the band was making. Joe Henderson proves over and over he can play in any style or form and sound as buoyant as ever. The texture the horns make over the playing and the grooving are mesmerizing and Herbie's use of the fender rhodes is so cool you crave to hear it.

The tunes have great melodies and this brings me to my point. It seems the tunes on this album are being played more and more by modern players. Just recently on his debut release, Drummer Dana Hall plays "I Have a Dream." It is clear that the sounds of the original are so modern even all these years later that the tunes when played now, sound like they were written tomorrow.

These tunes seem to get within my soul, I feel hypnotized every time I hear them. Pretty funny for an album that I procrastinated.

Here are some recordings from recent albums that feature tracks from "The Prisoner:"

I Have a Dream; Dana Hall-Into the Light

Firewater; Jim Rotondi-New Vistas

The Prisoner; Uri Cane-Toys

from Speak Like a Child

Toys; Uri Cane-Toys

Speak Like a Child; Kendrick Scott-Reverence