Search - Bobby Hutcherson :: Head on

Head Trip

Thomas Magnum | NJ, USA | 05/14/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Head On is vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson's 1971 album that has a different sound than most any other of his other albums. His music normally falls into the free jazz, avant-garde arena, but Head On fits more closely to the Bitches Brew era sound of Miles Davis. It is not a fusion album by design, but it has funk sounding overtones that guide several of the songs. If you like smart, inventive jazz music then Head On is more than worth a listen."

Rock On

Dennis G. Voss Jr. | Lexington, KY USA | 02/28/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was saddened to see that one of my favorite jazz albums had not yet received a 5-star review on Amazon, and so thought I should add the first one, hoping it would communicate to people how they'll feel about it... whether they'll have a 3-star or a 5-star reaction. This music is not like Hutcherson's well-known work from the mid-1960s as a leader ("Happenings") or a sideman (with Tony Williams or in the McLean/Moncur trilogy), which I also play frequently. Instead, it combines jazz instrumentation with the rhythm and the feel of progressive popular music, not unlike Miles from "Jack Johnson" to the Cellar Door sessions, but occasionally building up into those delicious collisions of sound more characteristic of Coltrane or the best jam rockers (a technique Branford Marsalis popularized under the label "structured burnout"). So if you do not mind jazz with a bit more structure and repetition in the bass line and the drums, drawing less on outright solo performance and more on the magic that occurs when a small emsemble comes together in just the right way, then maybe this music will blow your head off the same way it did mine."