An Evening With Herbie Hancock
So yesterday afternoon I was walking my dog Marty, the one who has accompanied me on my recent record scores, and we passed Barnes & Noble two blocks away and there in the window was a notice that Herbie Hancock would be appearing in the evening at 7 p.m. to discuss his new biography in conversation with Larry Blumenfeld who, I subsequently found out, is a jazz writer for, among others, The Wall Street Journal. Of course, this was of great interest to me so I left my house at 6:40 or so to venture the two blocks to Barnes & Noble and I took the escalator to the area where the discussion would be and, to my great surprise, the room was completely filled and overflowing, to the point where I actually had to stand outside the main area to hear and see the discussion. There must have been between 200 and 300 people in attendance. I don’t know why, but I expected a much smaller crowd. I never entertained the idea of leaving, because I wanted to hear what Herbie had to say and because I had also brought two of my rare Blue Notes for him to sign, which, as you can see in the picture, was a successful outcome. I was pleased that a good portion of the conversation was around Hancock’s time with Miles and, especially, his time with Blue Note. I will share one of the interesting Blue Note stories he told.
Hancock was taken under the wing of Donald Byrd, who had, as he described it, “discovered” him in Chicago. He got a contract with Blue Note and was prepared to make his first album as a leader, Takin’ Off. Byrd told him something to the effect of this: “You write three songs for yourself and then you do three songs for the label so they can sell the record. That would likely be two standards and a blues.” And Hancock thought about Horace Silver and the fact that he wrote all of the songs on his records and they sold pretty well. But, Hancock followed Byrd’s advice and wrote three songs. And one of the songs that Hancock wrote was “Watermelon Man,” and he played it for Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff and, apparently, they liked it so much they asked him to write three more songs for the album. But there was one problem.
Before Hancock was to meet with Lion and Wolff, he received one more bit of advice from Byrd: Don’t let Blue Note have the publishing rights to your songs. You should keep the publishing rights for yourself. So, after Lion and Wolff requested the three additional songs, and accepted the three already written, it came time to discuss the publishing rights. Naturally, they said, you will assign the rights to Blue Note. I can’t do that, Hancock replied. Why? Well, he said, I have the songs in my own publishing company. This was not true, since Hancock had not yet set up his publishing company. The response by Lion and Wolff: Okay the record date is off. They shook hands, Hancock got up to leave and, as he described it, he had is hand on the door knob when Lion called him back and said that he could, indeed, keep the publishing rights to his own songs. Of course, “Watermelon Man” became a huge hit and he used the early royalties to buy a car, a Cobra, which, he said, he still owns.
Hancock said the story is in the book, which I also now own. It will be interesting to hear more about the Blue Note days and how the company was run and how the records were made. The discussion last night went for about 45 minutes or so and then there was a huge line to get books, records and other memorabilia signed. Hancock was quite gracious, signing everything and taking pictures with anyone that asked. I waited for probably an hour on that line. I would have had my picture taken with him, but my cell phone had run out of juice. Instead you get to see the pictures of my records with the fresh Herbie Hancock signature.
Nice!!! Congrats 😉
Wonderful story, thanks for sharing. 🙂
Al, I love you live sooo close to the store!
I also met Herbie a few years ago at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. A real gentleman. A real star! Man, he looks so well too, I guess swerving the dope scene did our Herbie well. A living legend!
well, Herbie did have his drug problems, just not scag (to my knowledge).
Cool story! On the subject of living legends, I saw Wayne Shorter and his Quartet at the Concert Hall in Stockholm a few weeks ago. It was good, but not the kind of jazz I normally listen to. If it was jazz at all, maybe you can call it third stream or something? It was interesting, and nice to see a living legend. I wanna see Rollins too… I hope it’s not too late.
I saw Wayne on this tour as well, and was totally not mentally prepared for what they put forth. They were all uniquely great musicians (although Wayne is certainly showing his years), but I felt that they were performing more for each other than the audience. For example, I don’t recall any of his BN songbook performing. Maybe a snippet here or there of Footsteps for example.
al, your success and luck just continues to build on itself. 🙂
i would have loved to be at this event.
Great story, and great way to spend an evening.
Herbie had a big problem with smoking coke, which he fortunately licked
A truly great living legend – those are the two albums of mine I would love to have signed
I enjoyed every part of your story and the Herbie story within it. The theme of your NY stories–I was walking down the street when I bought a record; or, I was walking down the street when I saw Herbie Hancock– make us Midwesterners green with big city jazz envy!
daryl: how close are you to chicago, detroit, or minneapolis? they are record meccas. green grass, as they say. 😉
I would love to see us start to compile a list of favorite record stores
Great story, Al. Makes me jealous. But then again, flying into NY from Amsterdam just to meet Herbie would be a bit too steep for my wallet. I would have been scared to lose those two records while on my way to B&N.
–
And to all of you: don’t forget to listen to (or read) the great lil’ interview that Herbie gave on NPR on October 23rd! Click HERE and enjoy 🙂
GtF: I am in the Twin Cities, though raising kids 10 min’s from St. Paul. Agreed that Mpls is a hotbed of both music and records, but the JAZZ that Al frequently describes permeating his city exploits is what leaves me drooling. MN would be the epicenter of polkacollector.com, alt/garage rock notwithstanding. Great music area? Yes. Great jazz music area? Not so much…
Daryl:
My first love and still to a lesser degree, was/is Garage/60’s Punk.
You are correct MN was a great state for Garage, right up there most certainly with the #1 state Texas. (although some may argue). In the end most states , Chicago, Detroit, Austin, San Antonio, Memphis, Grand Rapids, Cleveland, Ohio, Philadelphia, New York, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles,Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, Twin Cities, Southern Florida, Boston, Great Leighs, contributed.
eh, I did all right pulling jazz records in Minneapolis. Hymie’s and Roadrunner often seemed to get good collections. Laurie Booksellers also had a pretty solid jazz section that was regularly replenished at one point. Not sure if that’s still the case.
(add: Laurie Booksellers also sells/sold records – not referring to jazz books above)
Hey Daryl check out Tony Malaby at Icehouse on 11/10 or Anthony Cox’s new band playing 11/5 at jazz central – there is plenty happening here
Frederik: couple of weeks ago there was a dutch documentery about Sonny Rollins on dutch tv. They followed him quite some time, did lots of interviews with him… in they end Sonny wasn’t happy ..:) they did not relaese it. There was to much in it about his bad health and hscenes where he takes lots lots of (herbal) medicine pils…i had the idea that the makers of this documentery do not expect him to play again…hmmm… he was composing a lot…
After a year they where able to make a new documantery with his cooperation. let’s say, a bit more how sonny wanted it to look 🙂 here a link, but i am not shure if you can see it in an other country as Holland.
Director: Olaf van Paassen
title: Sonny Rollins- Morgen speel ik beter (tomorrow i will play better)
http://www.npo.nl/het-uur-van-de-wolf-sonny-rollins-morgen-speel-ik-beter/23-10-2014/VPWON_1221913
Great score Al !!! He was just promoting the book on a townhall interview on Sirus XM’s Real Jazz station last Tuesday …It reminds me of that wonderful chat I had with Herbie a few years back as well (Made possible in part to Jazz Collector.com I might add). It was just after a set he did here on his “Imagine Project” tour. A real pleasure to meet, and definitely generous with his time that night as well. The two albums you had him sign were certainly the pervibial icing on the cake Al. (I also chose to bring my original copy of Maiden Voyage for him to sign the night I met him as well… A perfect choice, if I do say so myself. Although Empyrean Isles, would have been my second choice, but the cover was too dark and I didn’t have a silver paint pen that evening… That copy of Maiden Voyage still hangs proudly on my office wall to this very day !)
Maartenkools: Thanks for the Sonny link. Works great. I especially love the part where everything is in English.
You live a blessed jazz life. Thanks for including us and greetings from Iowa home of Grinnell where Herbie did some early gigs.
maartenkools: thanks so much for the link! I have started watchin’ it, not finished yet, but very interesting.
Russ E-S, we were at the Black Dog last night in StP for What Would Monk Do? w/Kenny Horst, Billy Peterson–what a bassist!– and more. I’m thankful for our jazz blessings, just coveting Al’s!
Also got my copy of Maiden Voyage signed. He spoke in Chicago on Friday, which was frankly not convenient, as it was Halloween and thus those of us with small children were out trick-or-treating. Luckily, a good friend of ours went to the event and had Herbie sign MD for me (as well as a lesser copy of Empyrean Isles, which will be framed). Also signed my buddy’s copy of Futureshock, and books for us both. A gentleman.
What a fine encounter it must have been. Thanks for telling us about it. Cheers
so is it an autobiography? sounds really interesting