Thursday, June 16, 2016

Bobby Hutcherson: Never Let Me Go


"Eschewing both the prettiness of the vibes and the conventionally bluesy delivery of Milt Jackson, [Bobby] Hutcherson's music had an abstract side which only Walt Dickerson approached," Richard Cook sums up the master vibraphonist's style in his Encyclopedia of Jazz, "yet he kept hold of the slow vibrato that Jackson espoused."

Case in study: Never Let Me Go, performed with the Timeless All Stars at the Subway jazz club in Cologne (Köln), Germany, 1986, accompanied by Cedar Walton (piano), Buster Williams (bass), and Billy Higgins (drums).

Is hypnotic the right word for it?