Herbie Hancock Ruminates
"Hold on a second, would you?" Four minutes later, Herbie Hancock is back on the phone. "Sorry, I'm eating sushi." But no one has ever accused this master musician of lacking a sense of time. Along with an exquisite harmonic language that piles on extended structures without obscuring the gospel triads that were such a strong, early influence, Hancock possesses touch, phrase, and figuration. His ability to reconfigure his playing- particularly his comping style, in accordance with the rhythmic influences around him, has been a signature of his style since Hancock's early days in Chicago, where he first made a name for himself as a member of Donald Byrd's band.
By the age of 23, Herbie Hancock was living large. Respected as a master of the straight ahead tradition, he managed to straddle both sides of the horse when his gospel influenced tune “Watermelon Man,” as recorded by Mongo Santamaria, hit the pop charts in 1963. Herbie had recorded the song on his debut album, Takin' Off in 1962. While sitting in with Santamaria's band, he introduced the percussion master and his band to “Watermelon Man.” "I only worked with Mongo for one weekend," says Hancock. "He was between piano players. I didn't find out until twenty years after the fact that the guy who'd just left the band was Chick Corea. The next player, Rogers Grant, was scheduled to join the group the following Monday.
"I'd never played Latin music before, but the guys told me not to worry about. They said they'd teach me some beats and that would be it. At the time I was sharing an apartment in the Bronx with Donald Byrd, who was like my big brother. The gig was close to that apartment, and Donald showed up to see how I was doing. Donald's always had this built in sense of mentoring young people. He has a PhD in Music Education, and helping develop talent has always been very important to him.
"During a break Donald and Mongo were having a conversation about finding the bridge between Afro Latin music and Afro American music. Donald said he'd never been able to find a real link between the two. I was half hearing that conversation when Donald said, 'Herbie, why don't you play “Watermelon Man” for Mongo?' I remember asking, what for, it's just a funky little jazz tune! But I started to play it, and Mongo told me to keep going. He got on his congas and immediately played a beat that fit perfectly. One by one the other band members fit in, and pretty soon everyone in the club was dancing and screaming. It was almost like something out of a movie. The song fit hand in glove with the Latin beat. I remember Mongo saying that he was playing a guiro beat, and that he'd love to record the song. He did, and it became a huge hit."
Hancock remembers Santamaria-who passed away days before we spoke, as a pioneer. "Mongo's vision was much broader than just that of a musician who plays Latin tunes. His Afro Cuban background, and the fact that he lived in America, gave him an historical perspective of both musical and ethnic relationships. That's a much more expansive vision than most people would probably imagine him having. Personally, my life would have been completely different in so many ways if it hadn't been for Mongo. That he responded to “Watermelon Man” the way he did, the timing of that recording, it all changed my world. Just a few months later I joined Miles Davis' band. Here I was, a 23 year old kid playing in the top jazz band in the country, AND I could hear my song playing out of everyone's window whenever I walked down the street. I couldn't have been more pleased."
What made “Watermelon Man” resonate with so many people? "It came from an honest place. It was also part of a commercial plan. Donald Byrd explained to me how the record business worked. He said that you could make half of a record for yourself, but you had to make the other half for the record company. Their half had to consist of material that people would be comfortable with-the blues, standards, that type of thing. Remember, in those days covering standards and current hits was done a lot more than is the case today. I decided that maybe there was something I could write that could help sell the record and still come from an honest place within me.
"That funky thing was popular in jazz back in the early 60's. Horace Silver, Bobby Timmons-who wrote “Moanin’” for Art Blakey's Band, these guys were having success. I wanted to find a very African American ethnic character to write about, figuring that if I found one the funk would be coming from the right place. The watermelon man was the most authentic character from my experience. Other people were writing work songs, and chain gang songs, but that wasn't what I knew. Chicago has cobblestone alleys, and when I grew up the watermelon man was one of the few people who still worked from a horse drawn wagon. That's a very folky concept to me. I tried to construct the melody from the sound I remembered of people clapping to the watermelon man from their back porches as he passed through the streets. The rhythm was my attempt to capture the wheels of his wagon as they struck the cobblestone."
Black pride was simmering into assertiveness at the time, and Hancock had to stiffen his resolve in response to some harsh criticism from other artists. "This was just before Martin Luther King became a national figure, before “Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud.” That transition into black pride hadn't really happened yet. Black people kept their culture hidden from white people to a large extent, and the watermelon was a sensitive topic. In the black community it was simple: watermelon tasted good! But in mixed company we knew there was a negative, ridiculous image attached to it. When white people thought of us and the watermelon they saw a pair of big eyes and a wide grin slapped across on the face of a black person as he or she slurped at it. If you went into a black neighborhood store you'd buy a watermelon and not even think about it.
"But you'd be embarrassed if you went into a white store and did the same thing," says Hancock, laughing over the phone. "I had to fight through that shame within myself in order to keep the title of the song as I imagined it, and I did. Frankly, before I recorded the piece, a number of other black musicians tried to get me to change the title. I knew that if I didn't call the piece Watermelon Man it would be an act of cowardice. So, it was an important decision for me to make about standing up for what I believe in."
Herbie Hancock has, of course, enjoyed many professional highs since then, including most recently, the brilliantly conceived and realized Gershwin's World. Can any later success match the feeling that comes with an early breakthrough? "There are different highs that transpire in life. It hasn't all been downhill! One of the things I try to do is maintain integrity, no matter what I do, even if my efforts are misunderstood. People often ask me about my first foray into fusion. Why did I make the Headhunters record? That was a very conscious decision to explore new territory. I didn't have a big problem with using rock elements, and neither did the jazz public or jazz musicians.
"Only the critics were appalled that I'd do something like that! I never signed a piece of paper in blood that said I was committed to only being a jazz musician for the rest of my life. If critics have a problem with the turns I make that's their problem, not mine. As it turns out, some of them changed their mind. Leonard Feather, for one, was always a friend of mine, even after he wrote how much he disliked the Headhunters album. Twenty years later he came up to me and said that he was completely wrong, that the Headhunters record was a great album. That was a wonderful compliment, coming from a traditionalist like Leonard. It took a lot of courage for me to make that recording. I saw that I might lose my jazz base, and in the worst case not gain a new audience to balance the loss. But my motivation was not about that. It was about expanding and exploring different perspectives. What kind of spin could I put on pop, funk, and r&b? Just as nothing sounded like Weather Report, or Chick's Return To Forever, no one else sounded like the Headhunters. I was proud of the fact that I followed my instincts and stood up for what I believed in.
"Miles was a big influence that way. He encouraged everyone in his band to stand up for what we believed in. Getting back to your question about how the challenge changes over time, if it gets easier you're not working hard enough! Of course, in one sense it is easier, because you have the strength that comes with knowing you've met challenges in the past. The biggest challenge, though, is the one that takes place inside. With time I've come to know that if what I'm doing is coming from the right place, I might be sitting an example for someone else, helping them to be more open about whatever endeavors they're involved in.
"I didn't realize it at the time, but even when I was focused so intensively on establishing myself as a successful musician, I was already functioning as a human being, independently of my life as a musician. That realization has become clear to me in just the last five or six years. I'm not a musician. I'm a human being who plays music. I don't make music-no one does, 24 hours a day. We all have different roles to play-friend, citizen, father, husband. When I realized that the constant was the need to keep developing as a complete person I was freed to think outside the box as a musician.
"How? The tendency for musicians is to think in terms of songs. Chords, compositional devices, all these things lie within the realm of music making. But they cramp you, if that's the only thing you're concentrating on. I'm open to avenues outside of music, and they all feed each other. Infomercials, television commercials, that's stuff I'm involved with now. As far as performing goes, I'm preparing to work with large orchestras. It's a perfect bridge to the general public. I come from the jazz world-at least that's how I'm perceived, and we thought that taking the Gershwin idea out to the public via orchestral performances would help expose me to a broader audience. So we sent out some feelers, and the response has been very positive."
Herbie Hancock has travelled a long way since he first struck the piano as a young boy in Chicago, but his guest appearances will mark the closing of a circle that he stepped into at the age of seven, when he played a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony. His last commercial release, the imperfect Future2Future, showed that Herbie Hancock is not ready for emeritus status. Still embracing the wheel of technology, he remains a musician-no, a person who makes music, in evolution.
Appeared in Mix, February 2003
