Listen No. 14 - Herbie Mann at the Village Gate

Record Number 14:  Herbie Mann at the Village Gate

Genre: Crossover jazz, global jazz, jazz-pop, Latin jazz, soul jazz

Context:  Recorded live at The Village Gate in 1961. The album contains just 3 pieces - Comin’ Home Baby, Summertime and It ain’t Necessarily So. 

Summertime has been recorded over 25000 times - see this blog post:

I may check out the REM version.

Notable facts: Mann described his music as “Afro-Yiddish”.He was an early champion of World music but his innovativeness wasn’t always appreciated by the critics. The cover art on this album is by Abidin Dino - some notes on this here:

My favourite track:  Not sure yet. Probably Summertime.

 What critics made of it: Herbie Mann came in for a lot of flack from the critics. In 2002 he said - ‘’To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G. I was too successful. I made too much money. Alternate fringe audiences liked me too much, so obviously that can’t be important.” I had to look up Kenny G to understand what he meant.

Listening to this inspired me to: make a plan to listen to some of his other albums, especially Flautista! (Afro-Cuban jazz).