Bobby Hutcherson, Vibraphonist, Dies at 75

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Bobby Hutcherson, one of the most admired andaccomplished vibraphonists in jazz, died on Monday at his home in Montara,Calif. He was 75.

Marshall Lamm, a spokesman for Mr. Hutcherson’s family,confirmed the death, saying Mr. Hutcherson had long been treated for emphysema.

Mr. Hutcherson’s career took flight in the early 1960s,as jazz was slipping free of the complex harmonic and rhythmic designs ofbebop. He was fluent in that language, but he was also one of the first toadapt his instrument to a freer postbop language, often playing chords with apair of mallets in each hand.

He released more than 40 albums and appeared on manymore, including some regarded as classics, like “Out to Lunch,” by the altosaxophonist, flutist and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, and “Mode for Joe,” bythe tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.

Both of those albums were a byproduct of Mr. Hutcherson’sclose affiliation with Blue Note Records, from 1963 to 1977. He was part of awave of young artists who defined the label’s forays into experimentalism,including the pianist Andrew Hill and the alto saxophonist Jackie McLean. Buthe also worked with hard-bop stalwarts like the tenor saxophonist DexterGordon, and he later delved into jazz-funk and Afro-Latin grooves.

Mr. Hutcherson had a clear, ringing sound, but his stylewas luminescent and coolly fluid. More than Milt Jackson or Lionel Hampton, hismajor predecessors on the vibraphone, he made an art out of resonatingovertones and chiming decay.

This coloristic range of sound, which he often used inthe service of emotional expression, was one reason for the deep influence heleft on stylistic inheritors like Joe Locke, Warren Wolf, Chris Dingman andStefon Harris, who recently assessed him as “by far the most harmonicallyadvanced person to ever play the vibraphone.”

Robert Hutcherson was born in Los Angeles on Jan. 17,1941. His father, Eli, was a brick mason, and his mother, Esther, was ahairdresser.

Growing up in a black community in Pasadena, Mr.Hutcherson was drawn to jazz partly by way of his older siblings: His brother,Teddy, had gone to high school with Mr. Gordon, and his sister, Peggy, was asinger who worked with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra. (She later toured andrecorded with Ray Charles as a Raelette.)

Mr. Hutcherson, who took piano lessons as a child, oftendescribed his transition to vibraphone as the result of an epiphany: Walkingpast a record store one day, he heard a recording of Milt Jackson and washooked. A friend at school, the bassist Herbie Lewis, further encouraged hisinterest in the vibraphone, so Mr. Hutcherson saved up and bought one. He waspromptly booked for a concert with Mr. Lewis’s band.

“Well, I hit the first note,” he recalled of thatperformance in a 2014 interview with JazzTimes. But, he added, “from the secondnote on, it was complete chaos. You never heard people boo and laugh like that.I was completely humiliated. But my mom was just smiling, and my father wassaying, ‘See, I told you he should have been a bricklayer.’ ”

Mr. Hutcherson persevered, eventually working withmusicians like Mr. Dolphy, whom he had first met when Mr. Dolphy was hissister’s boyfriend, and the tenor saxophonist and flutist Charles Lloyd. In1962 he joined a band led by a pair of Count Basie sidemen, the tenorsaxophonist Billy Mitchell and the trombonist Al Grey, and it brought him toNew York City for a debut engagement at Birdland.

The group broke up not long afterward, but Mr. Hutchersonstayed in New York, driving a taxicab for a living, his vibraphone stashed inthe trunk. He was living in the Bronx and married to his high schoolsweetheart, the former Beth Buford, with whom he had a son, Barry — theinspiration for his best-known tune, the lilting modernist waltz “Little B’sPoem.”

Mr. Hutcherson caught a break when Mr. Lewis, hischildhood friend, came to town and introduced him to the trombonist GrachanMoncur III, who in turn introduced him to Jackie McLean. “One Step Beyond,” analbum by Mr. McLean released on Blue Note in 1963, featured Mr. Hutcherson’svibraphone as the only chordal instrument. From that point on, he was busy.

The first album he released as a leader was “Dialogue” (1965),featuring Mr. Hill, the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and the saxophonist andflutist Sam Rivers. Among his notable subsequent albums was “Stick-Up!” (1966),with Mr. Henderson and the pianist McCoy Tyner among his partners. He and Mr.Tyner would forge a close alliance.

After being arrested for marijuana possession in CentralPark in 1967, Mr. Hutcherson lost his cabaret card, required of any musicianworking in New York clubs. He returned to California and struck a rapport withthe tenor saxophonist Harold Land. Among the recordings they made together was“Ummh,” a funk shuffle that became a crossover hit in 1970. (It was latersampled by the rapper Ice Cube.)

In the early ’70s Mr. Hutcherson bought an acre of landalong the coast in Montara, where he built a house. He lived there with hiswife, the former Rosemary Zuniga, whom he married in 1972. She survives him,along with their son, Teddy, a marketing production manager for theorganization SFJazz; his son Barry, a jazz drummer; and two grandchildren.

After his tenure on Blue Note, Mr. Hutcherson releasedalbums on Columbia, Landmark and other labels, working with Mr. Tyner, thetenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and — on screen, in the 1986 Bertrand Tavernierfilm “Round Midnight” — with Mr. Gordon and the pianist Herbie Hancock. From2004 to 2007, Mr. Hutcherson toured with the first edition of the SFJazzCollective, an ensemble devoted equally to jazz repertory and the creation ofnew music. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2010.

After releasing a series of albums on the European labelKind of Blue, he returned to Blue Note in 2014 to release a soul-jazz effort,“Enjoy the View,” with the alto saxophonist David Sanborn and othercollaborators.

Speaking in recent years, Mr. Hutcherson was fond ofciting a bit of insight from an old friend. “Eric Dolphy said music is like thewind,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2012. “You don’t know where itcame from, and you don’t know where it went. You can’t control it. All you cando is get inside the sphere of it and be swept away.”
 

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