Our last post explored We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (1960), a pivotal work which set the blueprint for many protest records to follow. Bobby Hutcherson’s album Now!, released on Blue Note in 1970, was one of those records which continued to build on the powerful political and musical statement Roach had made ten years prior.
On this album, Hutcherson assembled a team of jazz heroes, drawing on his experiences recording for Blue Note but also with players from the more avant-garde scenes of the time. Harold Land, a musician that would become a frequent collaborator of Hutcherson’s on tenor sax, pianist Stanley Cowell who founded the influential Strata-East label a year later and drummer Joe Chambers of Blue Note fame. This was the first of Hutcherson’s albums to feature vocals, provided by a chorus and lead vocalist Gene McDaniels.
The album is a fantastic listen from start to finish and is one of my favourites in the Hutcherson catalogue. Beginning with the driving urgency of ‘Slow Change’, the mood takes on a psychedelic tint with the deep ‘Hello To The Wind’, my favourite track on the album. As others have pointed out, fans of guitarist Terry Callier will instantly recognise similarities with his 1972 track ‘Dancing Girl’. The album then moves into more subdued territory with ‘Now’ (notice how it has lost it’s exclamation), a beautiful and moving tribute to a lost friend, before kicking back into gear with ‘The Creators’, a psychedelic protest march accompanied by soaring saxophone lines reminiscent of Coltrane.
‘Black Heroes’, the closing track written by Land, is the most overtly political song on the album with lyrics inspired by the Black Power movement of the time. The track explodes out the gates with its mission statement, a clarion call for freedom and equality, celebrating the legacy of influential black civil rights activists:
“Folks all over the world are talking about freedom right now,
Garvey, Malcolm, Martin,
Men have given their minds and lives for freedom for us,
Garvey, Malcolm, Martin,
Lies are wearing so thin the people can see through them now,
NOW! FREEDOM NOW! FREEDOM NOW!”
In the album’s liner notes, Hutcherson mentions the influence of black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar on his playing, in particular ‘the way [Dunbar’s] lines would come through’. This was not the first time jazz composers had been inspired by the structure and form of language. In 1963, John Coltrane recorded his hauntingly sorrowful and powerful composition ‘Alabama’ in response to the recent 16th Street Baptist Church bombing by the Ku Klux Klan in which four young African-American girls were killed. Inspired by the speech given by Martin Luther King following the bombing, Coltrane composed musical lines to mirror King’s words, a technique he would use again for his crowning achievement, A Love Supreme, recorded the following year.
Now! is an ambitious project which showcases Hutcherson and his contemporaries’ talents, not just as musicians, but as composers, and is an underrated Blue Note gem. The album mixes the sounds of post bop, soul jazz and the avant-garde, with hints of psychedelia and a strong political message which still resonates with listeners today. The repeated chants of ‘Freedom now! Right now!’ at the end of ‘Black Heroes’ linger after the album has finished and emphasise the urgency of the struggle, a call to arms for everyone to take action in the fight against racism and injustice.
Whatever you decide to do, do it NOW!
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