Herbie Mann
Herbie Mann
Herbert Jay Solomon, known by his stage name Herbie Mann, was an American jazz flautist and important early practitioner of world music. Early in his career, he also played tenor saxophone and clarinet, but Mann was among the first jazz musicians to specialize on the flute. His most popular single was "Hijack", which was a Billboard number-one dance hit for three weeks in 1975...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFlute Player
Date of Birth16 April 1930
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
My ego is controlled enough that I don't have to be the focus.
Being selfish to me means that you have to look out for yourself and you don't have to sacrifice.
Being stubborn has helped, being selfish is not a bad thing.
The reality is that what you find out is that your head is the medicine. If your head is not in the right place and you don't think positively, all the medicine technology in the world is not going to work.
I was raised in Brooklyn, and I lived there for 59 years.
For me Brazilian music is the perfect mix of melody and rhythm. It just bubbles rhythmically. If I had to pick just one music style to play if would be Brazilian.
My father's father came from Russia; my mother came from Romania.
I had sat in one day in Central Park with Bonnie and Delaney, and Duane was playing with them, so I asked if he wanted to work on an album. You never had to say to him how to play the guitar.
Let's say you have some chicken stock and you're making soup, and out of everything you can taste, some of the things you put in and some of the things you don't. So you start out with an African spice then you hear some Brazilian music, so then it changes. Then you hear Jamaican and it changes again. And the result depends on how much of each spice you put into it. Now, I've been putting in spices since I started playing professionally in 1945.
What I try to do is produce an atmosphere where musicians want to invest in what they do and give to the recording. I hire those musicians who I know will play something creative and interesting.
You have to be concerned with yourself because if you're not on it all the time, nobody else is going to be.
Why do you have to retire at 65? Why can't you start at 70? You know, like wine. Why can't music be that way? My new band, we're playing stuff that's never been done before.
To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.
As much as I think John Coltrane belongs on the list, I think without Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, both of whom defined improvising on the tenor sax, there would not have been the evolution of the craft by John Coltrane.