My Arrangment of Herbie’s “Cantaloupe Island”
From my jazz fusion album “Phröntrange: The High Road” this is my take on the iconic Herbie Hancock tune.
The group (pronounced front range…yeah, perhaps too clever on that one🙃) is made up of an extraordinary group of musicians that I worked with when I was co-chair of Jazz Studies (with Art Bouton) at The University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music. Incredibly, these cats were on the FACULTY! Yep. We had a blast.
Phröntrange is:
Eric Gunnison: Keyboards
Art Bouton: Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI)
Mike Marlier: Drums
Mike Abbott: Guitar
Eduardo “Bijoux” Barbosa: Bass
For those interested in some of the compositional elements used in this arrangement, here they are:
I just love Herbie’s comping in general on piano, especially when he “side steps” to other key centers to add to the delicious dissonance and mystery of the moment in a line. On Cantaloupe, he comes up with a comp lick that is a groove unto itself, an iconic part of an iconic tune. So I chose to take this piano idea and put it in the bass and drums to emphasize this ultra cool lick. I love the results!
Another aspect of Herbie’s oeuvre that I have always enjoyed is the “release” that he came up with on one of his killer tunes with The Headhunters. Titled Hang up Your Hangups, specifically the live version. Herbie goes into a wonderful half time feel section with synth strings for his acoustic piano solo. What an incredible change of texture! Considering the powerful synth-bass-guitar-percussion funk sections prior and after this release this moment is stunning. Along with the wash of synth strings supporting the grand piano, the groovy guitarist Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin adds some spectacular delay-enhanced cascades of hipness (check it out here at the 10:07 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdBLFkzKix8 ) therefore, we popped in our version of the Hang Up Your Hangups release here with Mike Wah-Wah Abbott providing the hip cascades!
And finally, everyone has a choice or favorite note on a brass instrument that just locks in and becomes a go-to pal. For me, it’s the screamer “high F.” On Herbie’s tune, he keeps coming back to tonic on two 8th notes (usually four-and) as part of the tune’s main melody. Since my version is in F, I decided to have fun with this happy note by going over-the-top with it. Of course I did😛
Enjoy!
