Woody Herman - Jazz Hoot (2024) [Hi-Res]

Big-band classic! Always eager to reach contemporary audiences without compromising his values, Woody Herman saw to it that his repertoire included interpretations of material carefully chosen from the pop charts.

Such broad exposure and critical acclaim is not a new experience for Woody Herman. Herman just won another Grammy with his Fantasy album, Giant Steps, for best performance by a big band, 1973. He won the same Grammy in 1963. To continue to top polls and gather in the awards after 37 years in the business is not easy. Woody can do it. He has been doing it and will keep on doing it. As Woody says, “I just can’t stop.”

While Frank Sinatra took a brief respite from the tour, Woody Herman kept on working! The 16-piece Herman Herd played three concerts with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. The Symphony, led by Lawrence Foster, played two Alan Broadbent compositions with Woody’s band—“Variations on a Scene” and “Children of Lima.” The concerts were recorded for album release next year.

Woody is 61 years old. He is a genuine, first-class American legend. Woody has an incredibly easygoing manner, a lightheartedness and natural buoyancy. To witness the Woody Herman band on the road in small-town America is to experience exactly what it is about Woody’s music that is so appealing to absolutely anyone: it is great fun and quite infectious.

Woody and his Thundering Herd like to play. That’s first. They perform in what must be the widest variety of situations of any working band today. They get it on in Crete, Nebraska and at the Half Note in New York City. Their performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival Switzerland last July was masterful. The resulting LP, Herd at Montreux, was released to coincide with the Sinatra tour.

Woody himself has been up, down, and all around. (Current reading is up.) His laugh is gentle, his warmth quite genuine. The definitive article on the economics of keeping a big (16-member) band together for 37 years has yet to be written; someone should do it, and start with Woody Herman.

Woody’s emphasis on the here-and-now is what keeps those Grammies coming. It is a young band, and they do Carole King tunes back to back with John Coltrane numbers. The age differences between Woody and his bullish young Herdsmen melt away with the music; one becomes aware of all the fine music this one man has encouraged and inspired.

The sound the band produces can be simply overwhelming. ‘Way back in the early Forties, critic George Simon wrote, after hearing Woody several nights in a row: “This band is so overpowering that from now on I am calling it ‘Woody Herman and the Thundering Herd.’” The name stuck.

About the thunder of the band, Woody says: “I’ve always had a ‘sound’ but never a style. My approach to the music I am involved in always has been let it be tasteful, let it be exciting, and always make it swing.”

Woody Herman & The Heard

Recorded live at Basin Street West, San Francisco on June 28, 29, 30, 1965

Digitally remastered