1. No Use Crying (J. B. Daniels/Roy Gaines/Freddie Lee Kober)
  2. Hold On, I’m Comin’ (Isaac Hayes/David Porter)
  3. Glory of Love (Billy Hill)
  4. Unchain My Heart (Bobby Sharp/Teddy Powell)
  5. House of The Rising Sun (Arranged by Roy Glover)
  6. The Letter (Wayne Carson)
  7. Upa, Neguinho (Edu Lobo/Gianfrancesco Guarnere)
  8. Love Is Stronger Far Than We (Pierre Barouh/Jerry Keller/Francis Lai)
  9. Oh, How I Want to Love You (Herbie Mann)
  10. In and Out (Herbie Mann)

Herbie Mann – flute
Roy Glover (01, 03, 04, 05, 09, 10), Roland Hanna (10) – piano and organ
Paul Griffin – piano (07)
Eric Gale (01, 03, 04, 05, 07, 09), Sonny Sharrock (02, 06, 08), Jay Berliner (07) – guitar
Ron Carter (01, 03, 04, 05, 07, 09, 10), Earl May (02, 06, 08) – bass
Grady Tate (01-06 and 08-10), Herb Lovelle (07) – drums
Roy Ayers – vibes (02, 06, 08)
Ted Sommer – vibes and percussion (07)
Ray Barretto (01, 03, 04, 05, 07, 09, 10), Johnny Pacheco (07) – percussion
Ernie Royal, Burt Collins – trumpet and flugelhorn (07)
Benny Powell – trombone (07)
Joe Grimaldi – saxophone (07)
Hubert Laws – flute and piccolo (01, 03, 04, 05, 07, 09, 10)
unknown – vocals (07)

Produced by Creed Taylor

Arranged and conducted by Roy Glover (01, 03, 04, 05), Herbie Mann (02, 06, 08, 09, 10) and Herb Bernstein (07)

Originally issued as A&M LP 2003 (mono) and A&M SP 3003 (stereo)
              also issued as GLORIA DE AMOR (A&M/Tizoc TAAMM-22003 [Mexico]) and
              LA GLORIA DE AMOR (A&M/Hispavox HDA 371-15 [Spain])

Recorded on July 26 (01, 03, 04, 05, 09), July 27 (10), September 19 (07) and October 6 (02, 06, 08), 1967, at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

01 published by Tangerine Music Corp. (BMI)
02 published by Irving Music, Inc. Pronto Music (BMI)
03 published by Shapiro Bernstein & Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
04 published by Music Sales Corp. (ASCAP)
05 published by Almo Music Corporation (ASCAP)
06 published by Bike Music/Budde Songs, Inc./Lovolar Music (BMI)
07 published by Songs of Universal, Inc. (BMI)
08 published by Lynn Hatch Music Company/Saravah Editions Musicales Soc./Universal Music Corp. (ASCAP)
09 and 10 published by Herbie Mann Music Corp. (ASCAP)

(P) 1967

Herbert Jay Solomon (1930-2003) was one of the very few in jazz who devoted himself fully to the flute. Many of his reed-playing contemporaries – Charles Lloyd, Yusef Lateef, David Newman, Sahib Shihab and Roland Kirk, for example – preferred (or were prodded) to mark their territory on saxophone. As Herbie Mann, he staked his claim on the tubular wind instrument and quickly developed his own signature sound that proved to be popular in and out of jazz circles. But his popularity has not helped his legacy. Mann may well be one of the most underrated and unappreciated talents in all of jazz. Despite selling loads of records and winning numerous polls, jazz had very little respect for Mann over the years. Of course, the purists could not approve of jazz that crossed over and found popularity with the masses. And perhaps the flute wasn’t considered as muscular or compelling as the sax.

Creed Taylor, an early supporter, produced Mann’s first records at Bethlehem. While the producer went on to successes at ABC-Paramount and Verve, Mann forged a prolific career of his own at a variety of other labels before finding a long-time home at Nesuhi Ertegun’s Atlantic Records. Mann scored a surprising number of hits during his nearly quarter century at the label (1962-85), starting with “Comin‘ Home Baby” in 1962 and recorded everything from Latin, African, Cuban, Middle-Eastern and European folk music to R&B, rock, pop, classical and disco. Mann was also among the very first in jazz to discover Brazilian music, having visited Rio de Janeiro in 1961 and recording Brazil, Bossa Nova & Blues in 1962 and Do the Bossa Nova, with Brazilians Sergio Mendes, Antonio Carlos Jobim and the Bossa Tres, in 1963. 

In 1967, Mann, on loan from Atlantic, waxed Glory of Love for A&M/CTI, reuniting the flautist with the producer after nearly a dozen years. The album, released in December 1967, blatantly targets the pop charts the way Mann’s recent Atlantic titles The Beat Goes On and A Mann and a Woman had, adding Taylor’s special touch for crafting crossover success. “Creed was a visionary,” said Mann. “He was the first one to take great jazz players and do pop songs. … [At the time] I was beginning to move toward trying some other things. Ray Charles was a very strong influence, and so was R&B.”1 The resulting set could have probably been better sequenced, yet it works much better than its track listing suggests, balancing soulful Top 40 hits and Ray Charles tributes (“No Use Crying” And “Unchain My Heart”) with a Brazilian piece and two superb originals.

The flautist plays especially well here, while vibist Roy Ayers takes some fiery solos on “Hold On, I’m Coming” and “The Letter.” Guitarist Eric Gale, too, features notably on “Unchain My Heart” and “Oh, How I Want to Love You,” but can be heard giving solid rhythm support throughout. Edu Lobo’s memorable “Upa, Neguinho” gets a spirited and worthy arrangement by Herb Bernstein that stands out for the album’s sole blast of brass and background vocals. (Bernstein was a pop arranger who had previously arranged a 1967 Little Eva single produced by Creed Taylor.) The lush, though stripped-down “Love is Stronger Far Than We” (a.k.a. “Stronger Than Us”) is from Francis Lai’s score to the film A Man and A Woman, whose main theme (on Atlantic) earned Mann a Top 100 hit in 1966. It is Mann’s originals, however, that make the album worth the price of admission. These include the infectious “Oh, How I Want to Love You” (recorded beautifully by Mann again for his 1978 album Brazil-Once Again) and the blues-soaked “In and Out,” featuring Mann with fellow flautist Hubert Laws, ruminating over Ron Carter’s sinewy, smoky bass lines.

Mann, who was two years away from the smash hit “Memphis Underground” – which he intended for this album2 – found moderate success with the stylish yet accessible Glory of Love. The album was one of five discs Mann released during 1967 and one of the flautist’s amazing 22 records that broke the Billboard’ 200 chart: it reached #151 in April 1968 (none of his other 1967 records broke through). “Unchain My Heart,” one of the album’s two singles, even cracked the Hot 100, peaking at #81 in February 1968. That got him named – again – the #1 Jazz Flutist in DownBeat Reader’s Poll, a distinction he held for an unprecedented 13 years, from 1958 to 1970. Mann would go on to contribute to the A&M/CTI legacy with the Soul Flutes album Trust in Me, but in a mysteriously unbilled capacity. He was also scheduled to record another album for the label in 1969, but it’s not known if the recording was ever made; the recording, scheduled as A&M SP 3029, was never issued. In 1984, A&M used this number to issue a Gato Barbieri compilation, Passion and Fire, that bears no connection to A&M/CTI.

About the cover: “The Glory of Love” (1966). Although it is often thought that the silhouetted figure in the photo is flautist Herbie Mann, it is actually a sculpture by Carl Milles in the Millesgården on the island of Lidingö in Stockholm, Sweden. The real Mann gets a handsome profile shot on the back cover, in one of the few photos that forgoes portraying the flautist manning his axe. This photo session yielded a similar picture used for the cover of Herbie Mann’s Big Boss Mann (1970), a reissue of the 1965 Columbia album Latin Mann.

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Endnotes:

  1. Ginell, Cary: The Evolution of Mann: Herbie Mann and the Flute in Jazz (Hal Leonard, Milwaukee, WI, 2014), p. 103. Mann had earlier emulated Ray Charles’ influence with “What’d I Say”-style electric piano features on “Right Now” and “Free for All,” from his 1962 album Right Now. Later, Mann covered “What’d I Say” on Latin Mann (1965) and devoted the entirety of the orchestral The Inspiration I Feel (1968) to Charles’ music. ↩︎
  2. “When we were working on the Glory of Love album,” said Mann, “I had this tune that I brought to Creed Taylor, and I said, ‘Here’s this great tune I think I could do with Hubert.’ And he said, ‘I don’t think it has a strong enough melody.’ So I saved ‘Memphis Underground’ for my own album. [Laughs]” (Ginell, 2014, p. 119). Taylor was right about the melody but wrong about its potential: the single reached number 44 on the pop charts, while the album reached number 22, becoming one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time. Both the song and the album were nominated for Grammy Awards. The rhythm section featured on Mann’s “Memphis Underground” is the same one that backed Creed Taylor’s Memphis productions for Tamiko Jones (1968) and Hubert Laws (1969). ↩︎