1. Bridge Over Troubled Water (Paul Simon)
  2. Gula Matari (Quincy Jones)
  3. Walkin’ (Richard Carpenter)
  4. Hummin’ (Nat Adderley)

Quincy Jones – leader
Herbie Hancock, Bob James, Bobby Scott – keyboards  
Eric Gale – guitar solo (01, 02)
Toots Thielemans – guitar/whistle solo (04), prob. harmonica (01, 02)
Ray Brown, Ron Carter (02), Richard Davis (02) – bass  
Major Holley – bass/vocal solo (except 01)
Grady Tate – drums
Milt Jackson – vibes (02, 03)
Don Elliott – bass marimba (02)
Jimmy Johnson, Warren Smith – percussion
Freddie Hubbard, Danny Moore, Ernie Royal, Marvin Stamm, Gene Young – trumpet, flugelhorn  
Al Grey (solos), Wayne Andre, Benny Powell, Tony Studd – trombone  
Jerome Richardson – soprano sax solos (02, 03)
Pepper Adams – baritone sax
Danny Bank – bass sax, baritone sax
Hubert Laws – flute solos (02, 03)
Valerie Simpson (solos), Marilyn Jackson, Maretha Stewart, Barbara Massey, Hilda
              Harris – vocals (except 03)  
Seymour Barab, Kermit Moore, Lucien Schmit, Alan Shulman – cello (02)

Produced by Creed Taylor

Arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones

Originally issued as A&M SP 3030

Recorded on March 25 (04) and 26 (01), and May 12 (02, 03), 1970, at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

01 published by Paul Simon Music (BMI)
02 published by Birthsign Music (BMI)
03 published by Richcar Music Corp. (BMI)
04 published by Upam Music Co. (BMI)

(P) 1970

According to the banner headline in an ad promoting the record, “Gula matari” is Swahili for “breaker of rocks.”1 Such audacity can bear any number of readings, but it lends Quincy Jones’ second spectacular A&M/CTI album the exciting and exotic aura it deserves.

Recorded in New York between two Sidney Poitier assignments in Hollywood (They Call Me Mister Tibbs! and Brother John), Gula Matari refines what Q introduced on Walking in Space: a fusion of his earlier inclinations as a jazz arranger with his recent experience as a film composer. For some, like Cadence’s Bob Rusch, it is Q’s final “jazz” album. For others, it is Q’s first “pop” album, mostly due to the inclusion of the kick-off theme, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Still, to others, it is just part of Quincy Jones’ evolution, mixing jazz, R&B, pop, gospel, the blues and world music to break categories, bend rigid definitions and create a vivid and colorful musical universe all his own.2

Released in August 1970, Gula Matari again matches Q and aide-de-camp Ray Brown with a who’s who of jazz talent. Intriguingly, guitarist Jimi Hendrix – who died a month after this album’s release – was invited to play on “Hummin’”3 but “he chickened out,” according to Jones. “He was nervous to play with Toots Thielemans, Herbie Hancock, Hubert Laws, Roland Kirk – those are some scary motherfuckers. Toots was one of the greatest soloists that ever fucking lived. The cats on my records were the baddest cats in the world and Hendrix didn’t want to play with them.”4

The album opens with Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,”5 a feature for guitarist Eric Gale (1938-94) and vocalist Valerie Simpson (b. 1946), a hit songwriter in her own right and half of the popular husband-and-wife singing duo Ashford & Simpson. The epic “Gula Matari” is an extension of what Q began in “Walking in Space” and the first in such African American historical suites as his “Guitar Blues Odyssey: From Roots to Fruits” (1971), “Black Requiem” (1971), “Soul Saga (Song of the Buffalo Soldier)” (1974) and the never-completed “evolution of black music” magnum opus that informed Jones’ scores to the TV miniseries “Roots” (1977) and the film The Color Purple (1986). “Gula Matari” is a remarkable piece of music that seamlessly melds the African-American origins of jazz with the European classical tradition, something Q brought to so much of his film work of the time, The Lost Man especially. The song’s structure vaguely suggests a walking tour of Africa, or possibly even a brief history of African-American music. The intoxicating groove leaps and lopes over much terrain, with a number of incredible features for Valerie Simpson, Hubert Laws, Eric Gale, Milt Jackson, Toots Thielemans, Jerome Richardson, Major Holley, the vastly underrated and too-little known Don Elliott (on bass marimba) and the basses of Ron Carter and Richard Davis. Each of the players emboldens Quincy Jones’ provocative chart, surely one of his most accomplished achievements and worth the price of admission alone.

“Walkin” and “Hummin” return us to the familiar territory Q mined so successfully with “Killer Joe,” the swinging jazz chart. But neither sound like what Jones would have done back in the fifties. Part of the reason is certainly the addition of electricity, but Q’s approach here imbues the Basie-esque brashness with a funky R&B fervor that wouldn’t sound out of place on an anthemic Atlantic side of the time. The catchy “Walkin”6 was made famous by Miles Davis and has been covered by many jazz musicians since. Jones himself covered it on his 1957 album This Is How I Feel About Jazz. The song’s a natural for Q, if not an odd glance backwards, with Ray Brown and Milt Jackson setting things up nicely for solos from Hubert Laws, Major Holley and Herbie Hancock’s rollicking Fender Rhodes.

Nat Adderley’s genuinely rousing stomper “Hummin’”7 features a typically dynamic horn chart (Q ingeniously transcribed the composer’s cornet solo on the original for five trumpets) and a honky-tonk groove driven by Eric Gale, (probably) Ray Brown and Grady Tate. Apropos the title, Major Holley growls along with his bass solo while Toots Thielemans whistles with his guitar solo – which, depending upon the listener, enhances the excitement or ruins it altogether. DownBeat’s Dan Morgenstern awarded Gula Matari three stars, bemoaning the album as “an arranger’s date, and most of the kicks come from Jones’ skillful and often imaginative deployment of his troops.” Revealing his bias, Morgenstern says “[i]f you’re into the now bag, this album is certainly above the average fare, and will more than likely please you a lot.”8

Gula Matari did indeed please many. Quincy Jones was voted #1 arranger in the 35th annual DownBeat Readers Poll while the album reached number 16 on the Billboard Soul LPs chart and an amazing number 63 on the Billboard 200. In 1971, Gula Matari was nominated for three Grammy Awards, losing out to Henry Mancini, Alfred Newman and, not surprisingly, Miles Davis’ epochal Bitches Brew. Q would continue recording for A&M in increasingly more popular settings, replacing orchestras and swing charts with electric rhythm sections and vocalists. By 1974, Q began easing out of film work and started to turn his talents toward production and as successful Svengali to soul acts like the Brothers Johnson in 1976 and Michael Jackson in 1979.

With George Benson’s hit album Give Me the Night (1980), Q started his own Qwest label,9 producing huge hits for Patti Austin, Lena Horne, James Ingram, Donna Summer and Frank Sinatra. After producing Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982), the best-selling album of all time, Jones found fortune and celebrity beyond compare. He’d go on produce films, television programs and magazines, while occasionally finding time to coordinate projects such as the all-star hit “We Are the World” (1985), Miles Davis’ final recording (Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux) and occasional all-star pop records (Back on the Block, Q’s Jook Joint). In 2016, the Monterey Jazz Festival presented “Tribute to Quincy Jones: The A&M Years,” a program presenting tracks from Q’s first three A&M albums (Walking in Space, Gula Matari and Smackwater Jack), played by a hand-picked big band directed by Christian McBride and conducted by John Clayton. The all-star group featured Hubert Laws and Valerie Simpson from the original recordings as well as Dave Grusin, who played on many of Jones’ subsequent A&M recordings.

About the cover: “Quincy Jones” (1970 – New York): In only the second and final instance in the series of a frameless cover, Turner’s photograph fills the spread with two shots of Quincy Jones (as if turning to profile on the front). This cover’s black background may simply reverse Walking in Space’s white context (again, contrast) but the album’s title and the music within may mean the background was intentional. Keen observers will note the CTI logo appears nowhere on the sleeve – but, in this case, the logo appears on the original record’s label.

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Endnotes:

  1. The ad appeared in the September 3, 1970, issue of DownBeat, tempered by copy which jokes, knowingly, that “we were tempted to close this ad by saying something labored like ‘Gula Matari – a veritable sledgehammer of an album.’” According to an internet translator, however, the Swahili definition of “gula matari” is “buy tons” – which “sledgehammers” the apparent commercial considerations of the record. Incidentally, Gula Matari was briefly the name of Quincy Jones and Ray Brown’s production company (Shirley Horn, etc.). ↩︎
  2. Sources: Cadence, Volume 15, Issue 7, July 1989; p. 21. All Music Guide to Jazz (Backbeat Books, 2002), p. 688; The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings – Ninth Edition (Penguin Books, 2008), p. 798 (where the editors begrudge Gula Matari for “a simpering treatment of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’”); and Leroy Robinson, “Big Band Arranger Quincy Jones Moves into Realm of Voices and Smaller Groups,” Billboard, June 29, 1974, p. 34. ↩︎
  3. Henry, Clarence Bernard, Quincy Jones: His Life in Music (University of Mississippi Press, 2013), p. 61. Hendrix’s solo part was given to Toots Thielemans. It is possible that the Jones family knew – or knew of – the Hendrix family in Seattle (Jones has said “I knew his daddy”), but it is unlikely that Q. or Jimi ever had any musical associations outside of this one lost opportunity. ↩︎
  4. Quincy Jones, “In Conversation: Quincy Jones,” interview by David Marchese, Vulture, http://www.vulture.com/2018/02/quincy-jones-in-conversation.html (accessed September 15, 2018). ↩︎
  5. Many popular artists covered “Bridge Over Troubled Water” before and after Quincy Jones, but not many jazz artists covered the song. Of note to CTI listeners, however, are covers of the song by Paul Desmond arranged by Don Sebesky (1970), Roberta Flack arranged by Eumir Deodato (1971), and Kimiko Itoh arranged by Richard Tee (1979). ↩︎
  6. The jazz staple “Walkin’” has a long, strange history. The song has long been credited to Richard Carpenter, a shady agent who made sleazy deals with desperate jazz musicians. Carpenter, who apparently couldn’t read a note of music, would give musicians a little bit of money for a song, then claim it as his own. Evidently jazz musician Jimmy Mundy (1907-83), a composer and arranger for Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and others, wrote a song called “Gravy” (aka “Gravey”). Gene Ammons, who sometimes gets credit for the song himself, recorded “Gravy” for a single in 1950. By the time Miles Davis came to record the song in March 1954, “Gravy” had somehow become “Weirdo” and Miles Davis was listed as composer. A month later Davis recorded the song as “Walkin’” and Richard Carpenter was now its composer. In its many subsequent covers, the song has been known as “Walkin’” and Richard Carpenter has been listed as composer. Then, after Mundy’s death, the song’s Library of Congress certificate was discovered. On it, the song’s original title and writer were erase d (!) and “Walkin’” and “Richard Carpenter” were written in. Another origin story has it that Miles Davis wrote the tune and credited it to “his friend” Richard Carpenter, so the poor guy could collect the royalties. Does anyone really believe Miles Davis did that? ↩︎
  7. Nat Adderley’s “Hummin’” made its first appearance on the Cannonball Adderley Quintet’s album Country Preacher, issued only weeks before Jones’ cover of the song was recorded. Although the Quintet album lists A&M/CTI recording artist Nat Adderley “appears through the courtesy of A&M Records,” it had been more than a year since Nat’s last A&M record and he would make no further records for the label. Cannonball Adderley, who worked with Quincy Jones on the 1955 album Julian “Cannonball” Adderley (Jones also contributed the album’s “Fallen Feathers,” a song inspired by a famous Charlie Parker solo), provides the lovely liner note to Gula Matari. ↩︎
  8. Dan Morgenstern, “Quincy Jones: Gula Matari,” DownBeat, November 26, 1970, p. 24. Years later, when questioned about the negative reviews Walking in Space and Gula Matari received in the jazz press: “It’s a drag,” Jones said, “when you get comments about it’s too complicated…it’s too slick, ‘cause it’s in tune and everything.” Jones was railing against the dissonance of the free jazz that was in vogue at the time as much as he was suggesting the music connected with more listeners than straight-ahead jazz was doing in those years (Robinson, 1974, p. 34). ↩︎
  9. Quincy Jones announced the launch of his Qwest label, an affiliate of Warner Bros. Records, in an article in the August 18, 1979, issue of Billboard. While acknowledging he had “a while to go” on his contract with A&M, Jones suggested that the first Qwest acts would be Chaka Khan and the Brothers Johnson. The Chaka Khan album turned out to be the singer’s Rufus reunion Masterjam (1979) on MCA and the Brothers Johnson never left A&M, recording only one more album with Quincy Jones, Light Up the Night (1980). Jones himself didn’t issue his first Qwest album until 1986, when he put out the soundtrack for the film The Color Purple. After a fair number of albums, including several by Jones himself, the label was shut down in 2000. ↩︎