HERBIE MANN — Waterbed (review)

HERBIE MANN — Waterbed album cover Album · 1975 · RnB Buy this album from MMA partners
1.5/5 ·
js
Mid to late 70s disco influenced jazz records are not known for being great works of art, but some are worse than others. Unfortunately Herbie Mann’s “Waterbed” is on the low end of a trend that already set its sights pretty low. This is not straight up disco, but funk fused with disco. The problem is that it is a very tired old school blues derived type of funk, country funk. In the rural south, when older blues men want to get funky, this is the style you will hear. The band chugs along like this for the entire first side while Mann frantically tweets on the flute like a hyper bird harassing an old sleepy country dog. The expected disco vocals are mixed loud and have that “sassy” campy sound that became popular on a lot of disco background music. 70s disco jazz doesn’t have to be this bad. By comparison, check out Donald Byrd’s “Caricatures” which features sophisticated modern funk, less annoying vocals and really hot solos.

Herbie Mann collectors will be pleased to know that side two opens with an exotic changeup when Mann produces a nice cover of an Astor Piazolla piece. With its electronic textures the whole song takes on the air of a psychedelic art rock piece, a very odd and surprising changeup on this otherwise dull album. The next song features the bombastic Cissy Houston singing the blues. She has an amazing set of pipes, but having her sing blues is just a way wrong fit. The album closes with two more country funk tunes, but the surprise is that they finally hit a nice groove on the album closer, “Body Oil”. This one also features a really nice Rhodes solo and way less campy vocals.

There are one or two cuts on here that might interest a Herbie Mann collector, but otherwise this is a fairly bad disco jazz record, even by disco jazz standards.
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