Takin' Off
Herbie Hancock
1962 · Blue Note
Personnel
Dexter Gordoncoming soon
played Tenor Saxophone on this album
The funky feel of 'Watermelon Man' on Herbie Hancock's 1962 debut Takin' Off came from drummer Billy Higgins, who landed his stroke right between straight eighths and swung triplets. The tune would soon travel far.
Billy Higgins anchored Blue Note's hard-bop peak on Herbie Hancock's Takin' Off (1962) and Lee Morgan's The Sidewinder (1964). He's also credited on the 2021 release Deciphering the Message, built from vintage Blue Note tape — two decades after his death in 2001.
In 1962-63, Butch Warren was the house bassist behind landmark Blue Note sessions -- Joe Henderson's Page One, Herbie Hancock's Takin' Off among them. Within a few years he vanished from the jazz world entirely, living in obscurity back home in Washington, D.C., and was only rediscovered decades later, not long before his death in 2013.
Around 1962
