The Common Ground

Herbie Mann is a capable jazz flutist, but his music has mostly been known in the popular sense. This means that while he could've continued his bop career after the 1950s, he worked toward offering a hybrid instead, a form of pop-jazz that could be easily accepted by middle America. On the surface, The Common Ground (originally released in 1960; re-released by Collectables in 2004) implies its serious nature. Mann teams with his Afro-Jazz Sextet to offer a fusion of Cuban, African, and American jazz, much in the manner of Dizzy Gillespie. But Mann, unlike Gillespie, is more interested in offering a commercial variation on Afro jazz, and as a result, The Common Ground circumvents exploration for tuneful melodies and solid, but predictable, solos. Mann has written or co-written half of the pieces on the album, and compositions like "Baghdad" and the title blend in well with Sonny Rollins' "St. Thomas" and Gillespie and Frank Paparelli's "Night in Tunisia." Most of the instrumental dexterity on the album is supplied by Mann's flute, which perfectly matches the mood of material. For the faithful, The Common Ground delivers an enjoyable (if short) set at the beginning of Mann's long, successful career as a popular artist on Atlantic Records. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.|