Post Description

AT THE VILLAGE GATE is the album that first brought Herbie Mann to widespread popular attention thanks to the inclusion of "Comin' Home Baby," which would soon become one of the flautist's signature songs. By the time of the record's release, however, Mann had been a bandleader for years, honing his pioneering blend of Afro-Cuban/Brazilian music and hard bop's funky structures just under the public radar. As a result, AT THE VILLAGE GATE sounds more like a summation than a beginning. The nearly 40-minute album is a mere three tracks, long, with an epic 20-minute version of "It Ain't Necessarily So" taking up the entirety of the second side of the original vinyl. The highlight, however, is a stunning take on the standard "Summertime," one that turns the Gershwin tune into an easy-swinging proto-bossa nova song featuring a glorious extended solo by Mann over a conga beat. In its way, it's just as revelatory as Miles Davis's better-known recasting of the tune.






Herbie Mann - Live At the Village Gate  (Audio Fidelity LP 180g 16-44.1

1. Comin' Home Baby  
2. Summertime  
3. It Ain't Necessarily So 

Recorded live at The Village Gate, New York, New York in 1961.

Personnel: Herbie Mann (flute); Hagood Hardy (vibraphone); Ahmad Abdul-Malik, Ben Tucker (bass); Rudy Collins (drums); Ray Mantilla (conga drum, percussion); Chief Bey (African drum, percussion).




Technical Informations

Hannl"limited" Record Cleaning Machine with Rotating Brush
Music Hall MMF 5.1 Turntable with ProJect Speedbox
Goldring 1042GX reference Cartridge
Belari VP-129 Tube Phono PreAmp with Sylvania 12AX7WA
Tascam US-144 external USB 2.0 Audiointerface
Interconnections by "Goldkabel"
Wavelab 5 recording software


Vacuum Cleaning > TT > Belari > Laptop > Wavelab 5.01 (24/96) > manual click removal
analyze (no clipping, no DC Bias offset) > split into individual Tracks > FLAC encoded (Vers. 1.21)

No silence been removed, please burn gapless to match original tracklayout.