CoronaVinyl Day 328 (H): Melodies by Jan Hammer Group

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "H," and I went with Jan Hammer Group's 1977 album Melodies.

Czech keyboardist Jan Hammer is best known for the Miami Vice theme song, which was an international hit in 1985 and went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.  But did you know that he made music before then?  Indeed he did.  Hammer moved to the U.S. after the Warsaw Pact went into effect in 1968, and he went to the famed Berklee College of Music in Boston.

After that, he toured with jazz singer Sarah Vaughan and then went into the jazz fusion world.  Over the years, in addition to his own groups and his solo work, he has collaborated with the likes of Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, Neil Schon, Joni Mitchell, Al Di Meola, and Tommy Bolin, among others.

In the mid '70s, he formed the Jan Hammer Group, and they released a few albums, including one with Jeff Beck.  Melodies was the group's final album.  Given that my only musical knowledge of Hammer is the Miami Vice theme, I honestly had no idea what to expect from Melodies.  I was pleasantly surprised, as I assumed it would all be synthy instrumental stuff.  There's a good amount of funk in there, and I wasn't expecting there to be vocals, but there are, courtesy of drummer Tony Smith.  What's interesting is that there's no electric guitar.  It's Hammer on keyboards and sometimes drums, Smith on drums and lead vocals, Steve Kindler on violin, and Fernando Saunders on bass and acoustic guitar (though there isn't much acoustic guitar from what I could hear).  In addition to the funky stuff, there's also plenty of instrumental stuff, but I'll say it was a nice album to listen to while I worked on a mild September day with the windows open.

Favorite song from Side 1:  "What It Is"
A great bass riff kicks this song off, and from the get-go, it's pure funk.  I just wish it was a little longer than three minutes, so that the band members could jam a little more.

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Who Are They?"
This is another one with a great bass intro, and it's a spacy, trippy, six-minute funk song, in line with something that might have been on The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein.