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SYNTHOPHONE RIFFS FOR DEEJAYS, VOLUME 1
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But the success of “Cantaloop” has less to do with pop creativity than it does with other things–the evolution of sampling, new developments in copyright law, and the canny manipulation of both by a multinational record company. The song’s strange story begins with the work of a couple of British DJs, Mel Simpson and Geoff Wilkinson, who, like many DJs, recorded their own mixes. For one of these, a song called “The Band Played the Boogie,” the pair sampled that distinctive Hancock piano riff, from the song “Cantaloupe Island,” recorded for the Blue Note label in 1964. They pressed up the single and distributed it through a small underground network of nightclubs and dance-music specialty shops in London. Not long after its release they were contacted by Capitol-EMI, current owner of Blue Note’s copyrights. The company could easily have sued the DJs and put them out of business. Instead, as the story goes, someone in the Capitol hierarchy got the idea that the group would be a good way to promote the further sales of older Blue Note records, especially to a younger generation. In the end the company teamed up with the DJs, signing them to the label and giving them access to the extensive Blue Note catalog, which includes classic recordings by Art Blakey, Donald Byrd, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, and many others.
Concurrent with the album’s release, Capitol-EMI began an extensive program of reissues that put special emphasis on funky material, both to facilitate the sampling desires of DJs and to fill in the collections of listeners who liked hip-hop jazz. The program includes full albums by artists such as Grant Green and Lou Donaldson, as well as introductory samplers like the recent Straight No Chaser, a compilation of the “most popular, most sampled songs from the vaults of Blue Note”–including (you guessed it!) Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island.”
So as the critics are making a big fuss about “the creative fusion of hip-hop and jazz,” seasoned instrumentalists are being marched into the studio on a musical assembly line and being told to play “funky” (but simply). Meanwhile the TV in the next room blares out the opening notes to a jazzy hip-hop groove as incidental music for a syndicated show. The crossover success of “Cantaloop” suggests that this new jazz tradition has a bright future indeed.
