The Egg

Freddie Hubbard (cornet), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums). From the album Empyrean Isles (1964).

Eggs are a common food in our diet that is consumed throughout the world. They are easily digestible and can be used to cook both sweet and savoury dishes. They are made up of three parts: the yolk, the white and the shell. The yolk is yellow in colour, its function is to provide nutrients and calories that comes from the xanthophiles that the hen ingests with alfalfa and grains. The white is mainly water and contains proteins, fatty materials, minerals, glucose and vitamins in low amounts.

And the shell may be white or brown, but it maintains the same nutritional properties of the egg. It is a great source of calcium, but to be able to consume it it’s necessary to submit it to complex methods to avoid gastro-intestinal wounds. Eggs can be fried, scrambled, boiled, cooked, grilled, baked, in salads and on a potato or other vegetables omelette. It also serves as an ingredient in confectionery to make sauces, puddings, sponge cakes, cakes, pancakes, crêpes and in the preparation of certain pastries.

With its minimal melody and extensive improvisations, it’s the most risky theme on the album, but it works because every musician makes creative solos that defy conventions. It’s Hancock’s avant-garde side debut. Hubbard begins his solo with Hancock doing an ostinato underneath. His phrases are skewed in a skein that is difficult to unravel and then he squeezes them without harmonic sense with Hancock accompanying him with random notes and sentences. The interaction between the two is perfect, and they even use the call and response technique. Williams has also lost the notion of rhythm and hits the battery at his free will. Hancock returns to the ostinato and suddenly they all stop to make way for Carter, who plays a dark tune with the double bass with bow while Williams makes extrange sounds and atonal chords come out of the piano. Then Hancock intervenes with a melodic line full of broken chords. Next Carter starts walking and Hancock begins to play more coherent phrases, although not without ups and downs, and frantic passages executed without the slightest respect for the listener. Then the walking disappears and the rhythm section is left improvising freely until Williams makes a crazy solo. At the end Hubbard comes back to re-expose the theme fading out.