Ropeadope

Hunter, who got his first guitar at ten, early on immersed himself in tunes from the '60s to the mid '70s. A music omnivore, he listened to everything, regardless of stylistic bulwarks. He gravitated to the soul music of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. He burned through a rock phase that made him a lifetime fan of Jimi Hendrix. In addition, he still treasures the old blues records by Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Buddy Guy that his mother listened to. After ear-opening exposure to Charlie Christian, Joe pass and Charlie Parker at 18, he dug in and got dangerous, focusing on technique and dedicating himself to transcribing their solos on guitar. The great 80s given that hometown Berkeley high's esteemed jazz program at the time was churning out future stars (including Joshua Redman and earlier alums Peter Apfelbaum and Benny green, among others), it would make perfect sense imagining hunter in the practice room riffing away on the changes with the others. Guess again.

"I just barely made it to school each day because I was playing in all these Motown, reggae and blues bands in bars every night," he said, noting that he also formed his own eclectic rockabilly band called the grease monkeys. "I was a naughty kid who went through that crazy, angst-driven hysteria a lot of teenagers experience. Because I was from a low-income family, I was tracked into the lowest level of academic classes. You did not get a chance to develop much self-esteem there, so I decided to focus on something that made me feel good. I graduated by the skin of my teeth." Having schooled himself in the genre-bending basics, hunter assimilated it all and in his mid-twenties came up with a distinctive roiling-chunky-funky blend of urban jazz. It was high-energy, improvisationally sharp and immensely appealing to the younger generation packing into San Francisco neighborhood hangs like the elbo room and tiny nightspots like the up and down club which catered to the burgeoning post-post-bop scene. Most of the people who came to see his bands - first his guitar-sax-drum outfit, then his twin sax quartet and the three-guitar T.J. Kirk Attack Squad - were in their twenties. Of course, jazz pundits convened and argued: Is Hunter retreading pop-jazz of the '70s or is he on to something new? And, do we really want all these young kids dancing in the clubs? Nonplussed, hunter shrugged it off, covered Charles Mingus ("fables of faubus") and titled one of his groove creations "dance of the jazz fascists," both appearing on his maiden trio recording.