Herbie Mann – Push Push

Not sure what's up here but my copy is an SP pressing with the CRC printed on the label and the same matrixes as this one but it DOES have the fucking couple inside the gatefold. I may modify this entry or add a new one.

fun fact: “push push” is a brazilian slang term for coitus.

I'm amused that somebody on Discogs pointed out the misprinted label but in doing so misspelled the word "misprint". It's spelled "mispint" on this page. Today. 26 July 2022.

Great album though. Despite the mispint and the cheesy cover art (which is pretty indicative of the social mores in the early 70s). So all is forgiven. Isn't it?

I can't think of another instance where actual felt was used as part of the cover design. Inner gatefold cover, but still...

This is Anchorman The Album 🤣 "This is embarrassing, I'm totally unprepared"

Absolute fire record. Smooth as silk. Warm and free. Tip!

Music is awesome, but, Dude -- put your shirt back on!

LOL I've owned this since the early 80's and never noticed the misprint. Thanks for making me aware of this!

Just Club Edition does not necessarily imply poor pressing but in this case yes. I am sure that there are much better editions.

Whoa... is that a flute in your hand or are you just happy to see me?

Seriously funky jams featuring Duane Allman, Donald "Duck" Dunn, etc

This copy with censored interior makes the die-cut cover rather pointless.

Mann was a legend when Push Push arrived, with something in the neighborhood of forty albums under his belt, and if you’re asking how that’s possible, he released eight albums in 1957 alone, along with another seven in 1962.

You know, I rather like this album, yet that said, and not being a puritan, the album art feels as if it secretly entered my house in an plain brown paper wrapper, like a free-be, offered up with a subscription to Playboy magazine in 1971, with Mann, his phallic flute and oiled up chest hair … where if I’d not known where this album had been for the last fifty years, I might think twice about touching a used copy, as it’s entirely too sleazy; ‘less of course (laughing) I could scan it with a blacklight first.

Push Push took me by surprise, it’s a seriously funky record, with the title track taking listeners on an epically beautiful journey, one infused with honest emotion. Push Push was an record that easily crossed genre boundaries, especially as he took his vision down south to record with Tom Dowd and those amazing folks at Stax Records, where introduced to Duane Allman at an impromptu recording session, Allman’s slide guitar ended up weaving its way in and out of the music (side one only), standing in stark juxtaposition to Mann’s flute and showering this stylish odyssey with steamy explorative jazz-rock that is entirely irresistible.

Holding that thought, one could easily say, that Mann has been justifiably praised for his career-long dedication to making the flute a credible jazz voice. But, for this performance, at least, he produced neither the dynamic range nor the emotional contrast needed to push the instrument’s mono-timbral voice up and out of the surrounding cauldron of sound. Push Push is what it is, it’s certainly not one of those records to be deconstructed and examined, and it’s simply too good to be easily dismissed, though one could make the argument that it’s simply one of those records most of us take for granted … had it never been made, no one would be striving to make it so, yet since it’s out there, go on and have some unpretentious fun as your day winds down.

*** The Fun Facts: The original cover photography by Joel Brodsky, features an apparently nude Mann from the waist up, holding a flute resting on his shoulder. The album had the second “PUSH" die-cut, with that die-cut revealing a small unrecognizable portion of the print hidden below. The gatefold opened to reveal a textured (flocked) duotone orange and black print of two torsos engaged in missionary style intercourse with no explicit content. The album's images generated enough controversy at the time, that later printings excluded the gatefold print, or eliminated the gatefold format entirely.

Review by Jenell Kesler