HERBIE HANCOCK: Must-Listen Tracks

            If there were a lifetime award for ‘jazz player with the most rhythm', Herbie Hancock would easily walk away with it. His are not the polyrhythms of certain Caucasian or East Indian players, nor are they the sometimes frenetic Latino rhythms in jazz; his is the steady basic beat that he takes to tantric heights or get-down lows like no one else can. (Check out the final vamp in When Love Comes to Town, off the POSSIBILITES album if you don’t believe me). If you combine that talent for killer rhythm with his exquisite touch, Herbie Hancock is probably the best jazz pianist of the last fifty years, with only one or two on the same short list.

            Before he had his own group, Herbie’s solos as a sideman with Miles’s quintet were the envy of every aspiring jazz pianist. When he left Miles, he formed his own groups and brought out his composing chops with popular tunes like Watermelon Man and Maiden Voyage. Those two, along with Tell me a bedtime Story and Dolphin Dance, became instant jazz standards.

            But then! He completely blew the jazz music world away in 1973 with HEADHUNTERS, the recording that catapulted jazz-rock fusion to the forefront of jazz. His arrangements on that album combined the chordal voicings and virtuosity expected of jazz musicians, with funk and rock rhythms, to create a brand new kind of musical power and emotion. It was totally thrilling. In HEADHUNTERS, the energy of Hancock’s playing on synthesizers and the Rhodes piano took the music to fever pitch and rhythm, while synthesizers allowed him to write rich orchestral-like accompaniments. Benny Maupin’s tenor saxophone and bass clarinet playing on the album is magnificent. The bass clarinet solo in Vein Melter, especially the short one at the end of the tune, is as hauntingly beautiful as Mahler or the best classical music strains ever written. Maupin chooses his notes carefully.

           

            For all who care to know Herbie Hancock’s playing, the following tracks are Must-Listens. They come from his mid years, mostly.

            It would be criminal to omit the piano solo on Seven Steps to Heaven, off the Miles Davis album of the same name. Before Herbie entered the scene, piano solos were lame on tracks along side the intense horn solos being performed by Miles and Coltrane. Here, Herbie’s piano playing is tasteful, clean and crisp, a clear taste of his future potential.  

            Toys, off the SPEAK LIKE A CHILD album. Talk about cool! After the horns of the sextet present the melody line, Ron Carter moves the tune into a steady stroll while Herbie, the only soloist, plays with his urbane penthouse touch of single notes, fourths, runs, block chords and fine left-hand comping. Micky Roker’s drumming fits the mood perfectly. The entire album is a gem in a similar restrained style.

            Sly, off HEADHUNTERS, not only is a fine composition, but the solos by Benny Maupin and Herbie take the energy to levels hard to imagine, and then take them higher still. Truly a driving force of a tune, one of his absolute best. And of course, the beauty of Vein Melter does just what the title says.

            Butterfly, off the THRUST album is another example of the gentle but kickass compositions by Herbie, where he combines solid rhythm with electronic orchestral arranging and superb solos by himself on Rhodes piano, and Benny Maupin on soprano (double tracked with the bass clarinet).

            You have to listen to Spank-a-Lee, also off THRUST,  in which the tenor and soprano solos by Benny Maupin, complete with wah-wah pedal, take the funk and jazz fusion thing to yet a higher quantum of energy. Exhausting. Inspiring!

            Enjoy this small but important sample from the generous body of work given to us by this master of jazz piano.