BLP 4175

Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles

Released - November 1964

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, June 17, 1964
Freddie Hubbard, cornet; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Anthony Williams, drums.

1372 tk.5 One Finger Snap
1373 tk.14 Cantaloupe Island
1374 tk.17 The Egg
1375 tk.24 Oliloqui Valley

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
One Finger Snap	Herbie Hancock	June 17 1964
Oliloqui Valley	Herbie Hancock	June 17 1964
Side Two
Cantaloupe Island	Herbie Hancock	June 17 1964
The Egg	Herbie Hancock	June 17 1964

Liner Notes

This is a quartet album for trumpet and rhythm section. In this circumstance, a problem was created for the composer-arranger, in that the lack of another instrument supporting the lower, richer register, such as a tenor saxophone, might result in a shallow sound.

With this problem in mind, Herbie Hancock, who composed and arranged all the tunes, wrote them to sound more like improvisations than ensemble melodies, so that the warmth and fullness of a supporting instrument would not be missed. Free sketches were written in such a way that each instrument is allowed great flexibility of interpretation. In many cases, no melodic line was laid out over the chords, or atonal clusters were written so that the trumpet could supply any melody he wished.

The Egg, the most exemplary composition in the album, has only a short trumpet melody written out over a repeating figure in the rhythm section. This sets the mood and builds up tension; after that, the musicians' ears do the rest!

EMPYREAN ISLES

Away beyond the mountains of Lune, in the heart of the Great Eastern Sea, lie the Empyrean Isles, four glittering jewels, beyond the dreams of men. There is a perpetual haze around them, shimmering and distorting, and they seem to hover, ethereal, a little above the water, suggesting a world inaccessible except to fancy.

Myth and legend clothe these Isles in mystery, for they are elusive and said to vanish at the approach of ordinary mortals. Yet sailors have seen them glinting from afar, a green and gold illusion. Warm winds caress them, wrapping sinuous tendrils of mist around their lofty crowns and wafting a delicious scent across the waters, fresh, yet heavy, strong and intoxicating. Thus it is said that incense-bearing trees blossom there, filling the air with the frail, intimate perfume of flowers unseen in the dark.

No man has ever been known to set foot upon their shores, but ships have passed close enough to glimpse, through the enfolding mists, the slender stems of bright trees swaying in the breeze, and near one of the Isles, to catch the lush, overpowering odor of ripe cantaloupes. Men say this island is covered with leafy green vines, and cantaloupes are everywhere. Nothing else grows there, and flourishing thus unchecked, the vines and melons attain enormous size. It is said that a mere mouthful of one of these cantaloupes will give immortality to him who eats it.

On clear, windy days, when the breezes are strong enough to dispel the vapours, it is possible to discern the smooth, shining, dome-shaped peak of The Egg, a mountain about which the strangest mists and tales are woven. Veiled, inscrutable bastion of strength, its silent presence suggests ever-present danger, dormant perhaps, but ominous in its potential. And occasionally, when some vast tremor from the bowels of the earth shakes the waves and sends towering mountains of water across the placid Eastern Sea, people say that The Egg is ripening and becoming impatient at its long confining.

There are many tales and prophesies concerning the hatching of The Egg. No one really knows what may emerge. There are those who scorn the magic of the Isles, saying that if The Egg ever breaks open, molten lava will gush forth, as is the case with the mountains of our ordinary earth. But those who have seen the Empyrean Isles and have passed within the circle of their power believe other and stranger things. Some say that a vast monster will rise, perhaps a dragon, breathing smoke and flame. Others say a new island will be born. And lastly, there are those who believe that The Egg is angered by man's interfering ways, and its eruption will herald the passing of the islands from our sphere, remaining no longer as a living paradise for men to gaze upon.

Yet the island that has fascinated men more than any other is the Isle of Dreams, containing the mythical Oliloqui Valley. Men passing close to this isle become transfixed, all their senses bending toward it, oblivious to the world about them until the winds carry them out of the ring of power. Their minds and voices are far away, as if they walked in some dark vale, lost between dreaming and waking.

When their thoughts return to the land of men, they babble in unknown tongues and tell of weird visions, of far countries and strange peoples. Always they speak of dancing, of a beautiful and complex dance they can only describe as the One Finger Snap, which they say they do in their dreams, but which they cannot duplicate afterwards. Yet it is ever with great reluctance that they turn their minds away from these glittering fantasies.

They speak of wandering through a far valley ringed about with frowning precipices and filled with the perfume of large, white flowers, pale and deadly. There are great swaths of filmy moss hanging from all the trees, creating an illusion of a veiled mystery, but when the elusive barrier is thrust aside, there is only another. In their dreams, men keep parting the veils, thinking they are reaching the heart of the mystery and wandering further and further till they are lost in a shadowy world where dream and reality lose their distinction. One ship became becalmed within the circle of this isle, and the men remained too long wandering in its secret enchantment. When the wind finally came up and drifted their ship back to the world of men, all the sailors were found dead, their eyes closed and peaceful smiles on their faces, as if they had dreamed to death.

And prized above the jewels of a kingdom is a single white flower that was found drifting in the waters near the island and brought home by a sailor to his lord. For it is said that when the King is weary and sad, and would forget his troubles, he gazes upon this bloom and inhales its potent fragrance, and for a while is lost in the healing dreams of that inaccessible paradise.

- Nora Kelly

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT EMPYREAN ISLES

No one was surprised at the compatibility displayed by the four musicians featured on this album. At the time, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams had worked together for just over a year as members of the Miles Davis quintet. Williams had previously made one of his first recorded appearances on My Point Of View, the excellent (albeit more traditional) sophomore effort by Hancock, which was recorded in March 1963, while Freddie Hubbard and the pianist had demonstrated their affinity even earlier on Hancock's Takin' Off and the trumpeter's Hub Tones (both from 1962). Still, Empyrean Isles was a stunning revelation for most listeners, even those who had been fortunate enough to follow the rapid evolution of the Davis band. Hancock, an inquisitive musician from the outset of his career, had already taken a decidedly experimental turn on his previous Inventions & Dimensions, while documents such as the startling live performances by Davis issued on the Columbia LPs My Funny Valentine and Four And More indicate that the trumpeter's quintet was already seriously testing the limits of his classic repertoire. Still, there was a conservative cast to the support Hancock received on Inventions, while Davis continued to work within a fixed group of standards and originals that had yet to be expanded via his sidemen's input. Empyrean Isles was all Hancock's music and all new. More importantly, it is just about perfect, and remains as eloquent and rewarding as anything else in the estimable discographies of these four great artists.

If someone had ordered up a program that explores four distinct areas of jazz expression with equal brilliance, they could have done no better than Empyrean Isles. It is as if Hancock had set out to present "changes," modal, funk and free playing and delivered each at its apex. "One Finger Snap" is a bracing 20-bar harmonic form, although only the first four bars have a written melody. "Oliloqui Valley" employs shifting scales over a 28-bar structure (8/4/8/8), with dramatic tension and release generated by moving between vamp and swing. "Cantaloupe Island" is the blues with a vamp even more infectious and original than the one that powered Hancock's earlier hit "Watermelon Man," and the vamp's retention as an interlude between each solo chorus adds further to the tune's mystique. This is the recording that IJS3 sampled for its hit "Cantaloop" three decades later, in what proved to be the biggest-selling recording of all time issued under the Blue Note logo. "The Egg" is an open improvisation that grows from the slightest fragments. Each in its way is definitive.

Further revelations were heard when Empyrean Isles was initially reissued on compact disc with alternate takes of "Oliloqui Valley" and "One Finger Snap." The sequence of the six performances is interesting — first the alternate of "Oliloqui" was cut; then the masters of "One Finger, " "Cantaloupe" and "The Egg"; then the alternate "One Finger" and finally the master of "Oliloqui." Several listeners, including Bob Belden in his annotation to Herbie Hancock: The Complete Blue Note Sixties Sessions, have ventured the opinion that the alternate "One Finger" is superior to the master. The tenor saxophonist Teodross Avery agrees, and has argued that those of us old enough to have heard the LP first cannot approach the alternate takes with the of younger listeners who were introduced to all of this music on CD. Avery's point is worth considering, though my vote still goes to the original "One Finger Snap," for Hubbard's blend of aggression and lyricism (his brief solo separating the piano and drum solos is perhaps the finest 16 bars the trumpeter— or cornetist, according to the credits — ever played), the rush of Hancock's piano improvisation and the glorious detail of Williams's drum and cymbal sounds. Speaking of the sound of this album, it has rarely, if ever, been matched. Each of these musicians has been documented on countless occasions, often by Rudy Van Gelder, and not a single one of these recordings sounds better. That includes this rhythm section's many appearances with Miles Davis on Columbia, which lack the warmth and crispness one hears in the piano, bass and drums on Empyrean Isles. From both an audio and a musical standpoint, and with all due respect, if forced to choose between any of those fabled Davis Columbia albums and this set for the proverbial desert isle trip, this listener would not hesitate to go Empyrean.

- Bob Blumenthal, 1999