BN-LA-399-H2

Herbie Hancock

Released - 1975

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 28, 1962
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Dexter Gordon, tenor sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Butch Warren, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.

tk.1 Empty Pockets
tk.4 Three Bags Full
tk.13 Driftin'

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 19, 1963
Donald Byrd, trumpet; Grachan Moncur III, trombone; Hank Mobley, tenor sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Chuck Israels, bass; Anthony Williams, drums.

tk.10 Blind Man, Blind Man
tk.20 And What If I Don't

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, August 30, 1963
Herbie Hancock, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Willie Bobo, drums, timbales; Osvaldo "Chihuahau" Martinez, congas, bongos.

tk.2 (12568) Triangle

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

1373 tk.14 Cantaloupe Island

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 17, 1965
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; George Coleman, tenor sax; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Anthony Williams, drums.

1545 tk.2 Maiden Voyage

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 6, 1968
Thad Jones, flugelhorn; Peter Phillips, bass trombone; Jerry Dodgion, alto flute; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Mickey Roker, drums.

2059 tk.12 Speak Like A Child

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 9, 1968
Thad Jones, flugelhorn; Peter Phillips, bass trombone; Jerry Dodgion, alto flute; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Mickey Roker, drums.

2061 tk.23 Goodbye To Childhood
2063 tk.32 Toys

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 18, 1969
Johnny Coles, flugelhorn; Garnett Brown, trombone; Tony Studd, bass trombone; Hubert Laws, flute; Jerome Richardson, bass clarinet; Joe Henderson, tenor sax, alto flute; Herbie Hancock, piano, electric piano; Buster Williams, bass; Albert "Tootie" Heath, drums.

4011 tk.10 The Prisoner

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Maiden Voyage	Herbie Hancock	March 17 1965
Empty Pockets	Herbie Hancock	May 28 1962
Cantaloupe Island	Herbie Hancock	June 17 1964
Side Two
Speak Like A Child	Herbie Hancock	March 6 1968
Blind Man, Blind Man	Herbie Hancock	March 19 1963
The Prisoner	Herbie Hancock	April 18 1969
Side Three
Toys	Herbie Hancock	March 9 1968
Three Bags Full	Herbie Hancock	May 28 1962
Triangle	Herbie Hancock	August 30 1963
Side Four
And What If I Don't	Herbie Hancock	March 19 1963
Goodbye To Childhood	Herbie Hancock	March 9 1968
Driftin'	Herbie Hancock	May 28 1962

Liner Notes

HERBIE HANCOCK

Trumpeter Donald Byrd arrived in Chicago for a night club engagement in the winter of 1960 without a pianist. His keyboard man was driving in from the East Coast and was stranded by a blizzard and so Byrd was forced to look around town. Numerous musicians recommended a twenty-year-old local player named Herbie Hancock, who did so well as a last-minute substitute that Byrd took him to New York and put him up when the job was over. Soon Hancock was adding instinctively empathetic accompagiments to Byrd albums like A New Perspective, the classic "religious" lp that included the hit 'Christo Redentor." In 1963 Byrd talked Blue Note into sponsoring Hancock's first album as a leader and Takin' Off resulted. Take off it did, propelled by Hancock's "Watermelon Man."

The mid-1970's found Byrd and Hancock the best-selling "jazz" instrumentalists of all time, though their genre-hopping innovations had robbed that four-letter word of much of its meaning. They did improvise, as jazzmen are wont to do, and certainly their careers reflected a thorough grounding in the "mainstream"' jazz idiom of the 1950's and early '60's, with forays into the avant-garde. But they also used electronic instrumentation and played over "pop" rhythms of the kind pioneered by James Brown and Sly Stone. Writers argued the merits of their new music — "sell-out" versus "new wave" — while the public bought their records in unprecedented numbers.

Memories are short. Even a casual perusal of the intertwined histories of Byrd and Hancock leads to the inescapable conclusion that the substantial reputations of both men have long been based on their ability to communicate with masses of listeners while satisfying the most demanding critics of all, their fellow musicians. Hancock, the subject of the present collection, scored audience identification right away with "Watermelon Man" (a track so familiar it's been left off this reissue in favor of even choicer selections) and went on to capture the attention of jazz players everywhere with his "Maiden Voyage," after "Watermelon" one of the most influential and most widely played and recorded jazz compositions of the sixties. Today (1975) "Voyage," Wayne Shorter's and a few other compositions from the same period, the mid-sixties, are tests by which the abilities of countless young improvisers are judged. In a very real sense they are the "Lady Be Good" and "I Got Rhythm" of the seventies. And now discotheque bands around the world are reproducing, as best they can, the funky cross-rhythms and electronic keyboard effects of "Hancock's "Chamelion."

It might surprise some student musicians, especially those who are eager to jump into contemporary sounds without absorbing classical basics, but Herbert Jeffery Hancock, who took up the piano at age seven, never thought about contemporary music until his sophomore year in high school. For the record, he was born April 12, 1940, and grew up on the South Side of the Windy City. At age eleven he performed Mozart's D Major Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony. He first became aware of the possibilities of jazz at a high school talent show when he heard a fellow student improvising. "I didn't know what he was playing," Hancock later recalled, "so I had to really find out what it was for myself." He then proceeded to shut himself up in his room with his record player, some staff paper, and jazz piano lp's by Oscar Peterson and George Shearing, and to transcribe the improvisations he heard, note for note. Only in this way could he play them. "The first one I tried," he remembers, "took me weeks. Then I got it down to days, then hours — and finally I found that I could recognize and write whole passages quickly, and away from the piano." In this time-consuming, arduous manner, Hancock developed the improvisational skills, the harmonic sophistication, and the other attributes which have helped him forge ahead to his present position of eminence.

After a fling at studying engineering, Hancock returned to Chicago and worked with, among others, the inventor of jazz saxophone, Coleman Hawkins. Then, in quick succession, came Byrd, the move to New York, a few months in Byrd's combo; Takin' Off, and, in 1963, the piano chair in the most influential small band of the time, the Miles Davis Quintet. He stayed in the band until 1968 and participated (as composer and pianist) in such ground-breaking albums as ESP, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky, and Filles de Kilimanjaro, all of which served in one way or another as prototypes for the new electric sound which was to be Davis' principal contribution to the music of the seventies. In 1973, Hancock told Downbeat interviewer Ray Townley that Davis' music of that period moved "through ä lot of chord changes, a lot of different moods, lot of tempo changes. But it would be misleading to say it was just Miles' music. The music was not just a reflection of Miles, it was a reflection of all the guys in the band. He doesn't ever tell you what to play, you know. If what you play works, that's cool. Now if it doesn't work, he'll try to do something to make it work...

"I remember one time we were playing a concert in Germany, I think, and we were playing this one song and we got to one chord and I played the chord too soon, way too soon; it clashed with everything that was going on. Miles played it was during his solo - he played something on top of my chord to make it sound right. He made it fit and it blew my mind...I'm sure he didn't even think about it because it wasn't anything he could think about. He didn't hear it as a clash, he heard it as 'this is what's happening right now so I'll make the most of it,' and he did."

The bulk of Hancock's Blue Note work was recorded during this fruitful period, and, like Davis, Hancock makes the most of each situation. As a glance at the personnel listings for this album will confirm. Hancock approached each date as a new and more or less self-contained challenge. Rather than find a formula and stick to it — something many musicians would have done after scoring a hit on their first try Hancock explored a variety of possibilities. Thus "Maiden Voyage," with its simple, floating melodic lines and mysterious chord voicings, sets up a dream-like atmosphere rather like that established by the Davis group. "Empty Pockets," "Three Bags Full," and "Driftin' " feature instrumentation and the same trumpet player, but all three have to do with an entirely different set of moods and present a series of funkier, more deliberate grooves.

The relationship of the "funk" phenomenon to Hancock's music is worth investigating. "Watermelon Man," "Blind Man, Blind Man," and to a lesser extent, tunes like "Empty Pockets" and "Cantaloupe Island," were widely regarded as being examples of the funk idiom when they first appeared. Yet Hancock has been telling interviewers that his funky period really begins with his current direction. "Jazz musicians, generally speaking, don't really know how to play funky," he said to me in 1974, "but we think we do. We think there's nothing to it. I thought that, but I was wrong. Seventy-five per cent of the time what I thought was funky just wasn't; the criteria are different, as I found out little by little. Playing funky means, like knowing how to avoid destroying the rhythm for some nice harmonies. It means interplay between the bass line and drum pattern, and playing things that will fit into that."

If the word funk catches on in the sense that the word jazz has, as a standard generic noun for which no universally adopted replacement is conceivable, then musicians will doubtless begin to investigate its origins and to try to replace it with some more cumbersome but more meaningful description. The 1951 edition of The American College Dictionary defines "funk" ("Colloq, it notes) as "cowering fear; state of fright or terror, " while researchers into black slang have suggested original meanings even more disreputable than those attributed to "jazz." As a stock phrase in the vocabulary of white Americans, it was once associated with doldrums or melancholy, as in the sentence "I'm in a blue funk today." Musically, for some ultimately unknowable reason, funk has come to signify content deriving from the Afro-American musical heritage, and specifically from gospel music. In this sense, the gospel/ rock of Ray Charles, ca. 1955, was a major impetus to the development of funk as a distinct variety of black music, though Guitar Slim and other blues artists had been on the same wavelength since the late forties.

In a fifties sense, then, a number of Hancock's Blue Note recordings rate as funk. "Blind Man, Blind Man" employs piano and band voicings from gospel music, and a related backbeat (many musicians insist that the heavy beat of rock and roll came from sanctified churches to begin with). Blues feeling is supplied most prominently by guitarist Grant Green, who sounds in this instance like a more buttery and bigger-toned B. B, King, Note that the drummer is Tony Williams, who at the time was Hancock's bandmate in the Davis Quintet. In the mid-sixties Tony was known as an innovator of free patterns, a master of color and shadings. "Tony Williams turned me on to different rhythms," Hancock remembers, "overlapping this and that. Tony was really into Paul Bley, Gary Peacock...This was 1963. Ornette — like I never paid that much attention to Ornette when he first came out, but Tony got me interested in Ornette and got me to the point where I could get into it." Several years later, Williams left the Miles Davis band and formed his Lifetime, perhaps the first significant group to play jazz/rock from a jazz perspective. The guitarist was John McLaughlin, who had only recently arrived from England, and the organist was Larry Young (Khalid Yasin), a Blue Note artist at the time and later a participant in McLaughlin's Devotion and on the McLaughlin/Carlos Santana collaboration. "Blind Man" reveals that Williams was already into jazz/rock; his solid drumming helps make it a harbinger of the music of the seventies.

"Cantaloupe Island" rides along over a churchy 8/8 rhythm section figure that's a distant cousin of the "Watermelon Man" vamp and, again, Williams demonstrates his affinity for more basic rhythm playing than he was generally associated with at the time. "And What If I Don't" is introduced and internally paced by a recurring one-chord vamp not unlike the memorable, snaking riff that propelled Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder." Here and on "Blind Man," Donald Byrd, who was still, in Hancock's words, "like my older brother," fashions confidently bluesy solos, preaching storefront sermons and somehow managing to convey a certain elegance at the same time. This meeting of Byrd, Hancock, and Williams, three of the most important innovators in bringing "jazz to the people" during the early seventies, surely deserves to be ranked as one of the seminal sessions of the mid-sixties, at least as far as long-range trends and the music's commercial acceptance are concerned.

The quintet tracks are much more typical of the "Blue Note sound" of the period. Byrd has taken credit for organizing the Hancock-Butch Warren-Billy Higgins rhythm section, heard on his Royal Flush and on "Empty Pockets," "Three Bags Full," and "Driftin"' from Herbie's Takin' Off. The same trio appeared on Byrd's later Free Form, and the trumpeter was quoted in the liner notes to that album as follows: "Billy Higgins has a distinctive imagination. Also he's one of the two or three drummers in New York who plays with a time and feeling reminiscent of Kenny Clarke. With that as a base, he has a younger man's conception and daring. Butch is similarly imaginative, knows his instrument thoroughly, and reads well. The same is true of Herbie." In discussing one of Hancock's compositions, he said that "in works of Herbie like this one, the chord patterns are unexpected, They're deceptive in that you can never be sure exactly where the next chord is going to. Therefore, it's challenging to play."

The same can be said of "Empty Pockets" even though it's a blues, and of "Driftin'" and "Three Bags Full" and "Maiden Voyage." In his quintet music Hancock expanded the so-called Blue Note style principally through his continuing use of interesting fresh chord changes and voicings, "Three Bags" is of interest rhythmically; it's one of the rare recorded examples of drummer Higgins' approach to 6/8, and a comparison of the groove with some of Elvin Jones' recordings under John Coltrane's ship in instructive, Dexter Gordon's treatment of the meter is quite original, especially in the first part of his solo. Later, he shows he's been listening to 'Trane. Freddie Hubbard is performing at peak power throughout these selections; his old-style note bending and talking effects on "Cantaloupe Island," a quartet selection, are exceptionally delightful.

"Triangle" is the album's most extended sampling of Hancock's abilities as a soloist. It's a multi-directional piece which calls forth several improvisational approaches and showcases a number of characteristic techniques. The octave doubling early on shifts gears into a Latin-flavored montuno, and as the composition develops Herbie varies the music's focus from percussive to linear to densely harmonic to contrapuntal. The rhythm section — the great Paul Chambers and Latin/jazz stalwarts Willie Bobo and Osvaldo Martinez — plays with restrained clarity, but hot. Nevertheless, the overall effect is rather cool and progressive, certainly not the churchy sort of atmosphere so evident in some of the quintet and sextet pieces.

The three selections from Speak Like A Child feature horn arrangements but, again, Hancock is the only soloist. His creative scoring for bass trombone, alto flute, and flugelhorn is richer than anything from the earlier dates, and certainly a far cry from his more familiar gospel/blues style. Having transferred his exceptional ear for chord voicings to his writing and arranging, Hancock gets a sound from the closely-voiced lines played by this studio sextet that is much larger than the number of players would suggest. A similar approach characterizes "The Prisoner," but here there are horn solos, and the ensembles underline and extend rather than merely frame them. For the first time the rhythm section is controlled as deliberately as the horns throughout the performance, so that, for example, saxophonist Joe Henderson's passionate solo is backed mostly by bass and drums, and the entire rhythm section drops in and out dramatically under Johnny Coles' flugelhorn improvisation. There are tempo and rhythm changes as well.

Taken together, these selections present an unusually broad gamut of styles, each of which is executed with conspicuous success. It seems obvious that Hancock could have pursued almost any direction after leaving Blue Note, from funk to free jazz, without deviating from precedents in his own work. Certainly everything he has done subsequently, from the space music of his sextet/septet to the overwhelmingly popular neo-funk of his Headhunters band, is at least suggested in the tunes which make up this package. We have seen that Hancock differed from his fellow Blue Note artists at the time primarily in his influential harmonic style. But from the perspective of 1975 we can hear in the orchestrated rhythm section patterns which hold tunes like "Blind Man, Blind Man," "Cantaloupe Island," and "And What If I Don't" together the roots of his current approach, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, and numerous other artists were employing similar structures at the time, but it took Hancock to combine them with more varied harmonies on the one hand and the new electronic instrumentation on the other. The colorful scoring that highlighted Speak Like A Child and The Prisoner continues to turn up, most notably in Hancock's film scores.

The pianist's seventies music has earned him much of the large audience he now enjoys; but for many aficionados his work on acoustic piano, as documented in this set, is the best of his career. Certainly the combination of accomplished playing, writing, and arranging with an unusually clear sense of purpose and roots makes for a body of work which is easy to get into and yet, hearing after hearing, completely satisfying. Fortunately, now that the fruits of all Hancock's creative periods are available on record, it isn't really necessary to choose one over another.

—Robert Palmer Robert Palmer writes regularly on jazz for Rolling Stone and The New York Times and teaches Afro-American Music History and Improvisation at Bowdoin College.

BN-LA-152-F

Herbie Hancock / Willie Bobo - Succotash

Released - 1973

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, August 30, 1963
Herbie Hancock, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Willie Bobo, drums, timbales; Osvaldo "Chihuahau" Martinez, congas, bongos, finger cymbals, guiro.

tk.1 (12567) Succotash
tk.2 (12568) Triangle
tk.5 (12565) Mimosa
tk.9 (12566) A Jump Ahead
tk.13 (12564) Jack Rabbit

See Also: BLP 4147

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Jack Rabbit	Herbie Hancock	30/08/1963
Mimosa	Herbie Hancock	30/08/1963
A Jump Ahead	Herbie Hancock	30/08/1963
Side Two
Succotash	Herbie Hancock	30/08/1963
Triangle	Herbie Hancock	30/08/1963

Liner Notes

With the Renaissance of Jazz music today. it is no wonder that record companies are dipping into their musical archives and repackaging albums that today's record buyer would have missed. This album, spotlighting early Herbie Hancock and Willie Bobo, is one such album.

Recorded in October, 1964. this album marked a turning point for both Herbie and Willie in terms of creativity and musical freedom. There were no preconceived chord changes or intended melody lines before they entered the studio. As Herbie relates:

"At the beginning I thought I'd be afraid to play just anything I felt, but as I got used to it, the experience gassed me so much that I decided to plan for a record session in that vein."

With session men like famed percussionist Willie Bobo, conga player Osvaldo "Chihuahua" Martinez, and bassist Paul Chambers, the resultant music was spontaneous inventions and unrestricted dimensions. It was the polarization of these four individuals that allowed Herbie Hancock's piano to glide in colored simplicity and Willie Bobo's persuasive beat that extracted improvisational bass response from Paul Chambers.

In essence, this recording was a first for two of the major Jazz figures in today's music. It opened the once barred door that few musicians had dared to open. It also dispelled the belief that spontaniety and musical imagination ensues in chaos. The positive results of this musical experiment are numerous, however the definitive fact remains unchallenged; that excellent music is by no means a process of tedious trial and error. Music is in the hands of the creator, and this re-release is definite proof.

Blue Note Records
Jere Hausfater

BST 84321

Herbie Hancock - The Prisoner

Released - 1969

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 18, 1969
Johnny Coles, flugelhorn; Garnett Brown, trombone; Tony Studd, bass trombone; Hubert Laws, flute; Jerome Richardson, bass clarinet; Joe Henderson, tenor sax, alto flute; Herbie Hancock, piano, electric piano; Buster Williams, bass; Albert Heath, drums.

4011 tk.10 The Prisoner
4012 tk.31 Who Lives In Fear

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 21, 1969
Johnny Coles, flugelhorn; Garnett Brown, trombone; Tony Studd, bass trombone; Hubert Laws, flute; Jerome Richardson, bass clarinet; Joe Henderson, tenor sax, alto flute; Herbie Hancock, piano, electric piano; Buster Williams, bass; Albert Heath, drums.

4013 tk.40 I Have A Dream

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 23, 1969
Johnny Coles, flugelhorn; Garnett Brown, trombone; Jack Jeffers, bass trombone; Jerome Richardson, flute; Romeo Penque, bass clarinet; Joe Henderson, tenor sax, alto flute; Herbie Hancock, piano, electric piano; Buster Williams, bass; Albert Heath, drums.

4014 tk.42 Firewater
4015 tk.52 Promise Of The Sun

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
I Have a Dream	Herbie Hancock	April 21 1969
The Prisoner	Herbie Hancock	April 18 1969
Side Two
Firewater	Buster Williams	April 23 1969
He Who Lives in Fear	Herbie Hancock	April 18 1969
Promise of the Sun	Herbie Hancock	April 23 1969

Liner Notes

“Generally speaking, I’ve been able to get closer to the real me on this album than on any other previous one.” This is a value judgment of Herbie Hancock, the gifted young upper echelon jazz pianist-composer who left the charismatic and nutritious aura of the Miles Davis group to venture into leading his own band in order to cultivate his imagination and to shape his own musical concepts.

And what then does Hancock refer to when he mentions “the real me?’ I recognize that no one can really define the real anybody, but on the other hand, clues and intuitive responses can be confirmed in various degrees to refine a view of someone. During the last couple of years Herbie and I have had several lengthy dialogues which I consider as helpful intake sources to discover what psychologist Benjamin Bloom calls the ‘cognitive-affective domains” of Herbie Hancock as they may relate to music. Therefore, I have included some excerpts and interpretations which may provide some insight to the Hancock mosaic.

Concerning his musical hopes and tendencies Hancock expressed, “I want my music to evolve toward a point where it can contain that part of me that is relatively most musical to people—but in a jazz climate that can communicate to the general public.” He is referring to a flourishing residence in jazz while there is a cleanly easy-to-sing, easy-to-recall melodic line, but he also refers to correlates ¡n rhythm and harmony. “I am trying to write hummable tunes with a kind of rhythmic element people can be Infected with,” he continued, “and one key to the rhythmic thing is duple meter.” In this respect he discussed the duple meter of rock and the triple meter feeling of jazz. “People can identify more with duple meter, so the drummer does play duple meter but does not, however, play rock per se,” he elaborated, “so you hear the drummer playing jazz.” This metric flexibility is viewed as a resource for jazz percussion and Hancock has composed tunes using a type of bastardized bossa nova beat with a tinge of rock. He uses bossa nova which has duple meter because this metric trait is one that has made b.n. popular along with the inherently simple melodies. These appealing elements explain why Hancock uses them as communicative devices. As to harmony, he said, “Harmony is the element that offers even more flexibility. The differentiated positioning of chords in my Maiden Voyage is an example, and Speak Like A Child Is somewhat like a pop ballad. It’s an extension of the concept of simple melody and rhythm related to a more advanced harmony.” In summarizing his rationale of exploring areas in this sphere, he offered, “It’s like a huge door with a lot of little doors to the outside public and I’m trying different doors.”

All of these key elements Hancock subscribes to in his response to the challenge of orchestrating for color are used to expand his color concept of the band. This partially accounts for his use of the bass trombone, bass clarinet, and the C flute in addition to the basic instrumentation of his sextet. Clusters, splashes, accents and sounds that create visual images and effects come out of his scoring. You can readily detect a close alliance of Hancock’s orchestrations to those coloristic effects and sounds achieved so brilliantly by Gil Evans whose monumental collaborations with Miles Davis in particular created historical benchmarks. Hancock spoke admiringly, “I really dig Gil. Gil Evans is deceiving in the sound he gets because it sounds much more broad. The way he voices his chords is that he gets melodic movement on the bottom which goes beyond getting just functional movement... his music is more buoyant, more colorful. There is a natural flow of melody leading into the sound.”

Speaking of developmental influences on Herbie Hancock, aside from Gil and Miles, there is Bill Evans who was the first pianist Hancock could truly identify with. When Hancock started in jazz, George Shearing and Bud Powell were his forces of effect, and Hancock possessed a more emphatic harmonic approach before his melodic approach was secure. As for Bill Evans, Hancock exclaimed, “When I heard Bill, I knew that was it! Harmony has always gassed me. I was intrigued with different chord sounds and Bill led the way for me; he played a large part in my growth and development.” Hancock’s melodies are simple and he tries to get the harmony to sound simple too — in doing this he tries to get novel relationships between chords, each succession of chords presents an increment of surprise. In effect, there is no establishment of a strong tonal center. And in the way the chords follow each other, there is sufficient space and freedom between choral relationships so that soloists can feel free to comment comfortably and in the way they feel.

Concerning the musicians in his group he selected those who play melodically... this is not to infer that he wanted guys who thought less of the chord structure but it’s a matter of having players who are decidedly more conscious of the sound. “All my soloists,” he described, “play a different style but some part of each is related to each other, and I do some of all of their thing.”

Joe Henderson is one of today’s top saxophonists and he creates fire in the group. Fluegelhornist Johnny Coles sounds like a young lion. Hancock mused, “Johnny moves by the moment. He plays things with such sheer beauty I wonder where it’s coming from. He is just gifted enough to grab the notes he hears and get them out and it’s pure soul that comes out. Coles’ things are related to Miles’ things, but Coles doesn’t pick the same notes even though I believe they are conceptually similar.” And trombonist Garnett Brown who has been very active in the New York studios and prominently featured with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra is considered a lucky circumstance for Hancock as Herbie feels that Garnett’s experience is very valuable to the group.

Drummer Al “Tootie” Heath spent a good number of years in Europe as an American jazz expatriate before returning home last year, and upon the recommendation of Ron Carter, Hancock brought Heath into the fold. Hancock observes as others have, “Tootie is playing things I never heard him play before; he uses the drums as a total involvement and he can really swing... very tasty, very flexible and his big ears listen to everything!“ Buster Williams seems to be playing everywhere — with Nancy Wilson, with The Jazz Crusaders, et al. He performs the basic function of the bass in supplying the foundation, but he also functions beautifully as a horn. Hancock feels that Buster’s style is perfect for the group as he also understands formal chord structure and understands “the Hancock sound.”

On this album wherein Hancock uses a nonet, he cited the merits of Hubert Laws in particular, pointing out that Laws is one of the finest flute players in classical or jazz; Laws is used by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and other classical units for flute solos just as he is heavily featured on numerous jazz settings.

This album’s title, The Prisoner, sets a thematic direction for Hancock to express how Black people have been imprisoned for a long time. The opening tune’s connection with the late Dr. Martin Luther King is obvious. I first heard this piece as an untitled number when Hancock performed it at the 1968 University of California Jazz Festival. It has an airy singable line with the melody on top of the chordal structure; the first note of the melody is the 9th and as there are chord changes, an airiness grows out of the changes. Once again there isn’t a pervasive tonal center in I Have A Dream.

The Prisoner is in sections with an ABCB scheme. Joe Henderson’s solo in the middle section shows the use of the freedom and space provided by Hancock’s writing. The interest here is on the sound. The composition was Inspired by Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring. Hancock’s arrangement of Buster Williams’ Firewater recalls Gil Evans’ conceptual model. The title indicates the social duality of the oppressor and the oppressed. The fire and water idea symbolizes, for Hancock, the feeling of fire in violence and in power play and the feeling of water in Dr. King. Likewise, He Who Lives In Fear refers to the fact that King had to live in an atmosphere charged with intimidation. Via a skillful manipulation and reshaping process of a very hip jingle Hancock did for a television cigarette commerciaI, he evolved a completely new piece with a different melody and harmonic pattern. The juxtapositions he made came out beautifully with another Hancock gem. Finally, Promise Of The Sun, a fetching melody you won’t forget easily, symbolizes how the sun promises life and freedom to all living things and yet Blacks are not yet free.

I think it’s fortunate that affable, free thinking Herbie Hancock can so successfully amalgamate his powerfully creative influences and rich experience via people like Gil Evans, Miles Davis and Bill Evans. It Is a bow of respect and warm admiration, too, for Hancock since it takes someone with creative powers to accomplish these processes. “The real Herbie Han- cock” is neither a pipedream nor a prisoner. He is here for you to listen, to dig. And you’ll be hearing from him many times on a motion picture score, a TV theme or another recording in the future as Hancock fills In more pieces to the Hancock mosaic.

—HERB WONG

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT THE PRISONER

This album was much more of a transitional event in Herbie Hancock's career than anyone realized at the time. Beyond the quality of the individual compositions and performances, it is best appreciated as a chapter in various portions of his musical history — the last of his seven Blue Note albums, the first of two by what would prove to be the first Hancock sextet, and the second and final statement in what might be considered Hancock's Gil Evans phase.

The pianist had left the Miles Davis quintet during the Summer of 1968 to form his own group; and, to the surprise of many, it was an economically risky sextet rather than the trio that might have had an easier time as a business proposition. Yet Hancock required horns — and a section with a range of voices at that — to continue his explorations of the engaging yet open music he had introduced on his March 1968 session Speak Like A Child. In the notes to that album, as well as in Herb Wong's original notes for The Prisoner, Hancock acknowledged how Gil Evans had impressed him by writing parts that could stand alone melodically for each instrument in the ensemble, and voicing these various individual lines with wide intervals that omitted clear chordal signposts. This created an open and polychordal feeling that, together with the more basic rhythmic approach that Hancock described to Wong, presented an opportunity to pursue music that was appealing to a broad base of listeners while remaining challenging to those who played it.

Given its April 1969 recording date, The Prisoner is as interesting for what it omits as what it includes. The combustible rhythmic energy that characterized the avant-garde of the period is only hinted at (most clearly during Joe Henderson's solo on the alternate take of "The Prisoner"), and the bracing sting of amplification that jazz was beginning to borrow from rock plays even less of a role. (Hancock uses the electric piano he had come to play more frequently with Davis only during the ensemble portions of "He Who Lives In Fear" and the title track.) Instead he employs an expanded, nine-piece ensemble where the basic horns of his working sextet — trumpet, trombone and tenor sax — are joined by the more coloristic bass trombone, flute and bass clarinet. When applied to the superior melodic material provided by the leader and bassist Buster Williams, this ensemble produced a stunning sound that was no less powerful for its intimacy, a sound indicating that, had he so chosen, Hancock could have become one of jazz's greatest arrangers.

Yet he was too exceptional a player, communicator and leader of other musicians to settle for a life focused on score paper. The Prisoner lets us hear just how exceptional. The album employs a most contemporary theme, then and now — the struggle of African-Americans for their proper place in U.S. society — yet the music never preaches and never rants. The writing is exceptionally beautiful, even for Hancock, capturing the dignity and idealism of the Civil Rights movement. "He Who Lives In Fear," as noted, had originally been created for a Silva Thins cigarette commercial, then retitled when the advertising agency would not grant permission for its use on the L P. "Firewater," with its "Aren't You Glad You Use Dial?" phrase at bar four, also has echoes of Madison Avenue. Still, the music never sounds less than true to the album's stated theme, which is further proof of Hancock's ability to merge the accessible and the profound.

There is some great playing here from Henderson, who makes his sound especially flexible in this setting to reflect the full range of colors in the writing. Johnny Coles is also impressive, particularly where he seems to argue with the ensemble in the manner of a less vicious Miles Davis on the master take of "The Prisoner." I have to admit to my disappointment when this album was first released, though, because there had not been more room for solos. In April 1970 I had the opportunity to hear this sextet live, with Miroslav Vitous subbing for the absent Buster WiIIiams, and the music had become far more open. Hancock spent almost all of his time on electric piano, while Henderson even played a bit of flute, and there was now loads of solo space on extended performances in which changes of tempo and mood made individual compositions function like mini-suites. The band played "Eye Of The Hurricane" and "Maiden Voyage" from Hancock's most popular Blue Note album, "Wiggle-Waggle" and "Jessica" from his then-soon-to-be-released Warner Bros. debut Fat Albert Rotunda (where the sextet was again augmented, though this time in a more rock-oriented direction), and a faster version of "Firewater" than the one heard on this album. The band was astounding, but its run was nearly over. By year's end, Williams had returned; Coles, Brown, Joe Henderson and Heath had been replaced, respectively, by Eddie Henderson, Julian Priester, Bennie Maupin and Billy Hart; and the more electronic Mwandishi version of the Herbie ' Hancock sextet had been born.

—Bob Blumenthal

Complete Blue Note Sessions Liner Notes

Herbie’s last album for Blue Note came about as a result of Herbie’s newfound fame. Warner Brothers had made an offer that Herbie couldn’t refuse; he was given a sizable increase in funds for reacording and the music was to be treated like a pop act. Herbie had signed a deal with Blue Note that was unrealistic, and through his close relationship with Alfred Lion, and, by this time, Francis Wolff, he was able to complete his contract with Blue Note with one final album project.

The Prisoner was not your typical Blue Note date. Even though Blue Note had begun to use larger orchestral concepts to showcase their roster, they had not indulged anyone with a large budget to make an ‘art’ album. Quartet, quintet and sextet were the norm for Blue Note, and only Stanley Turrentine, Gene Harris and maybe Lee Morgan could get an expanded budget for something big. Andrew Hill had a couple of big dates, but the complexity of his music often led to musically disappointing sessions.

Herbie had developed a style of orchestration that evolved out of the necessity of capturing his pianistic accompaniments. This sound, this sense of orchestration, was unique, and could only have come from the mind of Herbie. He used this date to showcase his working band at the time (Coles, Henderson, Brown, Williams and Heath), and to place them in a larger, more textural environment. So on April 18th, 21st, and 23rd of 1969, Herbie’s Sextet (and an additional ensemble of three winds and two brass) headed out to Rudy’s with an arsenal of sound, and the musicians to make it work. The sound of The Prisoner has never been successfully duplicated by anyone, and the album remains a standout achievement in Herbie’s career.

“I Have A Dream” was initially submitted to Miles in January 1968, and by the time April 1969 came around, the song had undergone many noticeable changes, the first being that is is a finished piece, and arranged. The form is clearer, and the mood is in tune with the composition. The reverb of the Van Gelder studio brings out an otherworldly haze to the texture of the instruments, and this fits in nicely with the smear-and-slog phrasing employed by the band.

The two alternate takes from The Prisoner sessions used in this collection demonstrate something that haunts musicians at live to two-track studio dates. Both “The Prisoner” and “Firewater” have great solos by Herbie and Joe Henderson, but the ensemble playing is inconsistent at best. Perhaps it is the unorthodox method in which the music was orchestrated, or lines that have to be played by the musicians that could be a little more forgiving. To this day, Herbie has never revisited this project, nor has anyone performed any of this music in a form closely resembling the album. Such a pity.

During this time, Herbie began composing television commercials for a few agencies in town. He composed a jingle for Silva Thins cigarettes, and it was so beautiful, he wanted to record the song for his own album, but the agency didn’t give Blue Note permission. Herbie changed the title to “He Who Lives In Fear” and recorded it on The Prisoner session.

After The Prisoner was recorded, Herbie signed a deal with Warner Brothers Records with whom he recorded the soundtrack to a Bill Cosby animated feature called Fat Albert Rotunda. Once again, his working sextet was utilized (Coles, Henderson, Brown, Williams and Heath) along with some additional instruments to lend the music apronounced rock/soul feeling. “Jessica” and the incredible “Tell Me A Bedtime Story” Came from this project. Herbie continued to make studio dates, (Steve Marcus for Vortex, Roy Ayers for Atlantic), Joe Henderson’s classic Power To The People (on Milestone), Phil Woods (Round Trip for Verve), Gypsy Cry for Attila Zoller on Empryo, Ron Carter’s recording debut as a leader – Uptown Conversation also for Empryo, George Benson’s The Other Side Of Abbey Road for A&M, and the incredible album on Empryo led by Miroslav Vitous called Infinite Search. By 1971 he was a house pianist at CTI Records. What a career!

The Sextet was now beginning to work more frequently, even travelling to the West Coast in May. Down Beat positively reviewed the Sextet in performance in their July 24, 1969 issue. The Sextet played Newport that summer, and later in July, they had two weeks at the Village Vanguard (with Joe Farrell subbing for Henderson). Jimmy Garrison joined the band for a week at the Agua Lounge in Philadelphia. Things were looking up.

By 1971, a change in personnel had occurred, and electronic instruments were being added. Herbie’s deal at Warner Brothers allowed him to do anything, and he proceeded in making the most uncommercial but inspired music. The Sextet was a popular group and by 1973 had hit the top of the jazz scene. But Herbie was losing money on the group, and changing times led Herbie to reevaluate his musical situation. Enter Head Hunters, the hit, and you’re back to the beginning of this story.

But my quest to find out more about Herbie didn’t end with the acquisition of every recording he was on (well, almost everything). I actually got to work with him. On a record, his 1995 album The New Standards (Verve). I was hired because I was familiar with Herbie’s style and method. When I first met with him, he looked at me and probably thought: “My worst nightmare, a fan with a pencil and some manuscript paper,” but once we got to work, things began to happen. I understood his moves, and soon we had an album crafted to take advantage of his style and prowess. The recording did amazingly well all over the world, and is widely imitated for its concept of adapting pop melodies to the jazz sound. See, I wasn’t crazy to study his music.

Recently, Herbie began an homage to George Gershwin for the Verve label, and Bob Sadin was hired to produce the record. I called Mr. Sadin up after he returned from the West Coast, having just finished the project. I asked him, “Well…how did it go?” After a long pause, I heard him sigh into the phone and say “Herbie”. – Bob Belden, New York City, 1998

BST 84279

Herbie Hancock - Speak Like A Child

Released - July 1968

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 6, 1968
Thad Jones, flugelhorn #1,2; Peter Phillips, bass trombone #1,2; Jerry Dodgion, alto flute #1,2; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Mickey Roker, drums.

2058 tk.6 Riot
2059 tk.12 Speak Like A Child
2060 tk.19 First Trip

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, March 9, 1968
Thad Jones, flugelhorn #1,3; Peter Phillips, bass trombone #1,3; Jerry Dodgion, alto flute #1,3; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Mickey Roker, drums.

2061 tk.23 Goodbye To Childhood
2062 tk.26 The Sorcerer
2063 tk.32 Toys

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Riot	Herbie Hancock	March 6 1968
Speak Like a Child	Herbie Hancock	March 6 1968
First Trip	Ron Carter	March 6 1968
Side Two
Toys	Herbie Hancock	March 9 1968
Goodbye to Childhood	Herbie Hancock	March 9 1968
The Sorcerer	Herbie Hancock	March 9 1968

Liner Notes

Speak Like a Child is Herbie Hancock's first album as a leader for Blue Note since Maiden Voyage, and it represents a further extension of discoveries Herbie made during that preceding journey. It is related-to Maiden Voyage, Herbie notes, "in a way none of my previous albums were related to each other. That set was a sort of jumping off point for me, and I go on from there here."

I asked him for specifics. "What I was into then, and have been thinking about more and more," Herbie answered, "was the concept that there is a type of music in between jazz and rock. It has elements of both but retains and builds on its own identity. Its jazz elements include improvisation and it's like rock in that it emphasizes particular kinds of rhythmic patterns to work off of.

"This album," he continued, "also is an extension of Maiden Voyage in terms of my use of simple, singable melodies. Now what's different in Speak Like a Child as a whole has to do, first of all, with harmony. For the most part, the harmonies in these numbers are freer in the sense that they're not so easily identifiable chordally in the conventional way. I'm more concerned with sounds than chords, and so I voice the harmonies to provide a wider spectrum of colors that can be contained within the traditional chord progressions. In much of the album, there are places where you could call the harmonies by any one of four designations, but no one designation would really include everything involved. That's how I write; that's how it comes out.

"Similarly," Herbie went on, "on those tracks with the horns, I was more interested in sounds than in definite chordal patterns. I tried to give the horns notes that would give color and body to the sounds I heard as I wrote. Some of this way of thinking and writing comes from listening to Gil Evans and Oliver Nelson and from having worked with Thad Jones from time to time. Certainly one of the ways I'm going to go from here on is writing for large groups."

The first number, Riot, was recorded originally by Miles Davis. "When I listened to the record," Herbie said, "it sounded like a riot to me with regard to the emotions being expressed. This version, however, is less riotous. It does contain an element of turmoil, but it's there more as an undercurrent than on the surface. Incidentally, when I wrote this song, I wrote the melody first and then added the harmonies I wanted underneath. I suppose I heard them vaguely in my head from the beginning; I just had to find them."

Speak Like a Child, as a title, Herbie explains, "came from Frank Wolff, and it's a result of a picture that a friend of mine, David Bythewood, took. I dug it so much I brought it to Frank for use as the cover for this album. Frank said it was so evocative a photograph because of the innocence and naivete in it. And so I started thinking about the quality of innocence while writing this song. Clearly the music doesn't sound too much like what's going on today-war, riots, the stock market getting busted up. And the reason it doesn't, I realized, is that I'm optimistic. I believe in hope and peace and love. It's not that I'm blind to what's going on, but I feel this music is a forward look into what could be a bright future. The philosophy represented in this number, and to a large extent in the album as a whole, is childlike. But not childish. By that I mean there are certain elements of childhood we lose and wish we could have back-purity, spontaneity. When they do return to us, we're at our best. So what I'm telling the world is: 'Speak like a child. Think and feel in terms of hope and the possibilities of making ourselves less impure."

Herbie also points out that Speak Like a Child is a sectional piece and has no definite tonal centers. It should also be noted that the attractive young lady on the cover is Herbie's fiancee, Gigi Meixner.

First Trip is by Ron Carter and both the title and the tune itself strike Herbie as having a sense of childhood. "When I played the melody," Herbie adds "I didn't play it straight. I made some small changes, played a little with the time, and staggered some of the phrases. As for the time, I played some phrases in five, some in seven. It's the kind of thing I've become used to working with Tony Williams and Ron Carter so now that kind of approach to time just comes out naturally as I play." Herbie also spoke about the rhythmic feeling of the album as a whole. "I've been trying for a long time to work on swinging, to feel more and more comfortable in terms of swinging. And of all the albums I've done, this to me swings the most."

As for the harmonies of First Trip, "this tune too has the kind of progressions that go in and out of the traditional dividing lines," Herbie emphasized. "The emotions here and in other pieces require freer harmonic developments and as a result, we get away from finite structural and chordal limitations." Ron Carter wrote the song originally for his little boy, Ron Jr. At the time, his son was going to a nursery school where the kids who behaved well in class came home on the first trip. The ones who acted up had to wait for the second trip. "My son," Ron remembers, "was elated that day, and the song is about how he felt and is also a little tribute from me to him for one of the times he did indeed behave very well."

Toys, Herbie observes, "originally came about because I was thinking of writing a blues without it being a blues-a tune with the colors of the blues but not the form. Like Blues for Pablo. Some of the techniques in the writing of it I think I've gotten from Gil Evans. There are times, for instance, when I sacrifice the vertical for the horizontal structure in going from one chord to another a few bars later, and the reason is to allow certain instruments to play a melodic line even though that line may involve some harmonic clashes. But I make sure those clashes have their own kind of validity and body. There are also, as in Riot and some of the other pieces, carefully conceived contrasts in dynamics."

Goodbye to Childhood reflects, Herbie says, "that particular quality of sadness you feel at childhood being gone. In the writing of it, I again didn't think about what the chords were. I had to figure out what they were afterwards."

The Sorcerer, originally written for Miles Davis, receives its title, Herbie smiles, "because Miles is a sorcerer. His whole attitude, the way he is, is kind of mysterious. I know him well but there's still a kind of musical mystique about him. His music sounds like witchcraft. There are times I don't know where his music comes from. It doesn't sound like he's doing it. It sounds like it's coming from somewhere else."

Speaking of the album as a whole, Herbie concluded: "All the sounds in these pieces are a product of everything I've learned, particularly in recent work with Gil Evans and, of course, in the five years I've been with Miles and the other men in the band. I feel I have to go on and write more for horns, explore more possibilities of textures. There are things I hear in my head that I don't often hear in other people's music, and I want to get more of those down. And I keep hearing new things and I have to find out what value they have, how they workout."

It sounds clear to me that Speak Like a Child is an impressive further stage in the evolution of Herbie Hancock as writer and player. From the first time I heard him, I felt Herbie had a singular quality of incisive, searching lyricism. And as his experience has deepened and become more diversified, his music has become both more personal and more challenging. In Speak Like a Child, Herbie Hancock has created a durably pleasurable montage of those elements of childhood which remain in people who continue to be responsive, spontaneous, open to hope and to that sense of wonder that is essential to being fully alive.

-Nat Hentoff

RVG CD Reisssue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT SPEAK LIKE A CHILD

Three years separate the recording of Speak Like a Child and Herbie Hancock's previous Blue Note album, Maiden Voyage. That's an extremely long time for an artist as prolific and popular as Hancock, and it cannot be explained simply by the demands of touring with the Miles Davis quintet or by citing the numerous other recording projects featuring Hancock with Davis or as a first-call session pianist. Hancock's evolving concepts also contributed to the uncommon delay in following up Voyage, which was, up until that point, the most successful album of Hancock's career.

Two recording projects under Hancock's name did take place during 1966. The first, with a nine-piece ensemble, failed in its attempt to incorporate populist sources. "I was trying to make a funk record without knowing a thing about funk," Hancock explained to Bob Belden in 1998. "I hadn't really gotten into rock music by then. I was still sort of a jazz snob, and the date didn't turn out as I expected." A single selection from the sessions, "Don't Even Go There," appears in the boxed set Herbie Hancock: The Complete Blue Note Sixties Sessions. Later that year, Hancock scored the acclaimed Michelangelo Antonioni film Blow-Up, and a soundtrack album was released on Verve. Both efforts indicate Hancock's interest in working with larger ensembles, and the film music provided moments to explore the lyrical and harmonically challenging notions heard in the present album. By the end of 1967, the Davis quintet was taking its first steps toward fusion, and (at least in the studio) had begun to incorporate added instrumental voices, electric keyboards, and rock-like rhythms.

For all this surrounding music, Speak Like a Child represents a direction of its own, one that Hancock describes in a typically articulate manner in Nat Hentoff's original liner notes. The frequently referenced influence of Gil Evans, detectable in the mere presence of bass trombone and alto flute, produces fresh sonorities for the sextet instrumentation and an overall feeling of warmth, This band made an impression on its leader that Hancock is quick to acknowledge over three decades later, "Once I made that album," he commented recently, "there was no doubt in my mind that when I organized my own band it would be a sextet."

The program Hancock assembled is one of his most memorable, as can be seen by the prior and subsequent history of the individual pieces, "Riot" had been recorded by the Davis quintet the previous July for the Nefettiti album, and quickly became part of the Davis quintet's live repertoire. In the three versions included here, the ensemble is not yet balanced and the improvising cautious on the first alternate, but things settled in with probing playing all around on the second alternate. The master, cut last, is best Of all,

The Davis quintet attempted to record "Speak Like a Child" in January 1968 without producing a finished take (its effort is documented on Columbia's Complete Miles Davis Quintet 1965—1968 boxed set), Hancock revisited this beautiful piece twice in the '70s, on Jaco Pastorius's debut album and on a trio session with Ron Carter and Tony Williams that Sony released in Japan, and cut "Child" once again in 2003 under the leadership of drummer Harvey Mason

Carter's "First Trip" has debuted the previous September on a Joe Henderson quartet session included on the Milestone album Tetragon. "Toys," which would become a staple of both editions of the sextet Hancock led in the late '60s and early '70s, was performed and recorded at Hancock's first V.S.O.P. concert during the 1976 Newport-New York Jazz Festival, "Sorcerer," cut by the Davis quintet in May '67 for the Columbia album of the same name, was reprised by Hancock first in 1981 (in a quartet with Carter, Williams, and Wynton Marsalis), and then again 20 years later for the Directions in Music quintet that includes Roy Hargrove, Michael Brecker, John Patitucci, and Roy Haynes.

Since the beautiful "Goodbye to Childhood" has not been revisited by Hancock, the alternate take is all the more welcome, not to mention quite distinct from the master. The alternate features unaccompanied piano between the framing ensemble statements, and while not technically a "solo" track, does mark Hancock's first substantial recorded statement sans accompaniment. His evolving harmonic ideas emerge here with particular clarity.

If Speak Like a Child influenced Hancock's future ensemble choices, its gentle, soft-spoken attitude represents something of an oasis in his evolving conception. Other, more energetic and electronic notions took priority, a choice influenced at least to some degree by the working environment in which Hancock and his peers found themselves. Music this tender is hard to imagine in a nightclub, much less in the stadiums and large concert spaces that became the settings for most of Hancock's subsequent performing career. For sustained intimate listening, however, what Herbie Hancock accomplished with these musicians on these sessions cannot be beat.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2004

Complete Sixties Sessions Liner Notes

January and February of 1967 saw the Miles Davis Quintet in residence at the Vanguard. Joe Henderson, Eddie Gomez, Scotty Holt (on a one-nighter in Baltimore) and Jack DeJohnette graced the stand during this bleak time for jazz. As recalled by Ron McClure, “Herbie called me at about eight o’clock on a Saturday night to come down and play with Miles Davis for union scale ($87.50 at the time). I went down there and the band was Wayne, Joe Henderson, Tony Williams and Herbie. Miles didn’t come. the band never said a word to me about what they were going to play, they just started to play. I still don’t know what we played.”

On January 13, Herbie, Wayne and Ron entered the studio to record a date with Lee Morgan. Standards (CDP-23213), remained unissued until 1997, but upon its release added to both Lee’s vast Blue Note legacy and memorable Hancock solos. March 20 found Herbie in the studio again as a sideman on Wayne Shorter’s Schizophrenia (BN-84:297), with Ron and Joe Chambers. Herbie’s solo on “Miyako” is a treasure.

Miles then took the Quintet on a West Coast tour, to climax at the Berkeley Jazz Festival (On April 7). The Berkeley concert was incredible, with Albert Stinson now on bass. The group was now beginning to burn like before, and Herbie was starting to add touches of his post-Miles style. After working two weeks at Shelly’s Manne Hole at the end of April and early May (with Buster Williams on bass), Miles went into the Columbia Studios in Hollywood on May 9 and recorded a single track “Limbo,” which was eventually released in 1979.

When the Quintet returned to New York, Miles decided to remain in town and book the Village Gate as a home base. For the months of June July and August, Miles would rent out the basement club and promote his own concerts. This gave Miles a rest and Herbie became available for sessions. Little did he know that he was about to embark on an unprecedented series of recording sessions. From May 16, Miles went into the studio seven times. The albums Sorcerer, Nefertiti and Water Babies were issued from these sessions. During June, Herbie participated in Wes Montomery’s hit A Day In The Life (A&M-3001).

Lee Morgan went into the studio on July 14 to record another Blue Note album. On the date was Wayne, Herbie, Hutcherson, Ron Carter and Billy Higgins. The album was eventually released as The Procrastinator (BN-LA-582) in 1977. Just five days later, on July 19, Herbie, Wayne and Ron finished Miles’s epic Nefertiti album (Columbia CS-9594). To hear the full depth of Herbie’s style, compare the two recordings. For Miles. Herbie plays in a style unique to the Quintet, but for Lee, Herbie gives the date a classic Blue Note feel. What musicianship!

Just two days later (July 21) Herbie played on a quartet date with Bobby Hutcherson, that, strangely enough, was never released until 1979. The album is called Oblique (GFX-3016), and it is quite possibly one of the finest recordings in jazz. With Albert Stinson on bass and Joe Chambers on drums, this sessions literally redefines sensitivity and sophistication. Herbie’s “Theme From Blow-Up” was recorded at this session, and is included in this box set to showcase the composition and this incredible performance. During August, Herbie recorded Harold Vick’s The Melody Is Here (RCA-3902), and the high spots from these sessions are three quartet performances with Harold Vick, Harbie, Cranshaw and Grady Tate. “If Ever I Would Leave You” has a great Herbie solo.

In the fall of 1967, Miles took the group out of town again, and the band was on the West Coast. The band set house records at the Penthouse in Seattle, and eventually ended up in Los Angeles. The band returned to the Village Gate in October for a couple of weeks before heading for a two week tour of Europe organized by George Wein. Because of the relationship between the Concerts and European radio and TV there are many verite recordings of this tour that are available. You can hear the band about to explode, and Herbie feeds the fire. His style with Miles was unlike his albums on Blue Note.

When Miles went back into the studio on December 4, the sound of the band expanded for the first time. Herbie played celeste. The track was Circle In The Round (Columbia KC-36278) and was the start of Miles’s crossover period. At the end of the month, on the 28th, Miles went into the studio and recorded “Water On The Pond.” These sessions were kept in the can and only released in 1979 and 198O.

Also in December, Herbie recorded with Cal Tjader (Hip Vibrations) and Kenny Burrell (Blues The Common Ground), both for Verve, and reunited with Wes Montgomery for Down Here On The Ground (A&M 3OO6). On the Tjader date, Herbie connects with Ron on Django. As with most sessions for Creed Taylor, who was hiring Herbie whenever Herbie was in town, the final album might take two to five sessions over two months. The Burrell date, the Montgomery date, and sessions for Artie Butler (Have You Met Miss Jones?), George Benson (Giblet Gravy), Kai and J.J. (Israel) and the Soul Flutes (Trust In Me) kept Herbie busy January and February of 1968. Herbie was on 12 sessions on those two months, not including the Miles Davis sessions, which he squeezed in.

Miles Davis’s Miles In The Sky was the first album to feature Herbie playing the Fender Rhodes electric piano. The sessions from January and February show the band in disintegration, but conceptually heading for the future. “Side Car,” “Sanctuary,” “Fun,” Herbie’s composition “Teo’s Bag” (aka: “The Collector”) and “Paraphernalia” were outlining the next step. On January 25, 1968 Herbie brought in two new compositions for Miles to consider. These versions of “I Have A Dream” and “Speak Like A Child” show that Herbie was beginning to break the musical bonds of Miles Davis and go in a direction that was all his own. The harmonic demands of Herbie’s new music were a bit too much for Miles, who preferred his music simplified. The Quintet could not get the vibe Herbie was reaching for, and this music was left in the vaults. These rehearsals were finally issued on the Complete Studio Recordings Of The Miles Davis Quintet: 1965-68 (Columbia).

After finishing up studio sessions for Verve and A&M, Herbie went back into the studio for Blue Note this time as a leader, the first since the July, 1966 funk session. Herbie owed Blue Note a lot of records, but his constant travel and the difficulties of actually putting together recording sessions made his studio output as a leader less frequent than Blue Note may have wanted.

The alternate takes from these sessions were chosen for two reasons; they represent a work-in-progress view: how musicians create a memorable performances from the continuity of earlier takes, and the fact that any Herbie solo is worth hearing. “Riot” clearly demonstrates this model. The first alternate take (take 1) shows the ensemble not quite blending on the melody statements, and by the second alternate take (take 4) you can hear the group jell. The master take of “Riot” is fully defined and flawless. Yet in the earlier takes, you can hear Herbie go for it in a way that he didn’t go for on the master.

The alternate take of “Goodbye To Childhood” is a lost gem. Hidden in the vaults for 30 years, this is Herbie’s first solo piano recording. After a brief ensemble introduction, it’s only Herbie until the band returns at the end. And what beautiful Herbie it is. His style was now at a turning point, and this solo shows us the new Herbie: harmonically complex, and filled with dense, polychordal voicings. And yet, with all of this complexity, the melodies themselves are hauntingly beautiful, and evocative of an individual view.

The album Speak Like A Child catapulted Herbie into the forefront of jazz composition. Meanwhile, he was still a member of the Miles Davis Quintet, and that had some drawbacks. The band was going through constant turnover on the bass chair, and the work schedule was determined more by when Miles wanted to work. Herbie rehearsed with Miles at his house before record dates, and recorded and gigged with him, yet by 1968, Herbie wanted to move on. In April, Herbie was on the West coast with Miles and the Gil Evans Orchestra. When Miles returned to New York, he went back into the Village Gate and again, Herbie was free to record.

“I used to see Herbie on jingle and TV dates.” Phil Woods told me. “Herbie and Wayne one day, Herbie and Ron the next day. Sometimes we would work for these guys named Murtaugh, and they would hire the best jazz musicians in town to do Commercial dates. Herbie was on my album Round Trip (Verve).” Herbie was the first call for many arrangers, including Don Sebesky and Oliver Nelson.

In May and June, Herbie recorded with Miles “Stuff,” “Country Son,” and “Black Comedy” to finish out the Miles In The Sky album. “Tout de Suite” (a rough draft) and the master takes of Fille de Kilimanjaro, “Petits Machin” and “Tout de Suite” were destined for the mind shattering Filles de Kilimanjaro album. These June sessions would be the last that Herbie would participate in as a member of the Quintet.

In the midst of this tumultuous musical scene with Miles, Herbie also found time to record with Roy Ayers Stone Soul Picnic (Atlantic) with Charles Tolliver, Gary Bartz and Miroslav Vitous, (who had been subbing with Miles) and Grady Tate’s Windmills Of Your Mind (Skye). In July, Herbie appeared on Charles Tolliver’s Paper Man album (with Ron and Joe Chambers) and in August. Miles was still holding down weekends at the Village Gate during those months, with an occasional gig in Philadelphia at the Show Boat. Miles was going to take a European vacation in September and then get married, so there was no work for the Quintet.

Herbie himself got married and went on his honeymoon to Brazil in September 1968. “I got sick, that’s all there was to it.’ Herbie said. “Jack Whitemore (Miles’s agent) called about some gigs, and I said I couldn’t make them because I’m down here sick…and he thinks I don’t want to do the dates.” The next thing you know Chick Corea is in the band by late September (for a week at the Plugged Nickel). Miles also recruited a young English bass player named Dave Holland, and voila!, the new Miles Davis Quintet was born.

This development gave Herbie a newfound initiative to form his own group. With the music from Speak Like A Child (which had been released in September 1968) as his foundation, and with solid hits from the past behind him, Herbie was ready in a musical way to go on his own. In October, Herbie debuted his new sextet at the Village Vanguard. In the band was Johnny Coles on trumpet, Joe Henderson on tenor sax, Garnett Brown. On trombone, Buster Williams on bass and Albert “Tootie” Heath on drums. This group was a magical band, and would often expand upon the music, until an entire set would be comprised of just one song (shades of the electric sextet a few years later).

Herbie also remained busy in the studios. In October, Herbie recorded an album for Paul Desmond (Summertime on A&M, arranged by Don Sebesky), on which Herbie provides one of the greatest performances by a sideman in support of an album. On October 14, Herbie joined back up with Stanley Turrentine in a big band setting arranged by Thad Jones (Always Something There BN-84298). More sessions followed into November, and Herbie found himself on sessions for J.J. and Kai (Betwixt And Between, A&M), Luis Gasca (The Little Giant, Atlantic) and back with Miles Davis for his first multi-keyboard session. “Directions,” “Ascent,” “Two Faced,” “Splash” and “Dual Mr. Tillmon Anthony” were recorded in November 1968. Miles was keenly aware of Herbie’s ability to work with other musicians, and Herbie and Chick Corea forged a musical bond playing together on these sessions that continues till this day.

The session calls kept coming in: Milton Nascimento (Courage for A&M), Toots Thielemans (Toots for Command), Peter, Paul and Mary (!!) (Late Again for Warner Brothers) and an odd session for Columbia which ended up on a Christmas compilation (“Deck The Halls” from Jingle Bell Jazz) which featured Woody Shaw, Herbie and Chick Corea on Fender pianos, Al Caiola and Ed Shaughnessy. But his next session would be an important gathering of musicians, who would change the course of jazz history.

On February 18, 1969, Miles Davis assembled Wayne, Herbie, Chick Joe Zawinul on keyboards, John McLaughlin on guitar, Dave Holland on bass and Tony Williams on drums to record. The resulting album, In A Silent Way (Columbia CS-9875) had a profound affect on jazz for years to come. The album announced, not with a bang, but with a feeling, the start of the jazz fusion movement. Highly influential, even to this day. In A Silent Way took both the musicians and listeners on a trip. Sessions continued in March with Roy Ayers (Daddy Bug, Atlantic) and an unissued session with Attila Zoller for Embryo.

2013 HD Tracks Liner Notes

There’s nothing like flunking, picking yourself up and learning from your mistakes. That’s what Herbie Hancock’s story was in the mid-60s. After his 1965 Blue Note milestone, Maiden Voyage (his fifth for the label and most popular to date), Herbie decided to conjure up a funk-inflected album in 1966 with a nine-piece band. The only problem was that at the time he didn’t know much about funk, or rock for that matter (that would be rectified in 1973 with his Columbia Records funk-filled fusion Head Hunters album highly influenced by the likes of Sly and JB) and still considered himself a “jazz snob.” That project ended up on the scrap heap.

Meanwhile, also in 1966, Herbie scored the soundtrack to director Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English-speaking film, Blow-Up, about the swinging London scene. Herbie told Billboard that this music appears “only when someone turns on the radio or puts on a record.” (His filmic experience came in handy in 1969 when he composed the music for an episode of Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids TV show that was released as the album Fat Albert Routunda on Warner Bros. Records, and in 1984 when he wrote the Oscar-winning score for Bertrand Tavernier’s Round Midnight film starring Dexter Gordon.)

The mid-60s was a busy time for Herbie, who was helping to pioneer new jazz ground as a member of the Miles Davis Quintet. Nevertheless he headed back into Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio in 1968 on March 3 and 9 to record Speak Like a Child, the long-awaited follow-up to Maiden Voyage. But in the almost three years since that release, Herbie had matured as a compelling pianist as well as an imaginative composer. He was being influenced by his Miles bandmates – tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter and the dynamic rhythm team of bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams – and was also all ears to the orchestral arrangements of Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson and Thad Jones, with whom he performed periodically.

As a result of the latter, Herbie enlisted three players – Thad on Flugelhorn, Peter Philips on bass trombone and Jerry Dodgion on alto flute – to color his tunes harmonically in lieu of sharing solo duties. In fact, neither Ron nor drummer Mickey Roker jump in with choruses either. Ron keeps the steady beat that undergirds the sessions and Mickey provides the drum drive. Happily there are no round-robin solo contests on any of the six tracks. Instead, it’s largely Herbie’s show to deliver his bedazzling frills and fancies on the piano. Though it’s hardly a one-man show, there’s much to be said about listening to this album by focusing on Herbie, who puts on a captivating-but never show-offy-performance.

While Speak Like a Child shares a common lineage with Maiden Voyage in its infectious lyricism, Herbie was an evolutionary musician who was hearing music in a new and fresh way. His songbook for the session includes two tunes he had written that had become part of Miles’s setlist: “Riot” (instigated by the social and political turbulence of the outside world) and “The Sorcerer” (Herbie’s descriptor for Miles the enchanter) that bookend the album. Herbie plays buoyantly on the tracks that are swinging, skipping affairs.

Another Herbie original, “Toys,” swings with horn/flute luminosity, with Herbie reflecting on the keys the riffs the trio of pastel colorists paint. The song dashes with the sensibility of a chase. This tune comes after the only non-Herbie composition, the bright and playful “First Trip” that Ron brought to the date. In a trio setting of piano-bass-drums, Ron’s bass is delightfully and importantly high in the mix, while Herbie sends up a sweeping flourish of notes and phrases.

The highlights of the album come in its most reflective moments, including the slow-tempo title track that exudes a quality of trusting innocence, soft dreams and wistful nostalgia. The finale is the resplendent ballad, “Goodbye to Childhood.” At once, grand and intimate, it’s a sobering end to the overall tender album. Talking to original liner note writer Nat Hentoff, Herbie said that the wellspring of the recording was “child-like. But not childish.”

There’s a sense of hope amidst the tumult – 1968 was a hellacious year where less than a month after these sessions, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, followed two months later by Robert Kennedy’s assassination – that belies the time. Again from the liners on the theme of the album, Herbie sagely spoke: “… there are certain elements of childhood we lose and wish we could have back – purity, spontaneity. When they do return to us, we’re at our best. So what I’m telling the world is: ‘Speak like a child.’”

Forty-five years later, with bipartisan politics run amuck and threats of international and domestic terrorism rampant, Herbie’s sentiment still holds true. Culturally, we need to “speak like a child” as much now as then. While Speak Like a Child didn’t make for a game-changer in the ’60s, it continues to shower beauty and belief, optimism and anticipation. If could very well be Herbie’s most profound jazz contribution. – Dan Ouellette

Herbie Hancock: “The time I actually heard the Hi-Lo’s, I started picking that stuff out; my ear was happening. I could hear stuff and that’s when I really learned some much farther-out voicings – like the harmonies I used on “Speak Like a Child” – just being able to do that. I really got that from Clare Fischer’s arrangements for the Hi-Lo’s. Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept…. He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that’s where it came from.”

Blue Note Spotlight - July 2015

http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/herbie-hancock-tells-the-world-to-speak-like/

There’s nothing like flunking, picking yourself up and learning from your mistakes. After Herbie Hancock’s 1965 Blue Note milestone, Maiden Voyage (his fifth for the label and most popular to date), he decided to conjure up a funk-inflected album in 1966 with a nine-piece band. The only problem was that at the time he didn’t know much about funk, or rock for that matter (that would be rectified in 1973 with his Columbia Records funk-filled fusion Head Hunters album highly influenced by the likes of Sly and JB) and still considered himself a “jazz snob.” That project ended up unissued.

Meanwhile, also in 1966, Herbie scored the soundtrack to director Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English-speaking film, Blow-Up, about the swinging London scene. The filmic experience came in handy later in 1969 when he composed the music for an episode of Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids TV show that was released as the album Fat Albert Rotunda on Warners Bros. Records, and in 1986 when he wrote the Oscar-winning score for Bertrand Tavernier’s Round Midnight film starring Dexter Gordon.

The mid-60s was a busy time for Herbie, who was helping to pioneer new jazz ground as a member of the Miles Davis Quintet. Nevertheless he headed back into Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio in 1968 on March 6 and 9 to record Speak Like a Child, the long-awaited follow-up to Maiden Voyage. But in the almost three years since that release, Herbie had matured as a compelling pianist as well as an imaginative composer. He was being influenced by his Miles band mates—tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter and the dynamic rhythm team of bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams—and was also all ears to the orchestral arrangements of Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson and Thad Jones, with whom he performed periodically.

As a result of the latter, Herbie enlisted three players—Thad on flugelhorn, Peter Phillips on bass trombone and Jerry Dodgion on alto flute—to color his tunes harmonically in lieu of sharing solo duties. In fact, neither Ron nor drummer Mickey Roker jump in with choruses either. Ron keeps the steady beat that undergirds the sessions and Mickey provides the drum drive. There are no round-robin solo contests on any of the six tracks. Instead, it’s largely Herbie’s show to deliver his bedazzling frills and fancies on the piano. Though it’s hardly a one-man show, there’s much to be said about listening to this album by focusing on Herbie, who puts on a captivating—but never show-offy—performance.

While Speak Like a Child shares a common lineage with Maiden Voyage in its infectious lyricism, Herbie was an evolutionary musician who was hearing music in a new and fresh way. His songbook for the session includes two tunes he had written that had become part of Miles’s set list: “Riot” (instigated by the social and political turbulence of the outside world) and “The Sorcerer” (Herbie’s descriptor for Miles the enchanter) that bookend the album. Herbie plays buoyantly on the tracks that are swinging, skipping affairs.

Another Herbie original, “Toys,” swings with horn/flute luminosity, with Herbie reflecting on the keys the riffs the trio of pastel colorists paint. The song dashes with the sensibility of a chase. This tune comes after the only non-Herbie composition, the bright and playful “First Trip” that Ron brought to the date. In a trio setting of piano-bass-drums, Ron’s bass is delightfully and importantly high in the mix, while Herbie sends up a sweeping flourish of notes and phrases.

The highlights of the album come in its most reflective moments, including the slow-tempo title track that exudes a quality of trusting innocence, soft dreams and wistful nostalgia. The finale is the resplendent ballad, “Goodbye to Childhood.” At once, grand and intimate, it’s a sobering end to the overall tender album. Talking to original liner note writer Nat Hentoff, Herbie said that the wellspring of the recording was “child-like. But not childish.”

There’s a sense of hope amidst the tumult—1968 was a hellacious year where less than a month after these sessions, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, followed two months later by Robert Kennedy’s assassination—that belies the time. Again from the liners on the theme of the album, Herbie sagely spoke: “…there are certain elements of childhood we lose and wish we could have back—purity, spontaneity. When they do return to us, we’re at our best. So what I’m telling the world is: ‘Speak like a child.’”

Decades later, Herbie’s sentiment still holds true. Culturally, we need to “speak like a child” as much now as then. Speak Like a Child continues to shower beauty and belief, optimism and anticipation. It could very well be Herbie’s most profound jazz contribution.