Herbie Hancock
Out of 41 studio LPs, 12 live sets, 62 compilations and five OSTs: the essence of controlled freedom. By Andrew Male.
“With degrees in electrical engineering and music, he combined both disciplines.”
THE THEME of Herbie Hancock’s solo career is one of constant reinvention. The super-smart Chicago-born son of a lower middle-class family, raised in a multi-cultural neighbourhood, Hancock studied classical piano from the age of seven, with harmonic ideas influenced by vocal quartet The Hi-Lo’s and arranger Gil Evans. After graduating from Grinnell College, Iowa in 1960, aged 20, with degrees in electrical engineering and music, he effectively combined both disciplines, approaching his piano playing with an analytical curiosity, rearranging and dissecting standard elements to produce different results. After moving to New York with jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd and releasing his first solo album, 1962’s Takin’ Off, featuring the eternal funk groove of Watermelon Man, he caught the attention of everyone from Freddie Hubbard and Roland Kirk to Eric Dolphy and
Miles Davis. Davis enlisted Hancock into his new quintet in 1964, allowing him a platform branch out into what they called “controlled freedom”. It’s this controlled freedom that Hancock has applied to his own work ever since, from the spiralling fluidity of mid-’60s Blue Note LPs Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage to the deceptively beautiful melodic complexities of 1968’s
Speak Like A Child, the out-of-body spirituality of his Mwandishi group, the hard-driving electro of Future
Shock and the simple acoustic beauty of The Joni Letters.
While it’s impossible to reduce such a career to a mere 10 albums (and we definitely didn’t have room for any of the many LPs on which Hancock was a sideman) there are certainly records that have aged better than others, recordings that offer a more exciting gateway into his world than others, and that’s what we’ve tried to do here. If a familiar record isn’t immediately visible, chances are it will be mentioned in relation to one that is. For, if ever there was an artist who has too many great records to fit into a MOJO How To Buy, it’s Herbie Hancock.