Herbie Hancock

Speak Like A Child

BLUE NOTE, 1968

You say: “Acoustic, with lean orchestration and featuring Hancock as the only soloist throughout the entire album. A lifetime favourite album of his, and in my Top 10 favourite albums of all time. It’s that good.” Ron Robinson, via Twitter

On his penultimate Blue Note LP, Hancock attempted to capture the shifting colours and harmonious grace of Gil Evans’ arrangements for Miles Davis but with “the smallest number of horns possible”. Intending to soundtrack “a bright future” amid an America of riots and upheaval, Hancock enlisted Jerry Dodgion on alto flute, Thad Jones on flugelhorn and Peter Phillips on bass trombone, and with a rhythm section of Ron Carter and Mickey Roker created what is arguably his most beautiful acoustic work. Rather than working with definite chord patterns, Hancock creates a complex interweaving of melodies, scales and colours that simultaneously harks back to the world he was leaving while pointing towards his mind-expanding electronic compositions of the early ‘70s.