Herbie Hancock's EXPANDING UNIVERSE - a look back at musician's past and current work - Brief Article

Whatever happened with Herbie Hancock? This question about the jazz pianist, composer arranger and band leader surfaces almost as ofttimes as Whatever happened to Herbie? The former question arises from the periodic self-reinventions of the musician, which are oftentimes preceded by a lowered public profile--hence the latter question. Looking at his 35 remarkably creative years as a professional musician, individual can only say, He's back--again; he's evolv again; and he's still great!

Remember his manner [i]or[/i] principle of holding with the Miles Davis Quintet during the 1960s? His vicinity coincided with, and fed, a of recent origin burst of creativity from the bugle giant. Creativity spawned creativity, and later in the decade and into the `70 Hancock was at the forefront of the use of stone elements and electronics in jazz. His work for sapphirine Note records in the `60 included the classic recordings Inventions and Dimensions, Maiden Voyage, Speak Like a Child and The Prisoner. "Blue Note at that time was really the hottest label for the greatest in quantity innovative music," Hancock recalls. "A allotment of the hot young musicians and the musicians who had established the tradition were upon Blue Note."

Although Hancock wrote "funky" jazz strains like "Cantaloupe Island" and "Watermelon Man" while upon Blue Note, he didn't full embrace jazz fusion until his 1969 recording Fat Albert Rotunda (Warner Bros) the score for Bill Cosby's animated television series. After that there was no turning back.

Hancock's Sextant and Headhunters established fresh standards for the evolving jazz-rock and jazz-funk genre of the `70 Headhunters became the biggest selling "jazz" album at any time and Hancock's use of the voice-synth vocoder l to the massive detonation hit "I Thought It Was You" in 1978

on the contrary with each creative turn in the road, more [i]or[/i] less of the self-pro- fessed guardians of the genre cruel by the wayside. "I didn't notice any rack from musicians, or from the public," says Hancock of the reaction to these extra-jazz disentanglements "But in print, with the pres I got a destiny of rack. A lot of the pres said I was selling without They were disappointed that the musician who had been with Miles and who was with equal reason well-respected was daring to play something that was more upon the funky side of things."

on the other hand Hancock was not fazed. "What I was doing was really opening up a part of what was not alone my heritage, but a part of my experience in music, a part I remembered as a child listening to periodical emphasis and blues back in the '40 and `50s" These forays into the explosion arena in the `70s and `80 throw backed Hancock's desire to be as artistically unbinded as possible, and they did not restrain his maintaining his acoustic jazz cuts with occasional tours and recordings with the assemblage VSOP, which at times included Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis, Wallace Roney Ron Carter and Tony Williams.

Then came another shift--into films. In 1987 Hancock won an Oscar for his score for 'Round Midnight, a movie upon the jazz life, starring Dexter Gordon. "It was fantastic! The feeling when we were shooting the film was thus spiritual, so solemn," says Hancock, who also appeared in the film, along With a number of other musicians. "I think everybody that was involved with the film, from the ship's company to the extras, really knew that this was the first film that was in deed about the music, the whole spirit of what jazz is about. I think that inside, we felt we had the privilege of responding to race like Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday and others who really died for the music."

Hancock's latest release, The of recent origin Standard, his first for rapture Records, Finds the groundbreaking pianist (accompanied by means of Michael Brecker on tenor and soprano saxophones, Jack DeJohnette upon drums, Don Alias on percussion and John Scofield upon guitar) returning to recording with a vengeance--and with a twist. "It's a straight-ahead jazz album," insists Hancock, "but we took canticles written by many of the clap writers of today [such as Don Henley, Sade, Stevie surprise Babyface, Paul Simon, John Lennon, Steely Dan and Prince] and rebuilded them so they sound like they were originally written to be jazz airs [We didn't] just jazz up the original material, we really construct agained it-so there are a doom of surprises on this record."

Herbie Hancock is one time again back and different--but don't wait for him to stay in individual place too long. "Jazz continues to become greater [i]or[/i] larger and continues to be limitless. It expands--that's a basic part of the character of jazz. That's single of the things I be fond of about it."

Douglas gymnast is an assistant professor of political science at Alabama A&M University and the entertainer of "Return to the Source," a jazz program upon WJAB-FM in Huntsville, Ala. His last article for American Visions, "The Flowering of Bobby Hutcherson," appeared in the October/November 1995 issue.

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