Herbie Hancock on Vinyl: Where to Start and Where to Go Next

Few musicians have changed shape as often as Herbie Hancock, and fewer still have done it this well. Born in Chicago in 1940, he was performing with a symphony orchestra as a boy and cutting his first Blue Note album, Takin' Off, at twenty-two. The single from it, Watermelon Man, was covered so quickly and so widely that it turned into a standard almost before he had settled into being a bandleader.

In May 1963 Miles Davis pulled him into the group that became known as the second great quintet, alongside bassist Ron Carter, a teenage Tony Williams on drums, and soon after Wayne Shorter on tenor. Hancock spent five years there learning what to leave out, and spent his nights off making his own records for Blue Note. Those two streams, the sideman's discipline and the leader's writing, produced the run of 1960s albums most listeners still start with.

What came after is why the catalog rewards collecting rather than sampling. He moved to Warner Bros. for the Mwandishi sextet and its banks of electronics, then to Columbia, where Sextant pushed that experiment as far as it would go and Head Hunters answered it with a leaner, harder funk band. Vocoders followed, then turntables on Rockit in 1983, then a return to acoustic piano in the 1990s. Here is the Hancock that GOOD TASTE carries, in order, with a note on where each record sits and what it does that the others do not.

Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles (1964)

Cut in a single day at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in June 1964, Empyrean Isles strips the band down to a quartet: Hancock, Freddie Hubbard on cornet rather than his usual trumpet, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Four pieces, no horn section to hide behind, and a fourteen-minute closer in The Egg that goes further out than the record's reputation suggests. Cantaloupe Island sits in the middle of it, which is how most people arrive here.

Why it's worth purchasing

• A pared-back quartet date with Freddie Hubbard switching to cornet
• Home of Cantaloupe Island, one of the most borrowed pieces in his book
• Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series pressing

Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage (1965)

Recorded nine months later with George Coleman added on tenor, Maiden Voyage is a concept album about the sea, and it commits: the title track and Dolphin Dance both move the way water does, patient and slightly unresolved. All five compositions are Hancock's, which makes this the clearest statement of his writing before he plugged anything in. We also carry it as a standard Blue Note edition if you would rather have the plainer pressing.

Why it's worth purchasing

• A concept record built around the ocean, with all five pieces written by Hancock
• The Davis rhythm section joined by George Coleman on tenor
• Carried in two pressings, the Blue Note Essentials Series and a standard edition

Herbie Hancock - Sextant (1973)

Sextant was his first record for Columbia and the last by the Mwandishi sextet: Bennie Maupin, Eddie Henderson, Julian Priester, Buster Williams and Billy Hart, with Patrick Gleeson treating the synthesizer as a full member rather than a colour. Three long pieces, all of them drifting between free playing and something with a pulse. It is the deep end of the catalog and the record that made the clean break of Head Hunters necessary.

Why it's worth purchasing

• The last and furthest-out of the Mwandishi sextet albums
• Patrick Gleeson's synthesizers played as an instrument, not an effect
• 180 gram pressing

Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters (1973)

Six months after Sextant, Hancock kept only Bennie Maupin and built a new band around bassist Paul Jackson, drummer Harvey Mason and percussionist Bill Summers. Head Hunters is four tracks long: Chameleon, a rebuilt Watermelon Man that hands the opening to Summers blowing across a beer bottle, Sly, and the slow crawl of Vein Melter. Clavinet and Fender Rhodes carry the harmony, ARP synthesizers carry the bass line, and the whole thing found an audience well outside jazz radio.

Why it's worth purchasing

• Chameleon and the rebuilt Watermelon Man on the same side
• Clavinet, Fender Rhodes and ARP synthesizers over a four-piece funk band
• Music on Vinyl pressing

Herbie Hancock - Thrust (1974)

The follow-up swaps Harvey Mason for Mike Clark, and that one change is the whole record. Thrust runs four long pieces, and Actual Proof is the one drummers still take apart bar by bar. Butterfly, on the second side, has had a long afterlife of its own, including the version Hancock cut in Tokyo with singer Kimiko Kasai on Butterfly, which we also stock.

Why it's worth purchasing

• Mike Clark's drumming, and Actual Proof as the reason people study it
• Butterfly, the ballad producers and DJs keep returning to
• Music on Vinyl pressing

Herbie Hancock - Sunlight (1978)

By 1978 Hancock was singing, after a fashion. Sunlight runs his voice through a vocoder across most of the first side, and the opener, I Thought It Was You, is the one that still turns up in disco and boogie sets. Good Question pulls in Jaco Pastorius and Tony Williams, which tells you the playing never got casual just because the surface went pop.

Why it's worth purchasing

• Vocoder vocals used as an instrument years before the sound became common
• I Thought It Was You, a lasting floor record
• Jaco Pastorius and Tony Williams on Good Question

Herbie Hancock - The New Standard (1996)

The argument behind The New Standard is simple: the songbook jazz musicians work from should keep growing. So an acoustic sextet with Michael Brecker, John Scofield, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette and Don Alias takes on Prince, Nirvana, Sade, Steely Dan, Peter Gabriel and Stevie Wonder and plays them as material rather than as covers. Thirty years on it reads less like a gimmick and more like a plan.

Why it's worth purchasing

• An acoustic band reading Prince, Nirvana, Sade and Steely Dan as jazz material
• Michael Brecker, John Scofield, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette across the session
• Verve By Request pressing

If You Like Herbie Hancock

• Miles Davis: the bandleader who hired him, and the catalog Hancock's 1960s playing sits inside.
• Wayne Shorter: quintet bandmate and the other great composer to come out of that room.
• Roy Ayers: the vibraphone side of the same jazz-funk crossing, and worth the whole run.
• Thundercat: a direct descendant of the Head Hunters rhythm section, with the harmony to match.
• BadBadNotGood: young players working the seam between jazz and hip-hop that Hancock opened.

One curio worth knowing about before you go hunting: Jammin' With Herbie is a 1961 hard bop session led by Donald Byrd and Pepper Adams, repackaged a decade later under Hancock's name with the track titles changed. Good playing, honestly labelled here, just not the album its cover implies. For more in this direction, dig through Jazz Funk and Jazz Fusion, and browse everything by him at Herbie Hancock. Ask anyone behind the counter and we will happily pull a few more.