Album Reviews

Despite once having endorsed Bose, Herbie Hancock is clearly a good listener. For his first Blue Note solo outing back in 1962 when he was just 22, he led with “Watermelon Man,” an irresistible “crossover” tune that could attract a crowd beyond Blue Note’s usual buyers. While Hancock says it’s based on a childhood recollection of street vendors, the song’s groove was very much in tune with “the street” circa 1962. Hancock’s playing is funky but not flamboyant.

After the enticing lead, Hancock serves up a cool, angular Miles influenced waltz, comping on it like McCoy Tyner on a Coltrane date before breaking into an ornate dazzling solo that let’s you know he has arrived, even if some of the “Watermelon Man” fans have left the building.

By this time, the jazz fans are luxuriating in the band behind Hancock. In his annotation, Leonard Feather’s greatly understates it when he writes that Hancock “didn’t stint” in selecting his bandmates on his “maiden voyage” (which not coincidentally became the name of Hancock’s second solo Blue Note outing). They are Freddie Hubbard, Dexter Gordon, Butch Warren and Billy Higgins. They’ll do.

These guys are cool and yet bluesy, winding up the side with “Empty Pockets,” another toe-tapper that’s sufficiently in the pocket to perk up the “Watermelon Man” constituency, while Morgan and Gordon keep the more cerebral among them entertained.

Side two offers more of the same, with Hubbard playing with exuberant abandon on the opener “The Maze,” and switching to fluegelhorn on the Neal Hefti-ish “Driftin’,” with a softer more detached touch, while Gordon’s tenor paying some dues to Coltrane’s early Atlantic period, at least to these admittedly semi-informed ears. The set ends with the gorgeous ballad “Alone and I,” the least “ditti-ish” track and the one with the most emotional substance, with Gordon’s airy, full tone taking on Ben Webster-ish dimensions.

In the passage of time, some 45 years later, the musical comings and goings take on a comfortable familiarity for the long-time jazz fan. For those looking for a way in (we get emails all the time from readers wishing to get into jazz and/or classical from a rock background), this album isn’t a bad place to start.

By this point, Rudy Van Gelder had deviated somewhat from his “hard left/hard right rhythm on one side solo on the other all for the sake of the mono mixdown” balance, so he’s placed Hancock and Warren center stage, with Hubbard hard left and Gordon and Higgins hard right. Also at this point Van Gelder had improved his piano miking, eliminating the boxy, distorted sound found on some early recordings (he wasn’t the only engineer who had this problem).

Van Gelder partly solved the piano overload problem by keeping recording levels down and you might find it curious that the star of the show seems overshadowed by Hubbard and Gordon. The piano’s transient clarity and attractive tonal richness more than make up for a somewhat distant perspective.

I don’t have an original Blue Note but I do have a very fine sounding blue label Liberty pressed using a “Van Gelder” cut lacquer, which might have been the one used for the first pressing. Those don’t usually sound as good as an original first pressing but they come close.

This reissue is remarkably true to the sound of that pressing but it is actually better on most counts, though time has taken a toll on the tape, which suffers from a few minor drop-outs that will in no way detract from your listening pleasure.

The decision to remain true to the original was a good one, especially the choice to retain the bit of edge to the cymbals and trumpet that gives the session a compelling vibrancy and energy.

A great reissue of Hancock’s classy solo debut that’s easy to recommend.