Presented online for the first time as an exclusive at HerbieHancock.com is the following epic essay by Bob Blumenthal, which originally appeared in the 1994 Warner Brothers double disc set The Complete Warner Brothers Recordings. We invite you to press play on our jukebox and enjoy an annotated history of Herbie’s fascinating Mwandishi period, spanning the albums The Prisoner, Fat Albert Rotunda, Mwandishi, and Crossings.
“When I told Miles Davis’s manager that I wanted to form my own group,” Herbie Hancock explained to a full house at Boston’s Jazz Workshop in 1972, “he asked me, Who do you plan to have in your trio?’ When I told him that planned to lead a sextet, he told me it was impossible for a group of that size to survive. Well, I kept a sextet together for three years until last week, when we added a seventh member!”
Hancock was speaking with justifiable pride, given the parlous state in which most working jazz artists found themselves in the early 70s. He had not only kept his band together, but sustained a constant personnel for two of those three years, taking advantage of the familiarity bred by nightly playing to build a collective knowledge that informed every set. It would not last forever. By 1974, Hancock had reduced and reconfigured his instrumentation, adopted a funkier rhythmic slant and achieved pop-chart success. His sextet period was no mere transition phase, however; it resulted in some memorable and influential music, most of which was documented during Hancock’s affiliation with Warner Bros.
If anyone was likely to beat the odds on leading a band in that rock-fixated era, it was Herbert Jeffrey Hancock, who had already shown an incredible knack for joining visionary impulses with commercial acceptance for nearly a decade. His first recording as a leader in 1962 had produced the blockbuster “Watermelon Man,” his 1965 masterpiece Maiden Voyage began life as music for a cologne commercial on television, and he had displayed singular range and flexibility with his score for Michelangelo Antonioni’s epochal film Blow-Up. Then there was the nearly six years Hancock spent in the Miles Davis Quintet, one of the seminal ensembles of that or any jazz period. Hancock was aboard when the trumpeter first added electric instruments, and would reconnect with Davis for influential recording sessions during the years that the music in the present collection was created.
So Hancock had one of jazz’s more diverse palettes at his disposal when he formed his band-including a thorough knowledge of bebop, modal and free jazz, a pioneer’s interest in the electric, rock-inflected style that had not yet been dubbed fusion, and experience writing for other media that prepared him for all manner of compositional sound-painting. He also knew what kind of ensemble would offer the greatest possibilities, which is why he insisted on a sextet where the smart money would have told him to economize.
The particular three-horn blend that Hancock favored can be traced back to his 1968 Blue Note album Speak Like A Child, where flugelhorn, bass trombone and alto flute were orchestrated in an expansive manner that revealed the influence of Miles Davis’s old friend and collaborator Gil Evans. The same options were available in Hancock’s first sextet, which is heard on the late 1969 sessions that produced the album Fat Albert Rotunda. The band had recorded The Prisoner for Blue Note earlier in the year which is closer to the searching impressionism of Speak Like A Child. Fat Albert Rotunda, in contrast, reflects the funkier electric avenues that link “Watermelon Man” to his contemporary efforts with Davis.
“I did the music for the Fat Albert cartoon show Bill Cosby did on TV,” Hancock explained in a 1971 interview. “Bill had the soundtrack tape, which he played for the executives at Warner Bros., and they flipped over it; they just loved it. So I chose to record Fat Albert Rotunda as my first album for the label-which gave me the freedom to do Mwandishi next.”
The album, which is Hancock’s most commercial venture to date, was built around the original Hancock sextet that included Johnny Coles (trumpet, flugelhorn), Garnett Brown (trombone), Joe Henderson (tenor sax, alto flute), Buster Williams (bass, electric bass) and Albert “Tootie” Heath (drums), with studio reinforcements added. Given the functional nature of the music, the emphasis on funk rhythms is not surprising and sounds less dated a quarter-century later than the primitive electric piano that Hancock employs. Creating music around Cosby’s popular characters provided an effective opportunity to write popular music with some challenging wrinkles. For the most part, Hancock succeeded surprisingly well.
After its mysterious introduction, with what sounds like a banjo/sitar hybrid and muted trumpet, “Wiggle-Waggle” becomes a funky celebration with clever rhythmic displacements and voicings passed among the brass and reeds. As responsive parts begin to accumulate, Joe Henderson launches a frisky, emotions-on-sleeve tenor solo as the ensemble shouts support. A typically open Hancock voicing, far removed from standard funk of this type, introduces a trumpet solo played by Count Basie alumni Joe Newman, who was in the trumpet section rather than the more introspective Coles. Newman’s shakes and the more complex backgrounds set up Hancock, who leaves a calling card of sorts with his opening solo break. His mix of riffing, counter-rhythmic tension, melodic flow and exclamatory trills feeds off the full band as it repeats the infectious theme to the fade.
The groove is heavier on the next track, befitting a “Fat Mama.” The simple melodic material is embellished by evolving call-and-response figures from the horns that inspire Hancock’s piano inventions as surely as the lumbering swing of the rhythm section.
“Tell Me A Bedtime Story” is the best-known composition from this session, and one of his most tender ballad creations. After a haunting trumpet introduction, the sextet states the theme (Henderson on alto flute), reinforced by the full ensemble on the reprise. The harmonic and rhythmic suspensions on the bridge, plus the quirky resolution of the main melody, add great character to an already memorable line. Hancock takes a gentle half-chorus before the theme returns and sets up a double recapitulation and quiet, tumbling coda.
Lumbering funk returns with “Oh! Oh! Here He Comes,” which gains added heft as the trombones shoulder the theme. Hancock’s electric piano percolates under and between orchestral riffs, holding the groove and leaving space to appreciate Buster Williams’s earth-moving electric bass.
Grand piano brings on “Jessica.” Garnett Brown’s trombone states the theme first, with Henderson’s alto flute trailing countermelodies. Then Johnny Coles takes over for a heartfelt flugelhorn lead as the ensemble spreads under his improvisation. Hancock follows with his only acoustic solo in this collection, offering another, more intimate opportunity to appreciate the supportive work of Williams and Albert Heath.
“Fat Albert Rotunda” begins with a fanfare, which brings on the infectious theme. The two-note figure that underpins the performance is the focus of Hancock’s opening electric piano solo, which is spurred by an added (and unidentified) electric guitar. Henderson explodes into his tenor solo (the man has always known how to get started) and continues to wrestle demons as the signature vamp adds intensity underneath. The theme returns, with horn punctuations, before Hancock leads the fade out.
The more excitable “Lil’ Brother” ends Hancock’s first Warner Bros. project with some added starters featured. Bernard “Pretty” Purdie is in the drum chair. The theme (scored for trombone and alto flute in unison) gives way to what becomes a recurring guitar break by the late Eric Gale and the hortatory tenor solo is played by Joe Farrell. After Hancock’s solo, the theme leads to a coda that allows some of the gentler images from Fat Albert Rotunda to momentarily reappear.
By the close of 1970, when Hancock recorded his next session, only Williams remained in the sextet. With the exception of the bassist and trombonist Julian Priester, the personnel was made up of younger and less familiar figures, and everyone in the band had taken a Swahili name. Hancock was Mwandishi, the horn players were Mganga Eddie Henderson, Pepo Mtoto Julian Priester and Mwille Benny Maupin; and the rhythm section was completed by Mchezaji Buster Williams and Jabali Billy Hart. An affinity quickly arose among these musicians, which Hancock described with great enthusiasm during a June 1971 interview with this author shortly after the album Mwandishi was released.
“My current band has hit a point where we are really turning out some great group music,” he reported. “One night in Chicago this band gave me the greatest musical experience of my life. We all just played beyond ourselves. I know how well each man can play, and we all played better. It was a spiritual revelation. We have come close to capturing that magic several times since. My other band had excellent nights, too, but the emphasis was more on solos. That band, I don’t think, was as daring as the one I have now. The earlier band would go through several mood changes in one tune; it was like a game we used to play, but we don’t try to do that anymore. I think the group is a little more subtle now. We try not to push the music any certain way, we just let it happen the way it happens.”
“I’ve played with some fantastic soloists,” he went on, “but there’s a thing that I think is more important than solos. I think music is supposed to make you high, to give you an experience so that you can transport yourself from wherever you are and that whole physical contact with the world so that you can gain a little more consciousness-inner consciousness. think it would be impossible for most of my early music to do that, just from the very nature of the material; but my new music is set up to do just that. It’s set up to make you high.”
Hancock called Mwandishi “my favorite record of all the records I have ever made, and the loosest I’ve ever done. None of the tunes have chords. After we play the melody, then we can go where we want to. Usually the structure of the melody leads you in a certain direction, so at least you’re not walking off of a cliff. That’s what I was trying to do on ‘The Egg’” (from his 1964 Blue Note masterpiece Empyrean Isles), “and it worked out fine. I was lucky; but it’s not luck anymore. Now I’ve found a way of structuring the material so that when there are no guidelines to follow, there’s enough of a catalyst in the writing to give you something to go on.”
The new approach is quickly defined in “Ostinato (Suite For Angela),” dedicated to political activist Angela Davis. After Henderson’s trumpet and Maupin’s bass clarinet spin incantations over Hancock’s Fender Rhodes, Maupin and Williams state the lopsided vamp in 15/4 that provides the track’s melodic content. The second drum part, played by Ndugu Leon Chancler, and the guitar and percussion effects, provided by Ronnie Montrose and Jose “Cepito” Areas, respectively add further layers of complexity to the hypnotic pattern of eight beats plus seven beats.
The full group simmers its way into Henderson’s trumpet solo-a journey of probing insistence that elicits attentive responses from Hancock and the percussionists. Like his predecessor, Henderson captured some of Miles Davis’s melancholy, though his attack and sense of structure were his own. Priester reinforces the bass line as Henderson concludes. Then Hancock enters for a typical display of how to employ voicings and odd meters for maximum drama. The drummers, who really open up under the electric piano solo, settle down for Benny Maupin, who plays a bass clarinet solo of agitated meandering that recalls his innovative and often neglected contribution to Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. Note that Maupin, originally a tenor saxophonist, is never heard on tenor sax on these recordings – one sign that Hancock was headed somewhere else with his music.
“You’ll Know When You Get There” is a logical extension of Hancock’s impressionistic side, with Williams on bass violin and Henderson carrying the melodic lead while the others move in and out of focus. There is particularly keen interaction in the rhythm section throughout, although Henderson also blows passionately without accompaniment. After building to some gentle explosions, the theme is reprised and Maupin emerges on alto flute.
Williams’s insistent bass often seems to be in the lead with Maupin the accompanist as the energy flows between alto flute and rhythm section. Hazy cadences from Hancock bring the theme back briefly. What follows sounds more like a trio collage than a piano solo per se and illustrates Hancock’s comments. For all of the atmospherics on this track, the melodic eloquence of Hancock the composer remains.
One of the strongest signs of the collective spirit that powered this sextet is the written contribution of its members. Priester’s lengthy “Wandering Spirit Song” is another example of music as experience. It opens slowly, like a flower seeking the sun, with bowed bass and low bass clarinet tones implanting an ominous texture on Hancock’s more optimistic keyboard ruminations. Maupin and a muted Henderson slowly sob the theme, with Priester ultimately joining the bass’ supporting dirge before a more sprightly waltz feeling emerges.
As the melody gains assertiveness, the horns separate and Priester emerges with a lyrical trombone solo that again leaves space for active support from Hancock and Williams. He is followed, after a reprise of the waltz, by more extended collective improvisation that ultimately yields to an abstract Maupin episode on bass clarinet. In our interview, Hancock remarked that he had come to view passages like this as more commercial than Fat Albert Rotunda because “the direction is a direction that people are ready to receive. It relates to things that are happening today, like vegetarianism, yoga, the Maharishi, organic foods, spirituality in general.”
Maupin definitely takes the band through some visions worthy of Carlos Casteneda, before a return to the theme and an extended free concluding duet by Williams and Hancock. “Albums like Mwandishi fit into what I think might be considered the new mainstream of jazz,” Hancock said at the time. “The new avant-garde has finally found a direction, but it’s like a spectrum. It’s not one direction; there are many directions and they all have to do with giving people an experience rather than just giving them a bunch of notes.”
The experiential approach was carried further on the 1972 recording Crossings, which introduced the group’s seventh member, Patrick Gleason on Moog synthesizer, plus conga drummer Victor Pontoja and a five-voice chorus.
“Sleeping Giant,” a particularly ambitious Hancock composition, touches on several moods and textures as well as the added players and the expanded arsenals of the sextet regulars. Everyone except Gleason is playing percussion on the opening, which carries a strong African flavor that reinforced the album’s striking Robert Springett cover painting.
Hancock and Williams toy with the meter before establishing a forceful 6/8 that the pair ride into a magnificent extended improvisation. As in “Ostinato,” the steady pattern frees Hancock for some striking rhythmic superimpositions, while also allowing a heady momentum to build. Hancock sounds a phrase to signal a change in mood, and the horns return with slowly congealing parts that make effective use of muted trumpet against a deep trombone bottom.
Williams emerges with an odd, halting pattern on electric bass that supports Priester’s echo-laden meditations as Hancock and Hart grow more active, finally taking the music into a funky 13-beat vamp for the rhythm section. The quieter theme reappears just as suddenly, then gives way to a steadier, more symmetrical passage where Hancock again blows over charged backing from Williams and the others. His percussive approach prevails until he sounds the cue riff once again to bring the horns back for more thematic musings.
Now Maupin takes over, with Williams and occasional percussion in support, until the other horns and the funk tempo returns. Linear development and pure sound are both used effectively in Maupin’s soprano sax solo, with sympathetic comping from Hancock that helps build the tension. Then the other horns are cued back in and the music seems headed for a peaceful conclusion; but the giant, far from exhausted, gives one final kick before the band closes with a passage where sound turns to pure air.
Chords from an acoustic piano trigger “Quasar,” the first of two Maupin compositions that complete the Crossings session. Built around a simple unison theme and a 7/4 time signature, the piece takes on a fluid, other-worldly coloration with Gleason’s synthesizer washes and the composer’s peripatetic alto flute. Henderson follows with one of his active, probing episodes as a cowbell reinforces the beat. The ending is effectively ominous-lost sounds in uncharted space.
Maupin’s other contribution, “Water Torture,” makes even greater use of Gleason’s presence. It begins with strange sonic drips and disembodied voices, the drum and percussion parts offering the anchors of stability in this strange new world until electric piano and bass clarinet state the slinking theme that could pass for one of Hancock’s own. What follows is not so much a solo as a collective impressionist sound-painting, with everyone applying dabs of color to the constantly reconfigured canvas. The melody reappears to signal new rounds of invention, with Henderson often hovering at the top of the sound mass and Gleason supplying ever more impetuous colors.
Hancock sustained this approach briefly after signing with Columbia in 1973 and recording Sextant – but not for long. “One thing became apparent to me last year,” he explained in a 1974 interview that explained the change in perspective that led to his ultra-funky and enormously successful Head Hunters album. “I’d go to friends’ homes and see my albums on the shelves with lots of other people’s records, and they’d play all the others except mine. My intention at the time was to play music to be listened to with undivided attention; but how many people have the time to approach music that way? Before, I was so interested in spirituality that I didn’t recognize that a person puts on a record with his hands and not his spirit.” So the emphasis shifted from “heavy musical trips that try to expand people’s minds” to “making people feel like getting up in the morning and going to work.”
“I’m not knocking the other thing,” Hancock insisted, “I’m just saying that there are several ways to look at music.”
He has persisted, in the decades that followed, to continue looking at music from various perspectives. Many of which have roots in either the funk or the freedom of his Warner Brothers years. – Bob Blumenthal, 1994