Happy 60th Anniversary to Herbie Hancock’s debut album Takin’ Off, originally recorded May 28, 1962 and released July 4, 1962.
By the age of 11, jazz titan Herbie Hancock was already an accomplished performer. Originally brought up in Chicago, Hancock was a child piano prodigy who, by the age of 11, had already performed a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During his formative years, Hancock learned harmony from jazz artist Chris Anderson from The Hi-Los, and in 1960, he was discovered by trumpeter Donald Byrd, with whom he worked as a session musician along with saxophonist Phil Woods and multi-instrumentalist Oliver Nelson. Two years later, he signed with the iconic Blue Note Records as a solo artist.
Around 1962, front-line hard boppers—in particular Blue Note artists—were increasingly developing an entirely new ear-catching jazz sound. Artists like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, and Bill Evans were pushing the envelope and at the same time raising the bar for other jazz musicians. Twenty-two years of age at the time, Herbie Hancock—who had just signed with Blue Note—was not going to perform below the average. His confident playing and composing among some of the most popular jazz exponents is particularly prominent throughout his debut album Takin’ Off.
Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s famed recording studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on May 28th, 1962 and officially released shortly thereafter on July 4, 1962, Takin’ Off marked Hancock’s debut as an ensemble leader. For his first adventure as director of a team, Hancock did not hold back in the selection of the ensemble’s members. He selected an impressive all-star lineup, including trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, saxophonist Dexter Gordon—a renowned player who had assimilated West Coast Jazz and Coltrane’s lessons and was enjoying a massive renaissance since signing with Blue Note—and the terrific rhythmic support of bass player Billy Higgins and drummer Butch Warren.
The result of such a stellar list of musicians and their collaborative musical camaraderie is an album that unveiled their ability to balance sophistication, class, and accessibility with funky and blues-rooted grooves. Takin’ Off is a flawlessly executed artistic endeavor, brandishing Hancock’s playful sense of rhythm and the quintet’s adventurous nature in experimenting with a broad array of styles, techniques, and harmonies.
Although in retrospect, Takin’ Off may be placed amidst Hancock’s most conventional projects—he was barely out of school and yet to work under eminent teacher and jazz legend Miles Davis—it nonetheless is a testament to the artist’s already extraordinarily mature and fresh approach to the genre, defined by his penchant for interpreting it with originality, vibrancy, and class.
The project launched Herbie Hancock’s career and caught the attention of jazz institutions with a mature sound that clashed with the artist’s young age.
The album opener “Watermelon Man” soon established its reputation as the jazz piece par excellence. The song is a fusion of jazz and funk grooves and was the first single Hancock released with Blue Note Records in 1962. As the artist recalled in his 2014 autobiography, the composition is based on a childhood memory of a watermelon seller, whose “horse-drawn wagon” resounded noisily through his neighborhood’s street in 1940s Chicago. “I’d heard the rhythmic clacking so many times, it was easy to turn it into a song patter,” Hancock reflects. “I wrote out a funky arrangement, with the melody lilting over a rhythmic pattern that represented the wagon wheels going over the cobblestones in the alley.”
“Watermelon Man” is a rhythmic piece filled with tight solo statements, including Hancock’s groovy piano riffing, Hubbard’s piercing and trilling trumpet, Gordon’s warm saxophone tones, and Higgins’ syncopated, undulating backbeat, infusing the tune with a funky hue. The collective’s synergetic work wound up in a classy composition, flowing smoothly and elegantly, anticipating the jazz-rock genre, which became popular by the end of the decade.
In 1973, Hancock reworked “Watermelon Man” in a radical jazz-funk key for his album Head Hunters, revisiting it into a quasi-unrecognizable piece, which later was sampled by numerous artists, including George Michael on “Spinning The Wheel” from his 1996 Older LP.
The next piece, “Three Bags Full,” a ¾ waltz structure, presents a skipping percussive beat, lilting, intertwining flugelhorn courtesy of Hubbard, and saxophone sections—evocative of 1950s John Coltrane style—curtsy, subtle bassline, and Hancock’s intricate, speed lightning piano solo, which takes the center stage at the end of the piece. According to Hancock, the song was named after the quintet playing distinct melodies. “Each of the three soloists plays out of a different bag,” he explains. “Also, this is a line from ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep,’ which makes you think of a shepherd, and in a way, the tune does have something of the sound of a shepherd”
“Empty Pockets”—displaying voicings recalling Donald Byrd’s “Jorgie’s” on which Higgins, Hancock, and Warren collaborated—is a moderato blues jam drenched in long pick-up phrases, composed while the artist was experiencing financial difficulties. The composition opens with a few sparse piano chords and a soft beat, to then leave room for Hubbard’s and Gordon’s breezy execution, while Hancock’s rhythmic, syncopated solo lights the number up, returning to a simple funky groove previously heard in “Watermelon Man.”
The minor-key “The Maze” offers some of the most memorable moments on the album. During the first two of Hancock’s solos—the first one after the song’s opening and the second right between Hubbard’s and Gordon’s solos—bassist Warren and drummer Higgins kick off with a free improvisation section, which allowed them more rhythmic freedom to explore more complex rhythms and timbers. Additionally, as the title suggests, the tune undertakes the angled paths of a maze—twisting and turning through a circle of chords returning to the same progression—to which there is no final solution, and hence the performance does not have a real conclusion.
On the laid-back penultimate track, “Driftin’,” the ensemble returns to a funky and tranquil yet infectious soul-jazz atmosphere. Interestingly, Hubbard’s fluegelhorn sound is softer, rounder, and less piercing, while Hancock stretches out for two extensive choruses, the second of which exhibits a heightened blues-consciousness.
Closing the album, “Alone And I” is a tender ballad that showcases Hancock’s sensitive side, and Gordon’s sentimental voice, melding 19th century-nuanced music and jazz execution. “I am very much interested in chord color in music and this tune displays much of what I have been working on in that vein,” Hancock states in his autobiography. Considering the funk-jazz modal workouts of the rest of Takin’ Off, “Alone And I” presents a distinctive voice and approach to the genre and some of the group’s best solos on the album.
Takin’ Off is the result of a joint effort from one of the most impressive groups of session musicians who had been able to flawlessly blend elegance and class with funky and blues-hued themes. When putting together the quintet for Hancock’s album, Blue Note assembled a roster of musical visionaries whose synergetic collaboration, chemistry, and sound experimentations created the matrix for the next generations of jazz artists.
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