Herbie Hancock: The Warner Bros. Years (1969-72)
Author: Stuart Nicholson
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Billy Hart (d) |
Label: |
Warner Bros./Rhino |
Magazine Review Date: |
October/2014 |
Catalogue Number: |
8122795904 |
RecordDate: |
1969-1972 |
The Warner Bros. Years represent perhaps the most enigmatic period of Hancock's career, his post-Miles response to the changing musical landscape around him that bridges his Blue Note period with his more overtly commercial offerings on Columbia, marked by the chart success of ‘Chameleon’. It is a period documented by Bob Gluck, author of the insightful You'll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band, who also contributed the liner notes to this attractive three-disc compilation by Florence Halfon. Packaged in a clamshell box, each album is presented in a mini-LP Compact Disc replica of the original sleeve with the original artwork. It is a far more practical, collectible and authentic presentation of this (by now) well known material than a previous Sony reissue project that housed the CDs in a large, arty, clear Perspex box that was part IQ test to open and part impractical to store. Highlight of the reissue is – for the first time – the inclusion of the single ‘Crossings’ plus its coupling ‘Water Torture’ from Crossings. Other bonus tracks are the edited promo tracks intended for DJ play of ‘Ostinato’ and ‘You'll Know When You Get There’ from the album Mwandishi plus the single coupling taken from Fat Album Rotunda – ‘Wiggle-Waggle’ and ‘Fat Mama’ – an album that is impossible to take seriously.

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