The maze (Herbie Hancock) (LP 1064-1068)

Herbie Hancock  Takin' Off (CD, Blue Note Records, 1962) *****

Herbie Hancock  My Point Of View (CD, Blue Note Records, 1963) ***  

Herbie Hancock  Inventions & Dimensions (CD, Blue Note Records, 1964) ****  

Herbie Hancock  Speak Like A Child (CD, Blue Note Records, 1968) ***  

Herbie Hancock  The Prisoner (CD, Blue Note Records, 1969) ****  

Genre: Jazz/ Jazz piano 

Places I remember: Fopp (Covent Garden)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: The Maze (Takin' Off)

Gear costume: Firewater (The Prisoner)

Active compensatory factors: I came across this five original album CD package on my visit to Fopp last Christmas. It's a brilliant collection of five early albums from Herbie's career in the sixties.

Takin' Off is amazing, and it's his debut album! Five stars all the way. A hard bop classic.

Of course, it's well known for Watermelon Man, but that's just one brilliant track of six. Dexter Gordon and Freddie Hubbard contribute stellar performances.

Second album, My Point Of View, changes up the personnel and sets the pattern of change. A stable workforce was not for Herbie, no sure. 

Instead, each album presents different instruments, different feels and different textures. MPOV has Donald Byrd on trumpet and he's not my favourite trumpeter. 

Inventions and Dimensions is fascinating - basically just piano, bass and various drums/bongo/timbales etc. It's terrific!

Speak Like A Child introduces some non-traditional horns into the arrangements: fluegelhorn, bass trombone, alto flute. 

All that doesn't work as well for me, but The Prisoner from 1969 sees Herbie employing an expanded horn section to great effect.

Where do they all belong? A great five album set this. The Herbie corner is complete.