The Chameleon

The leading experimental jazz pianist after 1945 was Herbie Hancock. It's not for nothing that he got the nickname "Chameleon". Herbie Hancock learned to play the piano as a child (starting at age seven) and studied classically until the age of twenty. In 2963, at age 23, Hancock joined Miles Davis's quintet while also continuing the solo career he had started in 1962 with the Blue Note label.

This piece is "Agitation" performed in Stockholm in 1963 by the Miles Davis Quintet (Miles Davis(trumpet), Herbie Hancock(piano), Wayne Shorter(tenor sax), Tony Williams(drums), Ron Carter(bass)). It is a post-bop piece that is a modal. We can hear Hancock's early style is very much bop inspired with the closely clustered chord progressions and the style of comping. At the very end, we hear a hint of Hancock's classical training.

After Hancock left Davis's band in 1968, he would form his own sextet and begin to create his persona as the Chameleon by experimenting in electronic jazz-funk. Hancock began to leave the piano behind to use other piano-type instruments including the synthesizer, the electronic keyboard, and even the Hohner clavinet. As a pianist it is interesting for me to hear how Hancock never loses his touch or nuances even as he changes instruments. Each of those piano-type instruments has a very different feeling when played and for some that presents problems when they switch between them--almost always the quality of playing on one instrument is lower than on the other. Hancock however keeps his style, no matter what instrument he plays on. The next piece shows where Hancock's music went with his sextet and with funk. This is "Fat Albert Rotunda" from the album of the same name which was released in 1969.

This piece shows how Hancock has grown as a pianist just by changing styles of music. He takes more chances as he plays and it pays off. This album was actually recorded as a soundtrack for the Bill Cosby cartoon Fat Albert. It opened up the door to many opportunities the biggest of which were the development of Hancock's jazz-funk style and his career as a score writer for films. Hancock would also write scores for the films Blow-Up and Death Wish as well as the soundtrack album for Round Midnight.

In his album Headhunters (1973), Hancock produced the song that would give him his nickname: "Chameleon". This song cemented his position as a crossover musician by being played on rock, pop, R&B, jazz and soul radio stations. This song contains a funk bass line with a synthesizer line that is at odds with the jazz type saxophone section and their repeated riff. Hancock uses polyrhythms and different styles of music brought together by the common bass line. This song is far ahead of its time and even seems to hint at old school hip-hop making Hancock one of the great innovators as a musician, not just as a jazz artist.

One of the things I like most about Herbie Hancock is that just because you don't like one of his tunes doesn't mean you're out of luck. He experimented in so many kinds of music and produced so many albums that you can always just try another one and you're almost sure to find something you'll like. He was truly the Chameleon: able to adapt and blend in with many, many different musical worlds.

Most people know "Watermelon Man" and I couldn't resist including this really neat clip of Hancock playing it on Elvis Costello's Spectacle. It's a great little video clip because he starts on piano, switches to synthesizer, then back to piano, and then finally back to synthesizer again. It allows one to see that his style doesn't diminish from one instrument to the next.

The last thing I really think is special about Herbie Hancock is his view of so-called "commercialism". Many jazz artists derided the making of music to appeal to audiences (and therefore make more money), viewing it as a kind of cop-out or betrayal to the real reason for the music. Hancock, when asked if his music played down to the audience, said, "Music, by itself is not valuable. What makes music valuable is the positive effect on the people who are going to hear it. When I started thinking about the people more, I approached music from the perspective of their lives, rather than from the music itself...it's commercial because it sells, not because there's anything condescending about it". Hancock not only enjoyed the music he wrote, but wanted others to enjoy it and understand it. He wanted his music to reach out to people in ways that made sense not only to him, but to them as well. I believe that this makes his music approachable even if it is different from what we might consider "typical".