Herbie Hancock’s Electric Music of the 1970s in 17 Masterful Solos

(this article was originally published in April 2021 on my website, www.jonopstad.com)

My love of Herbie Hancock’s electric music of the 1970s runs deep. My final year undergraduate dissertation was entitled “The Harmonic and Rhythmic Language of Herbie Hancock’s 1970s Fender Rhodes Solos”, and I later adapted this into an article for the academic journal Jazz Perspectives, published by Routledge. I recently created a video recreating Hancock’s 1970s analogue synth masterpiece “Spiraling Prism”, with all the synth parts meticulously recreated using the same models of vintage instruments as on the original recording and featuring the track’s original bassist, the legendary Byron Miller, along with keyboardist Tom O’Grady and the great drummer Mark Mondesir.

I will write about this project in more detail separately, but first, as a companion to this project, I wanted to put together a list of essential recordings for anyone looking to explore Herbie Hancock’s 1970s music in more detail. There are many who know Hancock primarily as an acoustic pianist and have perhaps overlooked the mastery of what he put to record in the 1970s in an electric context. I would say that anyone completely new to this music should definitely begin by listening to the whole of the Head Hunters album — an undisputed masterpiece and truly one of the great albums of the 20th century. There are many layers to Hancock’s electric music but the angle I’ve decided to focus on here is his incendiary soloing during this period, primarily on the Fender Rhodes electric piano. Another main angle to this music is Hancock’s genius in orchestrating for analogue synthesisers, as explored in the video above. I will save writing in detail on this for another occasion, but for now, here are 17 absolutely astonishing Rhodes and piano solos.

1. “Red Clay” (from Freddie Hubbard — Red Clay)

Red Clay is one of the earliest albums of producer Creed Taylor’s CTI label after it went independent in 1970 following a period as part of A&M. The label went on to carve out a particular, commercially successful, niche of placing jazz soloists in an expanded setting of string arrangements and session musician rhythm sections. Red Clay is one of the most straight-ahead albums on the label though, featuring trumpeter Freddie Hubbard (a close musical associate of Hancock’s from his Blue Note days and later taking the place of Miles Davis when the 60s Miles Davis group was reformed in the later 70s as “V.S.O.P.”) leading a top-flight quintet with saxophonist Joe Henderson, Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Lenny White. The title track is a great, driving slice of music from this particular period in jazz history, when musicians were starting to plug in and go electric, but the fusion movement of the 70s hadn’t quite taken hold yet. Both Hancock and Carter are on electric instruments and there is an element of funk, but overall the music is more indebted to the soul jazz of the 60s (tracks like Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” or Horace Silver’s “Song For My Father” for example) than the harder funk and rock elements that were soon to impregnate the work of so many jazz musicians. It’s a classic track, with some fiery playing all round, and Hubbard’s composition provides a base chord sequence that creates fertile ground for some inspired soloing all round. Hancock’s electric piano solo (from 4’34 to 6’30) is particularly masterful, weaving some brilliant lines around the changes. Hancock’s winding right hand line around 4’49 to 4’56 is particularly tasty. The whole track is underpinned by some deliciously grooving work from the rhythm section tandem of Ron Carter on electric bass and the 20-year-old Lenny White on drums. Carter — one of the most widely recorded, widely respected upright bass players in the history of the music — is less widely recognised for his electric playing, but he is a master of groove. Where the more widely celebrated electric bass players of the fusion movement (such as Stanley Clarke or Jaco Pastorius) brought their instrument to the front of the music by playing in the higher registers to compete with frontline soloists, Carter keeps the bass firmly in its role as the solid foundation of the groove, with his impeccable rhythmic timing and feel. White on drums meanwhile brings elements of funk to the rhythm while remaining rooted in the jazz tradition. A truly classic track of the era.

2. “Sleeping Giant” (from Herbie Hancock — Crossings, 1972)
3. “Scorpio Libra” (from Eddie Henderson — Realization, 1973)

These two solos find Hancock in his “Mwandishi Band” era — the group that Hancock led from 1970 to 1973 with the sextet line-up of trumpeter Eddie Henderson, trombonist Julian Priester, saxophonist and winds player Bennie Maupin, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Hart (and later as a septet with the addition of synthesiser pioneer Patrick Gleeson). “Sleeping Giant” is from the middle of the three Mwandishi albums, Crossings, while “Scorpio Libra” is from a 1973 session, around the time that the group disbanded, under the leadership of the group’s trumpeter Eddie Henderson. It has almost the exact Mwandishi Group line-up, but minus trombonist Julian Priester, and with second drummer Lenny White in addition to Billy Hart.

Both sessions find Hancock in the dense, experimental textural landscape of the Mwandishi sound, but also sowing the seeds of the more funk-based music that was soon to follow. They are also some of the earliest examples of Hancock’s extended soloing on the Fender Rhodes electric piano. “Sleeping Giant” opens with a rich tapestry of dense percussion rhythms for the first two and half minutes before Hancock enters on Rhodes to solo over the rhythm section for a full five minutes of frenzied creativity.

In the period before discovering the possibilities of analogue synthesizers Hancock had been finding other ways to expand his timbral palette, particularly with the use of an echoplex tape delay unit on his Rhodes, adjusting the tape heads while playing to create pitch bending effects, creating some almost psychedelic effects, as heard at points here. Hancock’s solo here combines these sorts of effects with some seriously hard-hitting playing. One of the key aspects of Hancock’s electric piano soloing in the 1970s was his ability to create evolving harmonic shapes over basslines that often outlined just a single static chord. Hancock would weave in and out of the harmony, creating dramatic tension and release in his playing by using scales from ‘outside’ the implied harmony of the rhythm section that he would then resolve by returning to the harmonic centre (you could perhaps simplify this by saying he played the “wrong” notes to create tension, before coming back to the “right” notes to release this tension. Hancock’s “wrong” notes always had a very strong harmonic logic to them though, and always felt so right!). Hancock was a true master of this approach and it is one of the main reasons that his playing has so much colour and forward momentum. This solo at the start of “Sleeping Giant” is one of the most intense pieces of improvisation that Hancock had put to record at this point and laid the groundwork for some of what was to follow on the Rhodes.

“Scorpio-Libra” is in the same vein but, with the track more grounded in an earthy electric bass groove from Buster Williams, the funk seeds are being further sown. Hancock makes more extensive use of the Echoplex on his Rhodes, and with heavy phasing effects on both drummers there is even more of a heavy psychedelic spaciness to this music than on the Mwandishi recordings. Where “Sleeping Giant” was a suite of music in several movements, “Scorpio-Libra” is much more a slab of raw groove. Hancock’s Fender Rhodes solo forms the final third of the track, entering at 6’15. The two drummers — panned left and right — keep a tide of heavy groove flowing that Hancock builds in intensity over. Like with “Sleeping Giant” this is an early example of Hancock’s genius for constructing a complex harmonic narrative over a harmonically static groove — a recurring theme of Hancock’s 70s solos that showed some of his most consistently inventive playing.

4. “Chameleon” (from Herbie Hancock — Head Hunters, 1973)

5. “Sly” (from Herbie Hancock — Head Hunters, 1973)

6. “Shiftless Shuffle” (from Herbie Hancock — Mr Hands, 1980 but originally recorded at the Head Hunters sessions in 1973)

Head Hunters is Herbie Hancock’s electric masterpiece. The first jazz album to sell one million copies, and fully deserving of its success. Head Hunters was ground breaking when it was released — no music quite like this had been heard before — and it remains a masterwork to this day. Where the Mwandishi group was made up of seasoned jazz players — albeit ones whose ears were open to different music and who could groove and play funk — for Head Hunters Hancock somewhat reversed the formula, building the group essentially around funk musicians who could play jazz. Hancock has spoken of how the music of the Mwandishi group was reaching for space and with Head Hunters he wanted to create music “closer to the soil”. Music inspired by James Brown and Sly Stone. Music with rhythms to get people moving. The rhythm section of bassist Paul Jackson and drummer Harvey Mason gives the album a solid grounding in funk, while percussionist Bill Summers brought a wide range of colour with his sounds from different musical cultures. Saxophonist Bennie Maupin was the one remaining thread from the Mwandishi group, with his range of wind instruments (alto flute and bass clarinet as well as saxophones) perfectly fitting the group’s palette.

The three solos highlighted here each find Hancock at his most inspired on the Fender Rhodes. “Sly” in particular is one of the most intense, harmonically complex, most utterly musically inventive pieces of soloing on the instrument ever put to record — a height of technical skill and musicality that seems unlikely to ever be quite matched again. Hancock’s solo on the track begins at 5’25. This is a classic example of one of Hancock’s solos from this era that is built over a repeating bass groove outlining a single chordal area harmonically. Hancock creates such an elaborate and endlessly inventive development of harmony and rhythm over this in his playing that it almost seems superhuman for an improvisor to be able to spontaneously create music of such complexity, ingenuity and compelling musicality.

“Sly” is perhaps the greatest Herbie Hancock solo of this era — perhaps his greatest solo on the Rhodes at all. No one else has ever played quite like this. Just four tracks featured on the Head Hunters album. This exact line-up was never to record together again (drummer Harvey Mason was soon replaced by Mike Clark in the group as Mason chose to focus on a studio recording career over live playing). Several years later, on the album Mr Hands, one further track from the Head Hunters sessions was released, “Shiftless Shuffle”. There’s something slightly raw and unfinished about this recording of “Shiftless Shuffle” — when comparing with the other tracks on Head Hunters or Mr Hands it is the only track on either not to feature any synthesiser overdubs, and there is also an obvious edit in the recording at 3’55 — but this doesn’t lessen its musical impact in any way, and it features another killer Hancock Rhodes solo. This is perhaps the closest solo stylistically to “Sly” in the rest of Hancock’s recorded output — similarly uptempo in groove and again over a bass riff on a single chord, with some intensely creative soloing on the Rhodes.

The third of these solos, on the classic “Chameleon” — the opening (and best known) track from Head Hunters — is much mellower, but no less inventive and musically rewarding. It is the second solo on “Chameleon”, after a raw ARP synthesizer solo from Hancock, and the warmness of the Rhodes solo comes as a great contrast to this. The solo section begins around 7’43 in the track (with Hancock’s Rhodes entering at 8’31) and it is built over some incredibly inventive rhythmic work from Jackson, Mason and Summers, and with additional bursts of alto flute colour from Maupin. It is one of the real classic Herbie Hancock solos on the Rhodes.

7. “Cloud Cream” (from Joe Farrell — Penny Arcade, 1973)

Alongside Hancock’s incredible productivity as a recording artist in his own right in this period he still found time to make occasional appearances as a sideman on recordings by others. This Joe Farrell recording is an interesting one in that it was recorded at a very similar time to Head Hunters (around a month later), and finds Hancock on acoustic piano in a contrasting, less ‘produced’, looser setting. Where Head Hunters feels like an album where the sort of attention to the production side of things more associated with the rock and pop world went into its creation, Farrell’s Penny Arcade feels much more like the more traditional jazz recording approach of a group of musicians getting together in a smoky studio for a recording date playing through a set of pieces. The music is not a straight-ahead jazz date though and is certainly informed by the sounds of the era, particularly in the rhythm section, with electric bass, electric guitar and with studio legend Steve Gadd on drums. One of the tracks is an extended 13-minute version of the Stevie Wonder classic “Too High”. The highlight though is an absolutely killer solo from Hancock on Farrell’s Latin composition “Cloud Cream”. After a piercing piccolo solo from Farrell, Hancock comes in at 3’48 and launches straight into a torrent of musical brilliance over the Latin pulse set up by bassist Herb Bushler, drummer Gadd and percussionist Don Alias. Although on acoustic piano here, Hancock’s solo has a lot in common with his soloing on Rhodes in this era — the harmonic inventiveness, the rhythmic intensity, the use of high octave tremolos. The solo is relatively short and concise, but a brilliant lesser-known example of Hancock’s playing at this time.

8. “Butterfly” (from Herbie Hancock — Thrust, 1974)

After the huge success of Head Hunters in 1973, Hancock returned to the recording studio the following year with the same configuration with just one change of personnel — Bay Area drummer Mike Clark in place of Harvey Mason. Clark — an utterly distinctive funk drummer but equally adept at jazz — offered the group a different, but no less original sound to Mason’s, and became the group’s regular drummer for touring.

Like Head Hunters, Thrust contained just four tracks. While none of these had quite the bass hook of “Chameleon” to capture the public’s attention, the music remained at a similarly high level and the album contained two classic Hancock compositions that became staples of later Hancock live sets and have been covered extensively by other artists — “Actual Proof” and “Butterfly”. “Actual Proof”, with its complex shifting time-signatures structure and distinctive melody has been a staple of Hancock’s live sets since being re-introduced to his live repertoire in the early 2000s.

“Butterfly” contrasts with much of the Headhunters material in its melodic, laid-back atmosphere. It’s a classic composition, by Hancock and Maupin. Later recordings appeared on the live album Flood (1975); the “live in the studio” album Direct Step (1978); with added vocals as the title track of the Kimiko Kasai and Herbie Hancock album Butterfly (1979); and later, on Hancock’s album Dis Is Da Drum in 1995. The original recording from Thrust is the real classic though and features a great Rhodes solo, with a relaxed nature that contrasts with the intensity of Hancock’s soloing on tracks like “Sly”.

9. “Actual Proof” (from Herbie Hancock — Flood, 1975)

Hancock was signed to the Columbia label from 1973 to 1988, and for much of this period his releases benefitted from an arrangement whereby in addition to the main schedule of studio releases, an agreement with the Japanese arm of the label allowed additional Japan-only releases for the burgeoning Japanese market, including the live Headhunters album Flood; studio albums Dedication and Direct Step; acoustic jazz albums with former Miles Davis bandmates (live albums with the VSOP quintet and studio albums as a trio); and Hancock’s only entirely solo piano album, The Piano in 1979. Flood is a live album from 1975, capturing performances by the Headhunters group on tour in Japan, and it is an album deeply treasured by fans of this period of Hancock’s music. The line-up is exactly as for Thrust, but with the addition of rhythm guitarist DeWayne “Blackbyrd” McKnight on some tracks. The album was originally released only in Japan, and for many years was hard to get hold of for listeners in other territories — so it is lesser known than Headhunters or Thrust, but in many ways stands on an equal footing, forming a valuable trilogy with those two albums. Apart from two tracks on the 1976 album V.S.O.P., Flood is the only official live album of Herbie Hancock’s post-Head Hunters electric music of the 1970s and 1980s, and it is an important document of the Headhunters group on top form.

Strikingly for this period, Hancock opens the album on solo acoustic piano, with a stunning solo rendition of his classic 1965 composition “Maiden Voyage”. There is then a beautiful moment when the rest of the group joins on this piece, with Maupin on flute, before segueing into an incendiary performance of “Actual Proof”, from Thrust. Hancock chooses to remain on acoustic piano for this piece (he switches to Rhodes and synths for the rest of the album), and it is a striking example of how he sounds on the instrument compared with his 1960s recordings. There is an intensity here in the piano playing that seems to go beyond his 1960s playing, with some of the sheer fire that had been coming through in the Rhodes solos such as “Sly”. Bassist Paul Jackson and drummer Mike Clark show how adept they are at this setting. Both are masterful and Clark shows a side to his playing that possibly has more in common with the drumming of Tony Williams in Miles Davis’s band than with the funk of Harvey Mason on Head Hunters, with driving hi hat pedal on every beat and a great dexterity around the kit. Jackson’s electric bass meanwhile sounds like a new step in the evolution of the instrument in the music. Overall, it’s hard to think of a track recorded before this that has sounded quite like this.

10. “Heartbeat” (from Herbie Hancock — Man-Child, 1975)

While Thrust had continued the quintet formation of Head Hunters, the next studio album, Man-Child, expanded things considerably with a shifting personnel across the six tracks that consisted of all the musicians from the two earlier albums (both Mason and Clark appear on drums), along with a brass section, three guitarists (Blackbyrd McKnight, who had appeared with the group on Flood, along with session legends Wah Wah Watson and David T. Walker), and brief cameos from guests Stevie Wonder and Wayne Shorter. Hancock’s range of synthesisers was expanding at this point too. The album is at times more laid back and impressionistic than the two earlier recordings, with Hancock’s compositions exploring this wider range of textures. The two real standout tracks of the album are the two that bookend it — the classic “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” that opens the album, and “Heartbeat” that ends it. “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” was part of the concert repertoire (live versions appear on both Flood and V.S.O.P.) but the version here is definitive — one of the true classics of Hancock’s 1970s recordings. The track closes with a brilliant acoustic piano solo from Hancock (an instrument that hadn’t appeared at all on either Head Hunters or Thrust, but which makes complete sense in this context). But the real killer solo on the album is on the closing track, “Heartbeat” — a Rhodes solo to rank with the very best that Hancock put to record. The solo begins at the two-minute mark and is one of the funkiest things that Hancock has created, with the classic Headhunters rhythm-section of Jackson, Clark and Summers laying down a solid, forward-moving foundation beneath. Incidentally this is the last recording of the 70s with Hancock playing with this exact rhythm section (although the exact varying personnel details for each track on Man-Child haven’t been publicly listed anywhere, it’s likely that the only other track on the album with this rhythm section is “Hang Up Your Hang Ups”). “Heartbeat” is the track on the album that feels closest in style to the two earlier records and it’s a real gem.

11. “As” (from Stevie Wonder — Songs in the Key of Life, 1976)

After Stevie Wonder appeared on Man-Child — performing a harmonica solo on the track “Steppin’ in it” — Hancock returned the favour, performing Rhodes on Wonder’s classic track “As” from his seminal album Songs In The Key Of Life, released the following year. Although he does get some solo space on the track, Hancock remains relatively restrained in this context, keeping the spotlight on Wonder’s vocals and focussing on a more accompaniment-based role. Even in this accompaniment role he, as always, remains utterly distinctive though.

12. “Gentle Thoughts” (from Herbie Hancock — Secrets, 1976)

13. “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” (from Herbie Hancock — V.S.O.P., 1977)

For Secrets, the next studio album after Man-Child, there were some shifts of personnel in the group. Maupin and Jackson remained from the original Head Hunters line-up, but the drum chair was now taken by James Levi, and on percussion Bill Summers was replaced by Kenneth Nash (Summers returned to the band later). There was also the addition of two guitarists, Wah Wah Watson and Ray Parker Jr. Watson, one of the most distinctive rhythm guitarists of the 70s (he played the classic guitar part on Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” among many other credits) had entered the picture on Man-Child, albeit with a slightly cryptic “thanks” in the inlay, rather than a full credit. Ray Parker Jr. achieved much wider fame in later years as the composer of the classic theme song for Ghostbusters.

V.S.O.P. was a live album recorded in 1976 that showcased Hancock’s work in the three most important settings of his career so far — the Miles Davis Quintet (here represented by the original line-up but with Freddie Hubbard in place of Davis); the Mwandishi group (reuniting here for the first time since disbanding) and the current incarnation of the “Herbie Hancock Group”, which in this case was the exact same line-up as the Secrets album.

Secrets is a slightly less consistent album than the three classics that had preceded it, Head Hunters, Thrust and Man-Child. “Chameleon”, “Actual Proof”, “Butterfly” and “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” from those albums are all classic tracks that became live staples in later years in a way that none of the tracks from Secrets quite did, but this isn’t to say that it’s not an album with strong moments. One of the highlights is the track “Gentle Thoughts” — possibly the breeziest Herbie Hancock track from this era, and with a great upbeat Rhodes solo (beginning at 3’03). The solo is relatively brief, and with a lighter feel to the intensity of earlier solos like “Sly”, but it’s completely compelling.

Of the two pieces by the same line-up on V.S.O.P., “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” is the stronger — a live take of the classic track from Man-Child. The track closes out with a short but brilliant solo by Hancock, performed on the Yamaha Electric Grand Piano — an instrument that was like a small grand piano with amplified strings, and which unusually Hancock plays in place of an acoustic piano throughout the album, even on the otherwise entirely acoustic quintet tracks.

14. “Come Running To Me” (from Herbie Hancock — Sunlight, 1978)

Secrets had contained the first vocal track of Hancock’s music of the 70s — its opening track, “Doin’ It”. In the case of Secrets it was just the one track that went in this direction, but from here on Hancock began to explore a vocal-led route in his music more and more — gradually seeking a more commercial direction. Sunlight found Hancock in a transition stage between the earlier albums and the more disco-based music to follow. It was on this album that Hancock began to use the ‘Vocoder’, allowing him to play his own voice using a keyboard. The opening track, “I Thought It Was You” reached number 15 in the UK singles chart. Three of the five tracks on Sunlight were vocal led. Although “I Thought It Was You” is the best-known track from Sunlight, the real gem of the album is the wonderful “Come Running To Me”. The track features Hancock on Vocoder vocals (with lyrics by Allee Willis, who would later be the lyricist for the theme song for hit sitcom Friends), and a further expanded instrumental palette than the previous albums with, as well as an expanded arsenal of synths, orchestral strings and brass, and additional percussionists now part of the texture. The highlight though is one of Hancock’s great Rhodes solos of the era (beginning at 3’23) — one of the very best he put to record.

15. “Amoroso” (from Eddie Henderson — Mahal, 1978)

Eddie Henderson was the trumpeter in Hancock’s Mwandishi group, appearing on the group’s albums Mwandishi, Crossings and Sextant. He went on to a recording career that largely mirrored Hancock’s in its progression through the 70s, beginning with two albums in the Mwandishi style (including Realization, discussed above), before recording a series of albums for the Blue Note and Capitol labels that began in a jazz-funk approach in parallel with Hancock’s Headhunters band, and then moving to a more vocal pop direction. The best of Henderson’s 70s albums is arguablyHeritage from 1976, with the Headhunters rhythm section of Paul Jackson and Mike Clark, and with the young keyboard prodigy Patrice Rushen doing compelling work in the Hancock-inspired keyboards role (Rushen was another artist who went through a similar progression on her own records, finding great success later with her hit “Forget-Me-Nots”, later sampled by Will Smith for “Men In Black”).

Hancock appeared on Henderson’s 1978 album Mahal, along with the full front line of the Mwandishi group (Henderson, Maupin, Preister) and three members of Hancock’s own band from that time (Headhunters stalwarts Paul Jackson and Bill Summers, as well as newly joined guitarist Ray Obiedo), with the line-up completed by drummer Howard King, flautist Hubert Laws and percussionist Mtume. The album opens with an up-tempo cover of Hancock’s classic “Butterfly” from Thrust, with Hancock soloing on Rhodes, but one of the real highlights is Maupin’s composition “Amoroso”. Hancock’s Rhodes solo begins at around 4’10 and it is one of the most perfectly formed of his short solos, beautifully winding its way around the song’s riff.

16. “Just Around The Corner” (from Herbie Hancock — Mr. Hands, 1980)

Mr. Hands is an interesting album in Hancock’s discography from this period in that it is an instrumental album that falls amongst the vocal-led disco projects of this period (Feets Don’t Fail Me Now, Monster, Magic Windows), and which was created at least in part from material originally recorded at sessions for earlier albums. It’s one of Hancock’s best albums of the period though and it places a particular focus on showcasing Hancock’s analogue synthesizer work, with the synths placed front and centre in the compositions — to a greater degree than any of the other albums. Apart from a brief appearance from Bennie Maupin at the end of “Shiftless Shuffle” there are no other lead instruments on the album apart from Hancock’s synths and Hancock takes all the main solos.

Each track on Mr. Hands is recorded with a different line-up, reflecting the nature of the raw material being taken from earlier sessions for albums including Head Hunters and Sunlight. “Just Around The Corner” is the one group track that was recorded with an up-to-date line-up, with a similar group to Hancock’s (very different sounding) pop album Monster, with Hancock joined by guitarist Wah Wah Watson, bassist Freddie Washington, drummer Alphonse Mouzon and percussionist Sheila Escovedo (Sheila E). Mouzon in particular is on top form here — his four-on-the-floor beat and fast triplet tom fills underpinning a blistering Rhodes solo from Hancock that certainly ranks among the very best (the solo begins at 2’56).

17. “Magic Number” (from Herbie Hancock — Magic Windows, 1981)

With Mr. Hands being the exception, improvisation had begun to take a lesser role on Hancock’s electric albums by the early 80s, as he moved further in a commercial pop direction. The Rhodes itself became somewhat relegated in its use as well. But amongst Hancock’s pop-oriented albums of the late 70s and early 80s there is one surprise gem of an absolutely burning Rhodes solo. One last hurrah on the instrument that had been central to Hancock’s music for over a decade, but which he largely turned his back on for his recordings after this point. The track is “Magic Number”, the opening track from Magic Windows from 1981. The track itself is a vocal pop track, very much of its time, but at 3’30 it breaks down into an instrumental section (with driving Latin percussion from the Escovedo dynasty of Sheila E alongside brother Juan and father Pete). At 4’38 there begins one of Hancock’s fieriest Rhodes solos on record. Definitely going out with a bang!

The pop record that followed Magic Windows, 1982’s Lite Me Up, contained very little improvisation. The direction that Hancock took after this, with “Rockit” and Future Shock in 1983 had very little room for the sort of incendiary soloing that had been such a feature of his 1970s music. After Hancock’s final Columbia album, Perfect Machine in 1988, his focus shifted much more back to the acoustic piano. Hancock has continued to evolve as a musician and created much great music in the time since his electric music of the 1970s, but there is something special about his work in that decade, particularly on the Fender Rhodes, that stands on its own as a body of work, with some heights of improvisatory genius that will never be repeated in quite the same way.