Cantaloupe Island

Performer: Herbie Hancock
Artist: Dexter Gordon; Hank Mobley; Donald Byrd; Freddie Hubbard; Grant Green; Ron Carter; Billy Higgins; Tony Williams
Engineer: Rudy Van Gelder
Distributor: EMI Music Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Herbie Hancock (piano); George Coleman, Dexter Gordon, Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone); Donald Byrd, Freddie Hubbard (trumpet); Grachan Moncur III (trombone); Grant Green (guitar); Chuck Israels, Butch Warren, Ron Carter (bass); Billy Higgins, Tony Williams (drums). Producer: Alfred Lion. Compilation producer: Michael Cuscuna. Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey between 1962 and 1965. Includes liner notes by Michael Cuscuna. Personnel: Herbie Hancock (piano, keyboards). A mini-retrospective of Herbie Hancock's early years as a jazz artist, this six-track CD touches on some of his best-known small-ensemble works from that period. Of his first five albums for Blue Note Records from 1963-1965, Takin' Off, My Point of View, Empyrean Isles, and Maiden Voyage are represented -- his third and perhaps most individually realized LP, Inventions & Dimensions, is not. You get hits "Canteloupe Island," "Watermelon Man," "Maiden Voyage," and three lesser titles, which remove it from "best-of" status. His sixth and seventh full-length Blue Note recordings, The Prisoner and Speak Like a Child, are also omitted. This is a decent, edited, and concise, but far from comprehensive view of Hancock's salad days, which some purport might still be his best. ~ Michael G. Nastos

Q (11/94, p.140) - 3 Stars - Good - "...with it's come-on-down piano, Freddie Hubbard's steel-blue trumpet and the hustle and stutter of Tony William's drumming...[it's] full of the pianist's genius for nourishing jazz spontaneity in pop formats..."

One of the most open-eared and forward-thinking jazz musicians of his day, Hancock has, more than just about anyone else, consistently tried to broaden the music's horizons by mixing it with the most interesting elements of contemporary pop. Hancock has consistently pushed the envelope, from his earliest days with Miles Davis to his jazz-rock fusion of the early '70s and his early embrace of synthesizers and electronic instruments, his early-'80s experiments with hip-hop and sampling, or more recently, his acoustic piano reinterpretations of songs--the new standards, in his parlance--by everyone from Don Henley to Nirvana.

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