Credit where credit's due. When I worked at an
unemployment benefit office in a well-known resort on the south coast of
England, a befuddled young man released from the safety net of higher
education, I was befriended by a human problem known to his fellow officers as the poisonous dwarf. Since no one wanted
to deal with the problem, he was offloaded onto the section of a new and callow
supervisor who knew nothing outside the covers of a modern American novel. Moi.
Predictably, he
proved a pain in the rear. Even though I would have come to it eventually under
my own steam, give the fellow some Brownie points, he did introduce me to
Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage. It seems hardly credible that such a
sociopathic little snot-rag would have appreciated anything of such intricate
beauty, but maybe the private person behind the public persona was not quite so
obnoxious. He was certainly fervent enough in his enthusiasm for Herbie's
earliest masterpiece almost to force it into my hands. There was no alternative
but to listen to it.
I knew the gorgeous
title track – one of the most hummable and beguiling melodies in the whole of
jazz – via Brian Auger & the Trinity's fine album, Befour. But I
couldn't believe at that point in my musical education that any modern jazz
album could be consistently up to such quality. It is. In fact, I realised on
first playing it back at home, that I knew both the opening title track and the
final, equally beautiful 'Dolphin Dance' – via one of Grover Washington jr.'s polished
if somewhat samey albums.
Book-ended by two
such indelible melodies, Maiden Voyage is one of the most accessible
jazz records of the modern age. Yet my initial unease was born out to a degree
by the chaotic fury of 'The Eye of the Hurricane' and 'Survival of the Fittest',
both of which – take out of context – could be considered a little challenging.
In between these
two more difficult tracks, lies the beautifully hypnotic 'Little One', taken at
an even slower tempo than the version which appears on Miles Davis' ESP.
The link between these two great albums is not serendipitous. Hancock recorded Maiden
Voyage with the other two members of the rhythm section that propelled
Miles Davis' legendary quintet of the 1960s – with Freddie Hubbard substituting
for Miles himself on trumpet and one of my unsung heroes of the tenor
saxophone, the surprisingly delicate 'Big George' Coleman, sitting in for Wayne
Shorter.
Taken all together,
too, the five extended tracks work thematically in the way that the five tracks
of Miles' earlier Kind Of Blue, say, slide one after another into a
modal suite. Given such obviously thematic titles as 'Maiden Voyage', 'The Eye
of the Hurricane' and 'Dolphin Dance', it's easy as you listen to picture in
your mind some sailing vessel negotiating the wind-tossed waves of 'Hurricane'
and 'Survival of the Fittest' to reach the final calm of 'Dolphin Dance'. Which
is one reason why individual tracks lifted onto a Best of compilation
can never work as well as they do in the context of the album. And which is one
reason why Jazzwise magazine selected it as one of their '100 albums
that shook the world'.
When you think that
another listed Herbie Hancock album, The New Standard, was recorded more
than 40 years later, it gives you an idea of how incredible has been the
pianist's durability. Part of that, I suppose, comes from his willingness –
like that of his former employer – to explore new musical frontiers. In between
the two albums came Herbie Hancock's other indisputable unalloyed masterpiece, Headhunters,
which more or less created the template for jazz-funk. The ridiculously
infectious funk of 'Chameleon' would serve as a soundtrack to my one and only
year in a hall of residence.
Not long after
that, my brother drove his girlfriend and me to the French Alps to visit an old
friend. Never shy of spending a bob or two on the latest technology, he had an
in-car stereo cassette player that bettered any others I have heard since. I
only have to hear his disco-era vocod-ified Columbia hit, 'I Thought it was
You', and I'm transported straight back to a long tree-lined road rising gently
but relentlessly up from the environs of Grenoble to the dark ominous mountain
peaks ahead.
Thankfully, I don't think of the poisonous dwarf every time I hear Maiden Voyage. Instead, it continues to delight and wonder as it reinforces my conviction that it was the finest hour of one of the jazz world's most charming, intelligent and innovative artists – and, for me, one of the five greatest jazz albums made during my lifetime.
