If you were looking to crown the current greatest living jazz artist, the short list of contenders would include alumni from the ensembles led by trumpeter and band leader Miles Davis (1926-1991) from the 1960s and 1970s.
Which would still only narrow it down to an impressive list of luminaries including Keith Jarrett, John McLaughlin, Ron Carter, and Billy Cobham.
Yet all are arguably vying for second place behind 86-year-old Herbie Hancock (www.herbiehancock.com), who plays at Glazer Hall in Palm Beach on May 8. Still an active touring draw, the keyboardist will perform with the all-star lineup of trumpeter Terence Blanchard, guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist James Genus, and drummer Jaylen Petinaud.
Fellow keyboardist Jarrett (who turns 81 years old on May 8), guitarist McLaughlin (84) and drummer Cobham (82 on May 16) all played with Davis during his initial electrified fusion run in late ’60s and early ’70s. Bassist Carter (89 on May 4) and Hancock go back further, having been part of the trumpeter’s heralded mid-to-late-’60s acoustic quintet with saxophonist Wayne Shorter (1933-2023) and drummer Tony Williams (1945-1997).
“They were all amazing players,” Hancock says by phone from his home in Los Angeles, where he’s lived for so long that he can only estimate the time frame as being between 45 and 50 years.
“I was so fortunate to work with Miles, Tony, Ron and Wayne. It created a tremendous musical atmosphere for me to be in.”
What the age-defiant, Chicago-born Hancock has done — both during and since his time with Davis — gives him the edge over the others, including Carter, a longtime distinguished recording artist, educator and sideman with well over 2,000 recording credits. McLaughlin has lived in Monaco for 44 years and is retired from touring; Cobham (a bandmate of McLaughlin’s in the post-Davis jazz/fusion juggernaut the Mahavishnu Orchestra) now mostly performs in Europe, having lived in Switzerland since the mid-’80s.
And Jarrett, the most obvious comparison, suffered two strokes in 2018 that caused partial paralysis and his own retirement from touring. Yet even before that, the brilliant and mercurial keyboardist became an exclusively acoustic jazz pianist after having played organ and electric piano with Davis. His famed subsequent solo and trio recordings displayed a purist who was freed from his electronic trappings.
The classically trained Hancock, on the other hand, has played practically every variation of keyboards, and on every style from traditional jazz and fusion to funk and world music, to become the ultimate crossover artist from the 1960s into the 21st century.
“In my career, it’s always been people suggesting that I go in this direction and that direction,” says Hancock. “And somehow I was able to get in the right groove at the right time.”
Over his 86 years, Hancock has practically lived several different musical lifetimes, including before his tenure with Davis. The 14-time Grammy Award winner’s early acoustic piano work with horn players (trumpeter Donald Byrd; saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Oliver Nelson, and Phil Woods), plus his 1962 Blue Note debut solo recording Takin’ Off, which featured a future jazz standard in “Watermelon Man,” preceded his inclusion in the legendary trumpeter’s quintet.
That group would redefine the post-bop jazz landscape on albums like ESP, Nefertiti, and Sorcerer, all while Hancock’s side solo career included more of his future standards like “Cantaloupe Island,” “Maiden Voyage” and “Dolphin Dance” from his albums Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage.
But as the ’60s morphed into the ’70s, Hancock increasingly included Fender Rhodes electric piano into his recording and touring repertoire. Still, it’s safe to say that very few others saw his 1973 album Head Hunters coming.
The chameleonic keyboardist had continued recording with Davis, playing electric piano and organ on his funk-infused 1972 release On the Corner, but took it a step further the following year. Influenced by James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Sly & the Family Stone, Head Hunters displayed Hancock’s additional clavinet and synthesizer playing in a new funk-fusion quintet with multi-wind instrumentalist Bennie Maupin, bassist Paul Jackson, drummer Harvey Mason, and percussionist Bill Summers.
The all-instrumental effort became the first jazz album to go platinum. “Watermelon Man” got a slithering new arrangement on it, and the strutting leadoff track “Chameleon” became yet another future Hancock standard. Some acoustic jazz purists weren’t impressed, ignoring the fact that three-fifths of the lineup actually played acoustic instruments, yet most critics recognized Hancock’s futuristic vision.
“Head Hunters still sounds fresh and vital three decades after its initial release,” Stephen Erlewine wrote in an AllMusic.com retrospective, “and its genre-bending proved vastly influential on not only jazz, but funk, soul, and hip-hop.”
Few bands get nicknamed for an album because of its influence, but some of the same personnel has carried on under the name Head Hunters, both with and without Hancock. His following album Thrust, released in 1974, featured a similar lineup other than a percolating new drummer in Mike Clark, and was just as creative despite lacking its predecessor’s shock value.
“That was all new territory at that time,” Hancock says. “Paul originally played upright acoustic jazz bass, but when he was handed an electric bass, he blended those jazz sensibilities with the funk side of his playing to create a whole new direction. Nobody else sounded like him.”
Alternating for the next decade between his new electric sound, traditional acoustic jazz, solo piano, and session work, Hancock still had surprises up his sleeve. Teaming up with bassist and producer Bill Laswell, his 1983 album Future Shock lived up to its title. Its single, “Rockit,” blended jazz and hip-hop; synthesizers, Hancock’s distorted vocal interjections, and vinyl scratching. And its popularity surged due to an innovative, Godley and Creme-directed animated MTV video that featured robotic artwork by Jim Whiting. The track won Hancock his first Grammy Award, for Best R&B Instrumental Performance, in 1984.
“Head Hunters had opened a lot of doors by then,” Hancock says, “even though I didn’t know how it was possible when people were telling me it was a hit record. And rap music was still somewhat underground when ‘Rockit’ came out, yet that song just kind of blended several different genres and opened more doorways. But I never expected it would win a Grammy, because I never expected any of this!”
In 1986, Hancock won an Academy Award for Best Original Score for director Bertrand Tavernier’s homage to traditional jazz, ’Round Midnight, in which Hancock also appeared. Over the past 40 years, the Oscar-winning star of stage, the charts, and both large and small screens has added a baker’s dozen more Grammy Awards, most recently for the octogenarian’s latest two releases.
His 2007 ode to inimitable pop singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell, River: The Joni Letters, won Best Contemporary Jazz Album and Album of the Year honors, the latter award a rarity for jazz artists. And the star-studded 2010 cover songs album The Imagine Project won Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals for John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Best Improvised Jazz Solo for Hancock’s break on Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”
In 2013, Hancock received a prestigious Kennedy Center Honor alongside actress Shirley MacLaine, opera singer Martina Arroyo, singer/songwriter Billy Joel, and guitarist Carlos Santana. A potent jazz ambassador, Hancock’s many titles include chairman at the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, creative chair for Jazz at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and founder of The International Committee of Artists for Peace.
Fans at Glazer Hall can expect tracks from throughout Hancock’s illustrious 60-plus-year career, on everything from acoustic and electric pianos to synthesizers, vocorder and a keytar, the hand-held keyboard he’ll play hanging from a strap around his neck at the front of the stage.
“Jaylen, my drummer, is 28 years old and has been with me for a couple years now,” Hancock says. “It’s great having that kind of young energy in the band. Terence will not only play trumpet, but some keyboards as well. James has played bass with me for a number of years now, and has evolved with so much creativity. And Lionel has written some new arrangements of tracks from the past. So we’re having fun with all that, and looking forward to the tour.”
If You Go
Herbie Hancock performs at Glazer Hall, 70 Royal Poinciana Way, Suite P70, Palm Beach.
When: 8 p.m. May 8
Tickets: $316.25-$373.75
Info: 561-576-7860, experience.glazerhall.org/153