Herbie Hancock
The Prisoner (Blue Note 46845)

Herbie Hancock's final album for Blue Note is one of his most interesting recordings, a nonet session that showcases his skill as an arranger as well as a composer. The songs are a bit less immediately catchy than most of his Blue Note albums (there's no "Cantaloupe Island" or "Watermelon Man" here), but the album benefits from repeated listenings.

It's fairly dense, reflecting a decided Gil Evans influence in terms of tone coloring, but with the usual Herbie blend of musical intellectualism and down-home feel-good-ness. As a songwriter, Herbie is one of the rare jazz cats that has been able to consistently use his schoolin' without losing sight of what feels good.

And while one might argue that he's spent the last 25 years doing a little too much of what feels good with an endless stream of increasingly generic-sounding fusion and post-fusion records, he's still totally capable of producing a stunner now and then. The Prisoner didn't have the burden of like 40 albums of varying quality preceding it … rather, it was only his seventh album as a leader, and only his second after leaving the Miles Davis group.

In some ways, this is an album that could only have been made in 1969: forward-thinking but still traditional, and with a depth that you won't find in many jazz records these days. It's a great album, have I made myself clear, you record-review-reading pervert?

The players are a mic of names and not-so-names: Johnny Coles (flugelhorn), Joe Henderson (tenor sax 7 alto flute), Garnett Brown (trombone), Herbie (acoustic & electric piano), Buster Williams (bass – wow, a jazz album that Ron Carter doesn't appear on!), Albert "Tootie" Heath (drums …fill in your own "Facts of Life" joke, I'm too tired), Hubert Laws (flute), Jerome Richardson (bass clarinet & flute), Romeo Penque (bass clarinet), Tony Studd (bass trombone … and a great porn name), and Jack Jeffers (bass trombone … and a terrible porn name).

The music is intense but beautiful, the grand highlight being the first cut, "I Have a Dream," at nearly eleven minutes, a wonderful sustained bit of slow-brew, recalling Horace Silver's late 50s hits ("Sister Sadie") as well as early 70s driver education movie music.

"The Prisoner" is a subtle but angry little song that showcases Henderson, very reminiscent of the Miles Quintet stuff. "Firewater" is the lone non-Hancock composition (it's by Charles Williams), and shows off the dynamics of the nonet. Though this draws a lot on the Birth of the Cool sound, I like it so much better, it's just more enjoyable to listen to.

"He Who Lives in Fear" is probably my second favorite track, another slow-brewer but very dark and mysterious, much more introspective than you'd expect from a group of nine. "Promise of the Sun" closes the album with more mood and mystery, and would be the last song issued by Hancock on Blue Note.

It was certainly the end of an era, and it's interesting to see the vast difference between the purity of a record like this and the earthiness of the albums he'd be doing just a couple years later as he delved deeper into funk.

The Prisoner is never really thought of as being one of Herbie's "great albums," more like a footnote or a curiosity, but it's a fantastic record and well worth seeking out. Even for non-Hancock fans this is a great album. It takes a lot of attention to get into it, but once you're there it's a smooth and very cool journey. Kind of like (fill in vaguely offensive sexual joke here).

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Review by Lula Babcock