Herbie Hancock: Box

As much a box as a box set, the new Herbie Hancock collection spanning the multi-faceted jazz keyboardist's career at Columbia from the early '70s to the late '80s comes in a cool-looking but confoundingly impractical plastic cube which appears to suspend its four individual CDs in midair. Fortunately, the music makes it worth the considerable effort required to open the box and restore its contents to their original position. Unconventional in another sense, Box eschews the traditional chronological-overview approach of most box sets, offering instead a sampler platter arranged by musical style. This phase of Hancock's career almost demands that approach. Whereas Hancock's '60s work follows a straight line from the early days of '60s post-bop to its climax with Miles Davis' second quintet and the In A Silent Way album, Hancock branched out in many directions in the '70s and '80s. Box catches the tail end of his next phase: the intense, fusion-leaning ensemble Mwandishi, whose dissolution would be more lamentable if his following work hadn't surpassed it. Introducing his group Headhunters on a 1973 album of the same name, Hancock joined jazz, funk, traditional African instruments, and whatever else occurred to him in a combination only the stodgiest purists could complain about. Hancock's critics have lamented his tendency to skip from trend to trend, and while portions of Box bear that out (particularly the disco-inspired material), the early '70s caught Hancock at just the right moment, when his interests in African music and a Buddhism-inspired desire to please the masses dovetailed with the golden age of funk. What's more, he paid back his inspiration with interest, often in ways that wouldn't manifest for years. The 1984 hit "Rockit" steered countless turntablists toward their craft, while "Nobu," recorded a decade earlier and previously available only on Japanese imports, almost wouldn't sound out of place on a Clicks + Cuts compilation. Smartly chosen collaborators, from Bill Laswell to Bernie Maupin, kept Hancock on his toes during this phase, and while not every experiment paid off—anyone up for the lite-rock vocals of Gavin Christopher—it's hard to not admire the restlessness. While a fine box set could be carved from Hancock's experimental electric work during these decades, Box doesn't get to that until its second two discs; the first two focus on Hancock's acoustic work, mostly with an older set of collaborators. Until drummer Tony Williams' death in 1997, Hancock periodically reunited the old Davis quintet under the name VSOP, with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard filling out Davis' trumpet spot. Box's first and second disc spotlight these reunions and other permutations of the combo featuring Hancock, Hubbard, Williams, Wayne Shorter, and Ron Carter. While Hancock could be forgiven for taking the post-bop franchise into a laurels-resting phase, the music here reveals nothing of the sort: It's driven by an energy and an obvious camaraderie that finds a great deal of life in the old style. Box begins and ends with two versions of Hancock's venerable "Watermelon Man," one played with VSOP in 1976, the other with Laswell, Bootsy Collins, a bank of synthesizers, and a pile of Apple computers in 1988. They're practically unrecognizable as the work of the same artist, but as Box illustrates, that's one of Hancock's niftiest tricks.