Herbie Hancock - Secrets [LP] (1976)

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Artist:
Title: Secrets [LP]
Year Of Release: 1976
Label: Columbia [PC 34280]
Genre: Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Funk
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue) [24Bit/96]
Total Time: 47:47
Total Size: 972 MB
WebSite:

Secrets is a August 1976 jazz-funk fusion album by keyboard player Herbie Hancock. It is also Hancock's seventeenth album overall.

The album clearly followed from its predecessor Man-Child. As ever, Paul Jackson's basslines were critical, and the other regular member Bennie Maupin continued to provide most of the solos alongside Hancock. Man-Child had seen the addition of electric guitar to Hancock's sound, and Secrets saw the guitar's place in the arrangements rise to crucial importance throughout. The flamboyant rhythm guitar contributions of top Motown session musician Wah Wah Watson are a particularly notable feature of the album.

Where Man-Child was evenly divided between up-tempo and laid-back tracks, Secrets emphasized the more mellow, softly rounded mood. Even the more up-tempo tracks, "Doin' It" and "Cantelope Island", are suffused with a relaxed Caribbean influence, and overall the album tends towards restrained, rolling grooves rather than overtly high-energy funk. Appropriately, Hancock spent much of his time using the mellow tones of the Rhodes piano, and took advantage of the new polyphonic synthesizers to contribute thick pads, foreshadowing ambient music.

Although summery and mellow, the album was far from lounge music, with some extremely abstract and intense sections, particular in the latter half; it is also entirely instrumental beside the "Jus' keep on doin' it" chants of the opening track. Subsequent Hancock albums saw the addition of more vocoded lead vocals and disco influences.

The Secrets line-up performed "Spider" (from this LP) and "Hang Up Your Hang-Ups" (from Man-Child) at the V.S.O.P. concert in the summer of 1976.



Tracklist:

Side One:
A1 Doin' It (08:00)
A2 People Music (07:07)
A3 Cantelope Island (07:06)

Side Two:
B1 Spider (07:20)
B2 Gentle Thoughts (07:01)
B3 Swamp Rat (06:25)
B4 Sansho Shima (04:50)

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The Herbie Hancock Group:
– Herbie Hancock - piano, Rhodes electric piano, Yamaha electric grand piano, Hohner D-6 clavinet, Arp Odyssey, Arp String Ensemble, moog micro-moog, Oberheim Polyphonic synthesizer, echoplex
– Bennie Maupin - soprano & tenor saxes, saxello, lyricon, bass clarinet
– Wah Wah Watson - guitar, Maestro Universal, synthesizer system, Maestro sample and hold unit, voice bag, bass (A1), lead vocals (A1)
– Ray Parker - guitar
– Paul Jackson - bass
– James Levi - drums
– Kenneth Nash - percussion
with others:
– James Gadson - drums (A1)
– Ray Parker Jr., James Gadson, Art Baldacci, Fred Dobbs, Don Kerr & Chris Mancini - backing vocals (A1)
Recorded and mixed at Wally Heider Recording Studio, San Francisco, California (except A1)
- engineers – Fred Catero & David Rubinson
Track A1 recorded at Columbia Recording Studios, San Francisco, California
- engineer – Michael Fusaro
Mastered by George Horn & Phil Brown at CBS, San Francisco
Originally released in June 1976 by Columbia Records (USA), LP - PC 34280

Herbie Hancock - Secrets [LP] (1976)