Herbie Hancock - Secrets (1976) [1997 Master Sound Series]

Secrets (1976) is a Jazz-Funk fusion album by acclaimed keyboard player Herbie Hancock. Following up on his previous album Man-Child, the album again features Paul Jackson on bass, and reedist 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 emphasised the more mellow, softly rounded mood. Even the more up-tempo tracks, "Doin' It" and "Cantaloupe 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.

Having long since established his funk credentials, Herbie Hancock continues the direction of Head Hunters and its U.S. successors here, welding himself to the groove on electric keyboards while Bennie Maupin again shines sardonic beams of light on a variety of reeds. In "Doin' It," the most successful track, Hancock makes a more overt bid for the dancefloor, for the tune is basically one long irresistible groove with a very commercial-sounding bridge. Again Hancock chooses to recompose one of his standards; "Cantelope [sic] Island" is almost unrecognizable converted into a sauntering, swaggering thing. A streamlining process has set in the drumming has been simplified, some of the old high-voltage drive has been muted yet there are still enough enjoyable, intelligently musical things happening here to hold a Hancock admirer's attention.

Tracks:

01. Doin' It
02. People Music
03. Cantelope Island
04. Spider
05. Gentle Thoughts
06. Swamp Rat
07. Sansho Shima

Personnel:

Herbie Hancock - acoustic piano, Rhodes electric piano, electric grand piano, ARP Odyssey, ARP String Ensemble, Hohner D6 Clavinet, Micromoog, Oberheim 4 Voice, Echoplex
Bennie Maupin - soprano sax, tenor sax, saxello, lyricon, bass clarinet
Ray Parker Jr. - guitar, backing vocals on Doin' It
Paul Jackson - bass
James Levi - drums
Kenneth Nash - percussion
Wah Wah Watson - guitar, synthesizer, voice bag, vocals & bass on Doin' It
James Gadson - drums on Doin' It