Herbie Hancock - Secrets (1976 Japanese CBS/Sony Vinyl LP)

Herbie Hancock - Secrets | Vinyl LP - 1976 Japanese CBS/Sony (25AP 244)

By 1976 Herbie Hancock had taken the sound of Head Hunters about as far towards the dancefloor as it would go. Secrets is the funkiest and most openly commercial record of his mid-seventies run, and the last built around the core of that band. Bennie Maupin stayed on reeds and Paul Jackson on bass, but Mike Clark and Bill Summers were gone, replaced by James Levi and Kenneth Nash, and the big change is the guitar. Wah Wah Watson, a Motown session guitarist, and a young Ray Parker Jr push electric guitar to the front of nearly every track. "Doin' It" is the clearest sign of where Hancock's head was, a straight funk single with Watson singing the hook through a talkbox over a disco bassline. "Cantelope Island" takes his 1964 Blue Note classic and slows it into a rolling Caribbean groove. Underneath all of it sits a bank of Rhodes, clavinet and analogue synthesisers that Hancock layers into thick, unhurried pads.

The record marks a turning point. Hancock spent 1976 pulling in two directions at once, reviving his acoustic past with the V.S.O.P. quintet while steering his electric band closer to disco, and Secrets is the electric side of that split. What came after, Sunlight and the vocoder records, went further into pop than a lot of jazz listeners wanted to follow, which has left this album slightly underrated, caught between the fame of the Head Hunters records and the commercial turn that followed. It rewards a second look, particularly for Paul Jackson's basslines and the strangeness Hancock draws out of his synth rig across the second side.

This is the original 1976 Japanese pressing on CBS/Sony, catalogue number 25AP 244.