Herbie Hancock - Empty Pockets download song

Herbie creates a masterpiece; an organic, evolving performance that almost completely disguises the fact that it is actually a 12 bar blues! A world apart from many a 12 bar blues that simply sound like 'cats blowing on blues changes'. He does this via an ingenious arrangement/compostition, structured such that the soloists play over 8 bars of stop-time. The stop time section uses half-step and suspended chordal movement to mask the blues form. The bass doesn't walk until bar 9 of the blues, fooling the listener into thinking that THAT is the top of the form! That trick further blurs the form...beautifully disorienting us and opening up our listening experience...genius!

When most people think if the music of the 60's, they think if rock. Ironically the most revolutionary music was the jazz scene. Some of my favorite 60's live jazz records were recorded in NYC and SF. So much more progressive, sophisticated and hip than what was going on in the rock scene back then. Cheers to Herbie for this indelible treasure!

GREAT MUSIC FOR MY SOUL

Billy Higgins - reminds me a lot of Elvin Jones' playing :)

This

jazz in the 50s/early 60s was the best and the most innovative to listen to.

Improv tidbit...Freddie likes to use the upper extensions of chords. So on an F7 he typically arpeggiates Eb, G, Bb, D; the 7th, 9th, 11th and 13th . The arpeggio is typically followed by a descending scale, usually bebop dominant...a classic post-bop shape "arps up/scale down".