THE PRISONER

I happen to prefer Herbie Hancock's more traditional jazz albums than his fusion excursions. Hancock, for all of his success with electric keyboards in fusion, from "Headhunters" to "Future Shock", never seemed to get comfortable in that setting. While popular audiences ate those albums up, they always, to me, sounded cold and repetitious.

Here, just after a stint in Miles Davis' band, Hancock brought together a fairly large band to play some light feeling be-bop. The band, featuring, among others, Joe Henderson and Hubert Laws, play fine, cool be-bop to Hancock's and bassist Buster Williams' compositions.

The theme of the album, according to the liner notes is "to express how black people have been imprisoned for a long time". While the song titles express that intent, the music conveys none of that imagery. Where the theme descibed above should have some level of tension, or even anger, the sound is mellow and cool. While it is fine listening music, I don't think it conveys what Hancock intended.