Takin’ Off by Herbie Hancock

Takin' Off, Herbie Hancock's debut album, came out on Blue Note with Alfred Lion producing, and for a first try it's got serious company. Veteran tenor man Dexter Gordon and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard handle the front line, with Butch Warren on bass and Billy Higgins on drums, and Hancock wrote the tunes himself.

This is hard bop with its sleeves rolled up and a soulful strut in its walk, and the prize is "Watermelon Man", a bluesy, finger-snapping tune that nearly broke into the pop singles Top 100 and ended up a standard that every jazz combo seems to know. Hancock liked it enough to rebuild it as funk on Head Hunters in 1973. The album got its first CD release in 1996, and Rudy Van Gelder remastered it in 2007. My Point of View came next.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.