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6 Degrees Entertainment

Title - 'Sunlight / Feets Don't Fail Me Now'
Artist - Herbie Hancock

Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock, more better known as simply Herbie Hancock is a highly regarded American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, composer and actor. Starting his career with Donald Byrd, he shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet where Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk music. Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "cross over" and achieved success among pop audiences.

To date, Hancock's best-known compositions include "Cantaloupe Island", "Watermelon Man" (later performed by dozens of musicians, including bandleader Mongo Santamaría), "Maiden Voyage", "Chameleon", and the singles "I Thought It Was You" and pop edgy "Rockit". His 2007 tribute album River: The Joni Letters won the 2008 Grammy Award for Album of the Year, only the second jazz album ever to win the award, after Getz/Gilberto in 1965.

So, as you can tell, Herbie Hancock has always been at the cutting edge of popular music and so, as you would fully expect from the man, both his albums Sunlight (1977) and Feets Don’t Fail Me Now (1979) were also most certainly a different style of Jazz to what people had heard back then.

Combining these two albums in one complete, and now expanded package, Robinsongs (via Cherry Red Records) has allowed all fans of both jazz and Hancock himself to invest their time in these two CDs like quite never before.

Sunlight:
1. "I Thought It Was You"
2. "Come Running to Me"
3. "Sunlight"
4. "No Means Yes"
5. "Good Question"
6. "I Thought It Was You" (7" Single Version)
7. "Come Running to Me" (7" Single Version)

Feets Don't Fail Me Now:
1. "You Bet Your Love"
2. "Trust Me"
3. "Ready or Not"
4. "Tell Everybody"
5. "Honey from the Jar"
6. "Knee Deep"
7. "You Bet Your Love" (7" Single Version)
8. "Ready or Not" (7" Single Version)
9. "Tell Everybody" (7" Single Version)
10. "Honey from the Jar" (7" Single Version)
11. "You Bet Your Love" (Special Disco Version)
12. "Tell Everybody" (Disco Version)

Taking them one at a time, Sunlight was released originally in June of 1978. A jazz-funk, fusion album, it features Hancock's vocals through a vocoder as well as performances by drummer Tony Williams and bassist Jaco Pastorius. This was when Hancock began heading towards a more mainstream Smooth Jazz/R&B fusion, similar to fellow Jazz-Fusion pianist Patrice Rushen. This would last until his 1982 album Lite Me Up.

The album produced a single entitled "I Thought It Was You" which was mildly received at the time by UK jazz listeners. As a whole the album tends to lay more toward funk than a jazz record, and is reminiscent of much of the electro-funk of the time. This release marks the beginning of the 1980s electro-era style that was more refined in Herbie's later albums such as Future Shock and Sound-System.

Feets Don't Fail Me Now was the first of Hancock's albums to discard jazz and funk completely in favor of a more commercial (at the time) disco sound, spotlighting vocoder effects and repetitive lyrics. Amazingly it was also his twenty-seventh album to date at that time and featured what they used to call a "4-on-the-floor beat" plus bongos/cowbells along with a very funky bass and/or synth.

This brand new Robinsongs package also includes the 7” single versions of "I Thought It Was You", "You Bet Your Love", "Ready Or Not", "Tell Everybody" and "Honey From The Jar" as bonus tracks, along with 12” versions of "You Bet Your Love" and "Tell Everybody".

The new sleeve notes are by Charles Waring contributor to MOJO and Record Collector and co-founder of www.soulandjazzandfunk.com

www.herbiehancock.com

Official CD Purchase Link





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