Search - Herbie Hancock :: Fat Albert Rotunda (Mlps)

Fun and Funky

M. Detko | Scarborough, Ontario Canada | 12/14/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Great album - first a correction, Herbie did not write the music for Bill Cosby's classic Saturday morning cartoon series. This music is the soundtrack for an animated one-off "special" which showed on TV somewhere around 1969. I recall seeing it (I was 9 at the time) and recall loving the music, and that the animation had a great sense of style, sort of like Spider-Man. I recall almost nothing of the cartoon nor have I ever seen it anywhere since. I came across this album on vinyl about 15 years ago and had a thrill putting it on. The music is very funky but a little static with repetitive grooves and horn sections which are a background for Herbie to solo on electric piano. A notable exception is "Tell Me a Bedtime Story", a beautiful ensemble piece, a funk ballad, worth the price of admission. The other tunes feature a lot of late-60's fuzz guitar riffs with understated Rhodes underneath. Kind of lightweight for Hancock, especially considering the great musicians featured, but fun and funky too. Remember that this is soundtrack music so it is subdued. Very nostalgic 60's funk sound to the album as a whole. The Spider-Man comparison can almost fit to the music."