Herbie Hancock best recordings

I like Brazil album.
Push-Push is great as well.

Czarivey, I believe you are referring to Herbie Mann.

Hancock's Blue Note recordings are a very good example of the old adage that, the better the music, the worse the recording.

I'm not so high on late model Herbie, but "The River" covering the songs of Joni Mitchell, who he worked with extensively, is nice music, well recorded. But IMHO, it still pales in comparison to the Blue Notes, but these are matters of taste, and Hancock, like Mitchell, has traversed so many styles and idioms that it's hard to pick a best.

Ponnie, Rockadanny, Viridian -

Very appreciative of the suggestions! Viridian, I'll definitely look into "The River", but you lost me at "Blue Note". Are you saying this is a bad recording? If so that would be the opposite of what I'm looking for. For what it's worth I have yet to hear any HH that I'd consider 'bad music', and I think that makes my task pretty easy: sift through the thousands of his recordings to shake out those that are great. I'm not at all concerned about the quality of the music itself.

Keep the suggestions coming - really looking forward to hearing these on my new system.

Thanks!
HJ

You're right Viridian my errrrorrr :)

My apoligies, I mean Hancock's classic albums on the Blue Note label, engineered by Rudy Van Gelder.

These are straight ahead jazz as opposed to the Funk that came later with his group the Headhunters or the rather stylized music of more recent times.

I think that "The River" may be just what you are looking for. Wayne Shorter's sax work is fantastic on this one as well. But take heed, this is a vocal album with Norah Jones, Corrine Bailey Rae, and others. So if you avoid vocal music this one may not be for you. There are some utube videos from the album that are excellent one with the fantastic enfent terible bass wizard Tal Wilkenfeld that will part your hair.