This was the scene at a Denver Starbucks the day after the release of Herbie Hancock’s new album, “Possibilities”:
The Hear Music display featuring austere black-and-white photography of recording sessions between Hancock and the likes of Sting and Paul Simon inhabited prime space between the velvet club chairs and the fruit scones. Two high school kids lounged in the cafe, a grandmotherly type read a crafts magazine over a cappuccino, office workers queued up for their morning fix and two women huddled over frothy drinks on the patio, urgently conversing in Spanish.
Starbucks might not yet trump McDonald’s or Wal-Mart as America’s leading cultural colonizer – a corporate entity that dictates what the masses read, hear, eat and drink. But even a music trailblazer like Hancock, who released “Possibilities” jointly with Hear Music and Vector Records, must acknowledge the coffee chain’s monumental marketing niche.
“Everybody goes to Starbucks,” the jazzman who launched his career with Miles Davis said earlier this week from New York City. “All ages feel comfortable (there). It’s a relaxed atmosphere, perfect for getting someone’s attention when they’re having a great cup of coffee.”
Hancock watched the blockbuster success of the Starbucks Hear Music release of the Ray Charles duets album, “Genius Loves Company.” He also talked with longtime comrade Carlos Santana, who engineered a comeback of sorts with his collaborative album “Supernatural.” Then he sat down and composed a “wish list” of artists he might like to work with on a similar project.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about for the past four or five years,” said Hancock, 65. “I didn’t want to wait until I was 70 years old to do it.”
“Possibilities” acknowledges the esteem Hancock has earned in his industry. According to its liner notes, Hancock wanted to capture the spontaneous creative electricity artists sometimes lose sight of after extended periods of working alone.
“The artists I asked to collaborate with on this record were all eager to do it,” he said.
The result is a collection of tracks he believes will surprise listeners. “Stitched Up,” the opening song penned with guitarist John Mayer, captures the fusion of schoolboy charm and jazz sensibility that boosted Mayer onto the national scene. And the jazzy Paul Simon ballad, “I Do It for Your Love,” reveals a mournful, reflective maturity in Simon’s voice.
The more unexpected pairings on “Possibilities” point to the kind of genre-hopping that made Hancock – one of the first producers to grasp the composition possibilities of hip-hop – relevant for nearly five decades.
The Chicago native viewed the entire project with his characteristic exploratory nature. To help seize the freshness so vital in jazz, Hancock grabbed studio time with his partners whenever he could, in settings that varied from big-city studios to former Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio’s hippie-friendly compound in Burlington, Vt.
Earlier this year, Hancock became the first official artist-in-residence at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, the monumental jam carnival that draws some 80,000 people to a 700-acre farm in Tennessee each summer, making the Anastasio collaboration not as far-fetched as some fans might think.
But cynics will note that Hancock’s roster of collaborators reads like a list of Billboard chart-toppers, basically guaranteeing the album will find a following. Those same folks expect world beat rhythms to dominate “Safiatou,” a song featuring Santana and Angélique Kidjo, just like they expect Christina Aguilera to unleash her usual vocal acrobatics for her take on the Leon Russell tune “A Song for You.”
Hancock insisted the collaborations resulted in a freshness that will catch people off guard.
“I knew Christina Aguilera could sing,” he said of that track. “I knew she has a voice that in many ways had not been utilized to its fullest extent. I thought if she brings that to the table, and I bring what I do to the table, something beyond what audiences are used to could happen.”
The result? “She murdered that song.”
Hancock rejects attempts to pigeonhole his music or that of the people he sought to work with on “Possibilities.”
“Everyone is showing dimensions that their fan base is not accustomed to,” Hancock said of this album, which pop followers may deem a comeback but jazz fans will take as the latest in one of music’s most respected catalogs.
“It’s not only a crossover record for me,” he added. “It’s a crossover for all of them.”
Staff writer Elana Ashanti Jefferson can be reached at 303-820-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com.
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