Empyrean Isles took exactly one day. June 17, 1964, at Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs. Four tunes, all Hancock originals, and the one everybody knows is Cantaloupe Island.
The band is tiny and there is no saxophone anywhere in it: Hancock on piano, Freddie Hubbard on cornet, Ron Carter on bass, and an eighteen year old Tony Williams on drums who already sounds like the smartest guy in the room.
The cornet thing is a really cool detail. Hubbard usually played trumpet. On this date he took a cornet instead, and the horn sounds rounder and a little softer. The melody floats instead of cutting. Small choice, big difference.
The track is basically one piano riff. Herbie lays it down in the first few seconds and the whole song lives on top of it. Carter locks in underneath. Williams keeps the pocket loose but never lets it drift. Hubbard gets a solo, Herbie gets a solo, and then the riff brings everybody home. Five and a half minutes. Done.
That makes it a perfect commute record. You are not waiting for a payoff. You are already in it by bar two. On a Wednesday, when the week is half over and your energy is not, that steady pocket does real work.
You probably know this riff even if you think you do not. Us3 sampled it for Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia), which came out on single in late 1992 and went to number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 the following year. Whole generations met Herbie through that record. No complaints from me. A groove that strong was always going to travel.
Herbie cut Maiden Voyage the next year with almost the same band, and everyone calls that one the masterpiece. Fair enough, but Empyrean Isles is the looser hang, and Cantaloupe Island is the tune I actually reach for on a work morning.
The riff gets stuck and stays stuck. Sixty years of players have tried to write one that catches like that. Most of them missed.