Herbie Hancock

Squeezing the best Herbie Hancock tracks into one Essentials playlist is a thankless task: Such an influential artist deserves ten-times the attention, but we hope we've done him justice. For a sense of Hancock's range, flip between his score for Death Wish, his masterful keyboard work with Miles Davis, and the techno-genius of Perfect Machine.

After departing Miles Davis' outfit, where he had switched to the Rhodes electric piano, Herbie Hancock put together a progressive jazz-rock electric sextet. Mwandishi — Hancock's African name (it's Swahili for "writer") — provided the title for his landmark 1970 album; and although the collection contained only three tracks, those tracks explored previously unimagined possibilities of jazz music.

Takin' Off, Herbie Hancock's 1962 debut as a leader, holds the seeds of his future brilliance, especially in the imaginative minor-key track "The Maze"; 1968's Speak Like a Child, meanwhile, benefits from Hancock's role as a cornerstone of the Miles Davis Quintet: tracks like "Toys" strike a great balance between simplicity and fancy improv.

Herbie Hancock is perhaps the most versatile and imaginative of jazz-meisters. His 40-year-old back-catalogue takes in all sorts: hit singles "Chameleon" (smooth funk) and "Rockit" (a key work for body-poppers), movie soundtracks, experimental electronic jazz, acoustic jazz, a spritz of techno-pop with 1988's Perfect Machine, and the collaborative brilliance of the stunning tribute album, 1998's Gershwin's World (check out Joni Mitchell's smoky vocals on "The Man I Love" and "Summertime"). Masterful.