Maiden Voyage is a jazz composition by Herbie Hancock, and the title track of his 1965 Blue Note album Maiden Voyage. It was recorded on March 17, 1965 at Rudy Van Gelder’s Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, with a quintet including Hancock on piano, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor sax, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums. The tune is a modal jazz/post-bop piece built on a durable 32-bar melody and a harmony shaped by sus chords derived from the dominant seventh, designed to evoke an oceanic mood as part of the album’s sea-inspired concept. Hancock has said the tune originated as background music for a television ad, and the album uses space and subtle group interplay to paint its nautical atmosphere, with the title track becoming a jazz standard. Maiden Voyage was released in 1965 on Blue Note and later received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999.
