JAZZ : Mr. Crossover’s Cross to Bear : Has Herbie Hancock spread himself too thin with his varied musical interests and diluted his influence as a jazz artist? He doesn’t think so.

Herbie Hancock is a happy guy. Or, at least, he says he’s a happy guy.

And why shouldn’t he be? One of the most visible jazz musicians in the world, winner (with other former members of the Miles Davis band) of his fourth Grammy Award this year, Academy Award winner, A-list party-goer, with an unusual new crossover album--”Dis Is Da Drum”--currently in release and a new jazz album in the works, Hancock appears to have the kind of to-die-for life that most jazz players can only envy.

This is an artist Rolling Stone described as “blessed with genius . . . brilliant”--a much-praised pianist, composer and leader who has cruised the top of every jazz popularity poll since he starred in the powerful Davis band of the mid-’60s.

Looking at him, dapper in a well-tailored suit, complete with carefully folded handkerchief in the lapel pocket, master of all he surveys in the luxuriously renovated West Hollywood home he has owned for 22 years, a visitor is a little shocked to hear Hancock say: “Of course, things haven’t gone exactly the way I expected lately.”

Excuse us, did we miss something?

“Well, it’s been tough the last few years,” Hancock says. “This new album and the jazz album I’m just finishing will be the first new recordings I’ve made under my name in 10 years.”

And only the second and third albums he has released in this decade--an astonishingly low level of productivity for a musician who has been viewed as a top-level jazz performer for more than 30 years. The question that some observers are asking is whether that view of his prominence in the jazz community is based on present activities or past glories. And whether Hancock, now 55, has become less a major jazz artist and more a multi-hyphenate entertainer whose fascination with television, pop music and technology have diluted his influence as a jazz artist.

As Hancock himself notes, the place where he hasn’t been seen with great frequency for the last decade has been in the studio playing jazz--at least not as the head of his own groups.

He can be heard, for example, accompanying Joe Henderson on the saxophonist’s “Double Rainbow” album (Verve), and his work with Wayne Shorter, Wallace Roney, Ron Carter and Tony Williams on “A Tribute to Miles” (Blue Note) won this year’s Grammy for jazz instrumental performance by an ensemble. Hancock has done duets with Chick Corea and straight-ahead jazz with the V.S.O.P. Quintet. Hancock’s last jazz album as a leader, however, was “Quartet” (CBS) in 1981.

Aside from his failure to produce new jazz albums under his own leadership, Hancock has had a few other problems to be concerned about. His career has been in a kind of holding pattern for most of the ‘90s, with a change in management, moves through three record companies and long waits for the release of both the Davis tribute album and “Dis Is Da Drum.”

Nor has his jazz visibility been helped by a constantly shifting involvement with other forms of music and media--from his unexpected early-’60s hit “Watermelon Man” to his Grammy-winning electro-jazz single “Rockit,” as well as a series of film scores that began with Antonioni’s “Blow Up” in 1966 and climaxed with the Academy Award-winning music for “‘Round Midnight” 20 years later. Hancock’s career, in fact, may be a perfect illustration of a performer who does too many things too well.

Last month, you might have seen him hosting a get-together at the House of Blues to describe the coming activities of his production company on the Internet and in interactive products. Or you might spot him on a television jazz show, hosting, emceeing and jamming with the musicians. And if you can slip into a Hollywood party, Hancock might just turn up with Gigi, his wife of 26 years, mixing with the show-biz elite and maybe even taking a brief turn at the piano.

“Herbie,” says one music industry insider, “can play great jazz, he can cross over into pop, he can write film scores, and he can even function in multimedia. But the more he does, the harder it is for the public to get a handle on him--and the more he dilutes his career.”

Hancock’s interests have never really progressed on a single track. Although he was captivated by jazz at an early age, he also performed the first movement of a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of 11. In college, he studied both music and electrical engineering.

When Hancock is asked if he agrees that the sacrifice of jazz recording to his other multiple activities has left a blank space in his career, his smile dims somewhat.

“No,” he replies, “because I’ve been playing jazz every year in Europe and in Japan. I just haven’t been making records.”

And the results of his jazz-pop hybrid albums have been uneven. In the ‘70s, when Hancock was still producing such quality jazz outings as “Crossings” (Warner Bros.) and “The Quintet” (CBS), he also was dipping into jazz-rock, funk and dance music in “Thrust” and “Head Hunters.” In the ‘80s, he finally hit the crossover jackpot with “Future Shock” (Columbia, 1983) and its hit single “Rockit.”

For much of the ‘90s, however, Hancock has done very little recording at all.

“There was a lot happening,” he explains. “I changed record companies and I got new management. “Then, just when I thought everything was coming together, I had to wait a year after I finished work on it for Mercury to release ‘Dis Is Da Drum.’ ”

He pauses for a moment, then shakes his head in frustration. Hancock’s responses to questions often start slow and build episodically. He tries to be as precise with his words as he is with his music.

“Why did they wait so long to release it?” he continues. “I don’t know. I think they may have been afraid that I wouldn’t get radio play. And they really wanted--since this was my first record for them--to put their whole force behind it and develop a whole special campaign to promote it.”

Nor was he happy with the company’s efforts to do remixes of some of the album’s tracks--a common occurrence in the pop world but almost unheard of in jazz recording.

“I suppose,” Hancock says with a sigh, “they thought they could make some remixes that would sound more like what the radio stations are playing. But I didn’t like the remixes, because they didn’t sound like my record. I mean, if they were going to do remixes, I should have been there when they were done. So I didn’t approve any of the remixes and the record company finally gave up and said, ‘Let’s just put the record out the way it is.’ ”

The problems with “Dis Is Da Drum” were the culmination of a series of record company changes reaching back to 1991, when Hancock left Columbia to sign with Quincy Jones’ Qwest label.

“The real reason I signed with Qwest was because I wanted to be with Quincy,” Hancock says. “I didn’t realize that at the time there really was no one person who headed the record company. But once I got inside, I saw that it was more like a production company that had a label rather than a real company. Quincy was doing not only the record company but also television and a whole bunch of other things, because that’s what Quincy does.”

The irony, of course, is that Jones was once a highly regarded jazz artist who left jazz almost completely to expand into pop music and eventually into multitiered areas of entertainment stewardship, management and production. It’s not surprising that his accomplishments would serve as a model for Hancock.

“I owe a great deal to Q for so many things that he did for me,” Hancock says. “I wouldn’t have a career in film scoring if it wasn’t for Quincy, and I’ll always be indebted to him. But when I saw that he didn’t seem to have gotten the idea that I had enough to bring to the table--and that, between the two of us, the whole could have been greater than the sum of its parts--that was surprising to me.”

The net result, after months of contractual and financial difficulties, was Hancock’s departure from Qwest and, eventually, the severing of ties with his longtime manager. (A Qwest representative declined to comment about Hancock’s association with the company.) In 1993, Hancock signed with PolyGram in a multi-label deal that places his jazz albums on the Verve label, his pop-oriented albums on Mercury and his larger works on Deutsche Grammophon.

And then he waited a year to have “Dis Is Da Drum” released. Given the moderately successful performance of the album--it has been in the Top 10 of the contemporary jazz charts (below Kenny G but above Spyro Gyra) since it was released in late May--it is difficult to say whether the long delay actually had much effect.

Hancock had more creative success with the Davis tribute album, even though it too was in the works a long time.

But Hancock, who has been a Buddhist for 21 years, possesses a remarkably calm overview that he attributes to regular meditation. If he does not exactly typify the smiling Buddha, he does seem to look easily beyond present and past problems with an ever-optimistic view of the next project. At the moment, he is busily trying to position himself and his production company in the world of the Internet and CD-ROMs. (He is currently developing his own page on the Internet’s World Wide Web. It can be accessed at https://www.sgi.com/ion/MindBending.html. )

The eclecticism of musical interests persists, however. Even his new album, scheduled for release early next year and his first jazz outing as leader in a decade, includes a program of pop songs. Although the specific tunes have not yet been selected for release, Hancock’s ensemble has recorded Bob Belden arrangements of Don Henley’s “New York Minute,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel” and the Police’s “Murder by Numbers.”

Does Hancock worry about the questioning of his jazz skills?

“Look at it this way,” he replies. “I don’t have to make a jazz record to prove to myself I can play jazz. All I have to do is sit down at the piano and play.”

More important to Hancock is what he views as his obligations to his audience as an artist and a performer.

“I like having hits,” he says with a shrug. “And I can’t deny that I like the ego gratification either. But the other thing is that having hits also means I’ve reached a large number of people. And that’s gratifying too. Especially if you believe in what you’re doing.”

But Hancock insists that his bottom line is simply not to do something--regardless of style or substance--that he doesn’t believe in.

“Sure, I’ve bent that rule a couple of times,” he adds with a laugh, “and I wasn’t happy with the results, not in the long run. But I’m not going to beat myself up for it. Those mistakes happened at a time when I put trust in somebody else’s judgment, because I felt I wasn’t qualified myself.

“But by and large. I’ve done things because I really believed in what I was doing and really felt it was the right thing to do. I don’t think I could live with myself if I did things any other way.”