The album was a commercial and artistic breakthrough for Hancock, crossing over to funk and rock audiences and bringing jazz-funkfusion to mainstream attention, peaking at number 13 on the Billboard 200. Hancock is featured with woodwind player Bennie Maupin from his previous sextet and new collaborators – bassist Paul Jackson, percussionist Bill Summers and drummer Harvey Mason. The latter group of collaborators, which would go on to be known as The Headhunters, also played on Hancock's subsequent studio album Thrust (1974). All of the musicians (with the exception of Mason) play multiple instruments on the album.
Structure and release
Head Hunters followed a series of experimental albums by Hancock's "Mwandishi" sextet: Mwandishi, Crossings, and Sextant, released between 1971 and 1973, a time when Hancock was looking for a new direction in which to take his music. He later reflected on moving away from this style:
I began to feel that I had been spending so much time exploring the upper atmosphere of music and the more ethereal kind of far-out spacey stuff. Now there was this need to take some more of the earth and to feel a little more tethered; a connection to the earth. ... I was beginning to feel that we (the sextet) were playing this heavy kind of music, and I was tired of everything being heavy. I wanted to play something lighter.
— Hancock's sleeve notes: 1997 CD reissue
For the new album, Hancock assembled a new band, the Headhunters, of whom only woodwind player Bennie Maupin had been a member of the "Mwandishi" sextet. Hancock handled all synthesizer parts himself (having shared these duties with Patrick Gleeson on Crossings and Sextant) and he decided against the use of guitar altogether, favoring instead the clavinet, one of the defining sounds on the album. The new band featured a tight rhythm section composed of Paul Jackson (bass) and Harvey Mason (drums), and the album has a relaxed, funky sensibility that gave it an appeal to a far wider audience. Among the defining moments of the emerging jazz fusion and jazz-funk movements, the album made jazz listeners out of R&B fans and vice versa.
Of the four tracks on the album, "Watermelon Man" was the only one not written for the album. A hit from Hancock's hard bop days, originally appearing on his first album Takin' Off (1962) and later covered by Mongo Santamaría, it was reworked by Hancock and Mason for this album, featuring Bill Summers blowing into a beer bottle in imitation of the hindewho flute used by the Mbuti Pygmies of Zaire. The track features heavy use of African percussion. "Sly" was dedicated to Sly Stone, leader of the funk band Sly and the Family Stone. "Chameleon" features a famous bassline played by Hancock on an ARP Odyssey synthesizer. Closing track "Vein Melter" is a slow-burner, predominantly featuring Hancock on Rhodes piano and Maupin on bass clarinet. Heavily edited versions of "Chameleon" and "Vein Melter" were released on two sides of a 45 RPM single.
The album was remixed for quadraphonic sound in 1974. Columbia released this mix on LP record in the Stereo Quadraphonic matrix format and 8-track tape. The quadraphonic mixes feature elements not heard in the stereo version, including an additional keyboard melody at the beginning of "Sly". Surround sound versions of the album have been released a number of times on the Super Audio CD format. All of these SACD editions use a digital transfer of the original four-channel quad mix re-purposed into 5.1 surround sound.
The Headhunters band (with Mike Clark replacing Harvey Mason) worked with Hancock on a number of other albums, including Thrust (1974), Man-Child (1975), and Flood (1975), the latter of which was recorded live in Japan. The subsequent albums Secrets (1976) and Sunlight (1977), had widely diverging personnel. The Headhunters, with Hancock featured as a guest soloist, produced the albums Survival of the Fittest (1975) and Straight from the Gate (1978), the first of which was produced by Hancock and included the hit "God Make Me Funky".
The image on the album cover, designed by Victor Moscoso, features Hancock wearing a mask based on the African kple kple mask of the Baoulé tribe of Ivory Coast. Positioned clockwise around Hancock from lower left are Mason, Jackson, Maupin, and Summers.
Legacy
In 2005, the album was ranked number 498 in the book version of Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. While it was not included in Rolling Stone's original 2003 online version of the list, nor its 2012 revision, it was ranked at number 254 in the 2020 revision.[11]Head Hunters was a key release in Hancock's career and a defining moment in the genre of jazz, and has been an inspiration not only for jazz musicians, but also to funk, soul music, jazz funk and hip hop artists.[2] The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry, which collects "culturally, historically or aesthetically important" sound recordings from the 20th century.[12]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Herbie Hancock, except "Chameleon" by Hancock, Paul Jackson, Harvey Mason, & Bennie Maupin.
