HeadHunters

While digging in my crates, I ran across a recording from a wicked clan from my college days, the Digable Planets. Their debut record, Reachin – A New Refutation of Time & Space, brought back many memories of a time of emerging Black pride in Hip Hop, restless experimentation and interpolation of jazz infused with Hip Hop Beats by groups like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul . These groups and their sonic experimentation gave music heads who love Jazz and Hip Hop another kind of Fusion to love.

Two of the bes joints on "Reachin" contain samples from Herbie Hancock's - "HeadHunters" document.

As I remember over the years while reading different reviews about ‘Headhunters’ and Herbie Hancock, I believe it is one of, if not the best selling Jazz album of all time. This wouldn’t shock me at all.

My first experience with ‘Headhunters’ was the song ‘The Chameleon’. My middle school jazz band teacher introduced us to the song as a contest piece. It was the Maynard Ferguson big band version. Fortunately, my teacher was from the old, creative school and didn’t believe in playing pieces as written. There was always added flavoring that highlighted the strengths in the band. He also used the song to teach about the art of the groove. There is no bass line like the one from ‘The Chameleon’! It’s infectious and funky!

The long form musical composition is a lost art form in music - even Jazz. I blame TV and the “instant generation”. Seems the attention spans have gotten short over the years…and continue to get shorter. I bring up this point because the opening piece of this document clocks in at 15:41 seconds. The beauty of the length is it never gets boring and as the grooves change, you feel there is no end to the song. In fact, the song doesn’t end traditionally; it just fades away and sounds as if there was more going on.

Hancock and Reed man Bennie Maupin went to great lengths at texturing this document - matching the sounds of the synths with the horns. The texture and layering of Herbie’s ‘Headhunters’ is to Fusion Jazz what Miles’ ‘Kind of Blue’ has been to Modal Jazz – the standard. There’s not one Jazz Fusion document released afterwards that didn’t use the recording as a blueprint.

The reason the record came to remembrance from listening to "Reachin", was its sampling of ‘Watermelon Man’, which to me, is an ode to lazy day on the beach on some West Indian island. The groove that is this record seems to warm me up like a hot sunny day laying in the shade sipping mad amounts of rum punch - every sip in rhythm.

Percussionist Bill Summers used every trick in his bag to insure a tropical feeling came over the record. For examples of ‘Headhunters’ being the blueprint to Fusion, check for Bill Summers’ ‘Call It What You Want’, record featuring an oft sampled tune, including by the Digable Planets, ‘Summer Fun’.

Herbie himself remarked that, “after ‘Headhunters’ and ‘Thrust’, the Quintet kind of lost their fire”. Subsequent recordings, never reached the level of the first two. I guess that is the peril of creating a classic standard as the debut. I guess this might be another “similarity”, loosely speaking, to his mentor Miles.

For me, musically and sonically, ‘Headhunters’ is one of my most favorite records. When I listen to the tunes, I’m always amazed at how the pure groove keeps me interested and never takes a background. From the bass line on the Chameleon to Vein Meters’ slow infectiousness, there’s not a time when I don’t stop to enjoy this sound.