Head Hunters

1	Chameleon 15:44
2	Watermelon Man 6:32
3	Sly 10:20
4	Vein Melter 9:10

Barnes & Noble

With the funk flying from note one, Head Hunters proudly announced itself a contemporary jazz recording, one that acknowledged the impact of Sly and the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye, and the rich vein of early '70s R&B. Armed with an arsenal of electronic keyboards, and backed by a lean-and-mean electric bassist and drummer, Hancock reinvented his music: What counted now was the feel of a piece -- virtuoso improvisation could take a back seat. Such tracks as "Sly" (an homage to you-know-who), the electro-groove remake of Hancock's earliest success, "Watermelon Man," and the big hit "Chameleon" come on like sonic valentines to funk itself. The street-beat jazz of Head Hunters gave Hancock a new audience and established his lasting reputation for cutting-edge fusion. Steve Futterman

All Music Guide

Head Hunters was a pivotal point in Herbie Hancock's career, bringing him into the vanguard of jazz fusion. Hancock had pushed avant-garde boundaries on his own albums and with Miles Davis, but he had never devoted himself to the groove as he did on Head Hunters. Drawing heavily from Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, and James Brown, Hancock developed deeply funky, even gritty, rhythms over which he soloed on electric synthesizers, bringing the instrument to the forefront in jazz. It had all of the sensibilities of jazz, particularly in the way it wound off into long improvisations, but its rhythms were firmly planted in funk, soul, and R&B, giving it a mass appeal that made it the biggest-selling jazz album of all time (a record which was later broken). Jazz purists, of course, decried the experiments at the time, but Head Hunters still sounds fresh and vital decades after its initial release, and its genre-bending proved vastly influential on not only jazz, but funk, soul, and hip-hop. Stephen Thomas Erlewine