This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Head Hunters" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(August 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Head Hunters
Studio album by Herbie Hancock
Released	October 26, 1973 (1973-10-26)
Recorded	September 1973
Studio	Wally Heider andDifferent Fur (San Francisco)
Genre	Jazz-funk[1] jazz fusion[2]
Length	41:52
Label	Columbia
Producer	Herbie Hancock David Rubinson
Herbie Hancock chronology
Sextant (1973) Head Hunters (1973) Dedication (1974)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
DownBeat	[3]
Jazzwise	[4]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings	[5]
Pitchfork	10/10[1]
Q	[6]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[7]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide	[8]
Uncut	[9]

Head Hunters is the twelfthstudio album by American pianist, keyboardist and composerHerbie Hancock, released October 26, 1973, onColumbia Records. Recording sessions for the album took place in the evening atWally Heider Studios andDifferent Fur Trading Co. inSan Francisco,California.

The album was a commercial and artistic breakthrough for Hancock, crossing over tofunk androck audiences and bringingjazz-funkfusion to mainstream attention, peaking at number 13 on theBillboard 200. Hancock is featured with woodwind playerBennie Maupin from his previous sextet and new collaborators – bassistPaul Jackson, percussionistBill Summers and drummerHarvey Mason. The latter group of collaborators, which would go on to be known asthe Headhunters, also played on Hancock's subsequent studio albumThrust (1974). All of the musicians (with the exception of Mason) play multiple instruments on the album.

Head Hunters followed a series of experimental albums by Hancock's "Mwandishi" sextet:Mwandishi,Crossings, andSextant, 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 playerBennie Maupin had been a member of the "Mwandishi" sextet. Hancock handled all synthesizer parts himself (having shared these duties withPatrick Gleeson onCrossings andSextant) and he decided against the use of guitar altogether, favoring instead theclavinet, one of the defining sounds on the album. The new band featured a tightrhythm section composed ofPaul Jackson (bass) andHarvey 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 emergingjazz fusion andjazz-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'shard bop days, originally appearing on his first albumTakin' Off (1962) and later covered byMongo Santamaría, it was reworked by Hancock and Mason for this album, featuring Bill Summers blowing into a beer bottle in imitation of thehindewho flute used by the MbutiPygmies ofZaire. The track features heavy use of African percussion. "Sly" was dedicated toSly Stone, leader of the funk bandSly and the Family Stone. "Chameleon" features a famous bassline played by Hancock on anARP Odyssey synthesizer. Closing track "Vein Melter" is a slow-burner, predominantly featuring Hancock onRhodes piano and Maupin onbass clarinet. Heavily edited versions of "Chameleon" and "Vein Melter" were released on two sides of a 45 RPM single.

The album was remixed forquadraphonic sound in 1974. Columbia released this mix onLP record in theStereo Quadraphonic matrix format and8-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 theSuper Audio CD format. All of these SACD editions use a digital transfer of the original four-channel quad mix re-purposed into5.1 surround sound.

Head Hunters became the biggest-selling jazz album of all time until surpassed byGeorge Benson'sBreezin' in 1976.^{[citation needed]}

The Headhunters band (withMike Clark replacing Harvey Mason) worked with Hancock on a number of other albums, includingThrust (1974),Man-Child (1975), andFlood (1975), the latter of which was recorded live in Japan. The subsequent albumsSecrets (1976) andSunlight (1977), had widely diverging personnel. The Headhunters, with Hancock featured as a guest soloist, produced the albumsSurvival of the Fittest (1975) andStraight 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 byVictor Moscoso, features Hancock wearing a mask based on the Africankple kple mask of theBaoulé tribe ofIvory Coast. Positioned clockwise around Hancock from lower left are Mason, Jackson, Maupin, and Summers.

In 2005, the album was ranked number 498 in the book version ofRolling Stone magazine's list ofthe 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. While it was not included inRolling Stone's original 2003 online version of the list, nor its 2012 revision, it was ranked at number 254 in the 2020 revision.^[10]Head Hunters was a key release in Hancock's career and a defining moment in the genre ofjazz, and has been an inspiration not only for jazz musicians, but also tofunk,soul music,jazz funk andhip hop artists.^[2] TheLibrary of Congress added it to theNational Recording Registry, which collects "culturally, historically or aesthetically important" sound recordings from the 20th century.^[11]

• "Chameleon" (2:50)/"Vein Melter" (4:00) - Columbia 4-46002 (U.S.); released 1974

The single edit of "Chameleon" was released on the 2008 compilationPlaylist: The Very Best of Herbie Hancock.

• Herbie Hancock –Fender Rhodes electric piano,Hohner D6 Clavinet,ARP Odyssey &ARP Pro Soloist synthesizers
• Bennie Maupin – tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, saxello, bass clarinet, alto flute
• Paul Jackson – bass guitar,marímbula
• Harvey Mason – drums, arrangement on "Watermelon Man"
• Bill Summers – agogô,balafon,cabasa, congas,gankogui,log drum,shekere,surdo, tambourine, beer bottle on "Watermelon Man"

• Herbie Hancock – producer
• David Rubinson – producer
• Fred Catero – engineer
• Jeremy Zatkin – engineer
• Dane Butcher – engineer
• John Vieira – engineer

• Head Hunters atDiscogs
• A Crossover Artist Who Feels None the Worse for the Trip —Billboard
• 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music:Head Hunters

• 1973 albums
• Herbie Hancock albums
• Columbia Records albums
• United States National Recording Registry recordings
• Albums produced by Dave Rubinson
• Albums recorded at Wally Heider Studios
• Jazz fusion albums by American artists
• Jazz-funk albums
• Funk albums by American artists
• United States National Recording Registry albums

• Webarchive template wayback links
• CS1 maint: untitled periodical
• Articles needing additional references from August 2023
• All articles needing additional references
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with hAudio microformats
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from October 2023
• Album chart usages for Billboard200
• Album chart usages for BillboardRandBHipHop