On the landmark 1973 album Head Hunters, keyboardist Herbie Hancock led an ensemble consisting of woodwinds player Bennie Maupin, bassist Paul Jackson, drummer Harvey Mason, and percussionist Bill Summers to fuse the heady jazz-rock of Miles Davis’s electric period with the funk grooves of James Brown and Sly Stone. The instrumental record was a blockbuster: It became the first platinum-selling jazz album and spent 47 weeks on the Billboard pop charts. Since 2008, Head Hunters has been preserved in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, and more than half a century after its release, it remains an incredible listen—a sweaty, soulful workout that culminates in the death march of “Vein Melter.”
The Head Hunters band, which became known as the Headhunters, recorded three more classic jazz-funk records with Hancock before breaking out on their own with 1975’s Survival of the Fittest. Despite several lineup changes, they’ve continued on and off ever since, and their music continues to influence new generations of musicians in different genres—you can hear its echoes in the neo-G-funk of Kendrick Lamar and the saxophone flames of Chicago jazz artist Isaiah Collier.
Summers—perhaps best known for his collage of handclaps, falsetto vocals, penny whistle, shekere, and beer bottles that intros the Head Hunters version of “Watermelon Man”—and longtime drummer Mike Clark lead the current incarnation of the Headhunters, a quintet with saxophonist Donald Harrison, bassist Chris Severin, and keyboardist Kyle Roussel. The only false note on the band’s latest album, October’s The Stunt Man (Ropeadope), is the addition of vocals on closing track “New Levels—New Devils,” a collaboration with Summers’s global fusion project Forward Back. The vocalists and rappers deliver passionate performances, but their generic lyrics can’t compete with the instrumental power on display. The rest of the album is a blend of originals and reinterpreted standards by the likes of George Gershwin (“Embracable You”) and the recently departed Wayne Shorter (“ESP”) that show the Headhunters have lost none of their dexterity or grit. As they’ve carried on through the decades, they’ve followed their namesake album like the North Star. Fellow travelers can join them for the next step of their musical journey at Evanston’s SPACE.
Headhunters Wed 1/22, 7:30 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago, Evanston, $35–$45, all ages
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2025-01-10 14:09:38