Herbie Hancock - Flood (1975)

Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters take to the road in the live double album Flood, recorded and released only in Japan. Contrary to the impression left by his American releases at this time, Hancock was still very much attached to the acoustic piano, as his erudite opening workout on "Maiden Voyage/Actual Proof" with his funk rhythm section makes clear. The electric keyboards, mostly Rhodes piano and clavinet, make their first appearances on side two, where Hancock now becomes more of a funky adjunct to the rhythm section, bumping along with a superb feeling for the groove while Bennie Maupin takes the high road above on a panoply of winds. Except for "Voyage," the tunes come from the Head Hunters, Thrust, and Man-Child albums (another reason why this was not released in the U.S.). "Chameleon" comes with a lengthy outbreak of machine pink noise that attests to Hancock's wide-eyed love of gadgetry. In all, this was a great funk band, not all that danceable because of the rapid complexities of Mike Clark's drumming, and quite often, full of harmonic depth and adventure.

by Richard S. Ginell at All Music Guide.

Styles:
Jazz-Funk
Funk
Fusion
Post-Bop

Tracks:
01 Introduction/Mayden Voyage
02 Actual Proof
03 Spank-A-Lee
04 Watermelon Man
05 Butterfly
06 Chameleon
07 Hang up Your Hangs Ups

Line-up:
Mike Clark – drums
Herbie Hancock – acoustic piano / fender rhodes / clavinet / arp odyssey / arp soloist / arp string ensemble
Paul Jackson – fender bass
Bennie Maupin – soprano and tenor saxophone / saxello / bass clarinet / flute / percussion
Dewayne McKnight – guitar
Bill Summers – congas / percussion

Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters (1973)

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.
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine at All Music Guide.

Styles:
Jazz-Funk
Funk
Fusion
Modal Music
Hard Bop
Post-Bop

Tracks:
01 Chameleon
02 Watermelon Man
03 Sly
04 Vein Melter

Line-up:
Herbie Hancock - electric piano / clavinet / synthesizers
Bennie Maupin - soprano and tenor saxophones / saxello / bass clarinet / alto flute
Paul Jackson - electric bass / marimbula
Harvey Mason - drums
Bill Summers - congas / shekere / balafon / agogo / cabasa / hindewho / tambourine / log drum / surdo / gankogui / beer bottle