Head Hunters by Herbie Hancock

Head Hunters, Herbie Hancock's twelfth studio album, landed on Columbia in 1973 and dragged jazz onto the dance floor. Hancock produced it himself, cutting it in evening sessions at Wally Heider Studios and Different Fur Trading Co. in San Francisco. He kept woodwind man Bennie Maupin from the old Mwandishi sextet and brought in three new hands: Paul Jackson on bass, Bill Summers on percussion and Harvey Mason on drums, a crew soon to be known as the Headhunters.

Everybody except Mason doubles up on instruments, and the result is a thick, rubbery groove machine, Hancock's keyboards burbling over Jackson's elastic bass while "Chameleon" rides its riff like it never wants to get off. It crossed over to funk and rock listeners, climbed to number 13 on the Billboard 200 and hauled jazz-funk into the mainstream. In 2008 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry.

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