Head Hunters

1. 01Chameleon15:45
2. 02Watermelon Man6:32
3. 03Sly10:21
4. 04Vein Melter9:10

• 2008Grammy Hall of Fame

Head Hunters is the twelfth studio album by American jazz musician Herbie Hancock, released October 13, 1973, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place during September 1973 at Wally Heider Studios and Different Fur Trading Co. in San Francisco, California. Head Hunters is a key release in Hancock's career and a defining moment in the genre of jazz funk. In 2003, the album was ranked number 498 in the book version of Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2007, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry, which collects "culturally, historically or aesthetically important" sound recordings from the 20th century. Head Hunters followed a series of experimental albums by Hancock's sextet: Mwandishi (1970), Crossings (1971), and Sextant (1972), released at a time when Hancock was looking for a new direction in which to take his music: "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 connectio…