Herbie Hancock in 1973. Photo: Sony Music Archives

WHEN the new jazz/beats wonderkids DOMi and JD Beck were brainstorming for their album Not Tight with producer Anderson .Paak, high on their wish list of collaborators was the venerable Herbie Hancock. It turned out Hancock had been following the young Frenchwoman (DOMi, keys) and American (JD Beck, drums) on YouTube (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANPbOxaRIO0 for a taster).

So, Hancock said yes to appearing but also invited the duo to sit in with him at a Hollywood Bowl gig. “And it was crazy,” JD told Gilles Peterson of BBC Radio 6 Music, “because as a musician there are these songs that you grew up with that everyone knows and everyone jams on. And [Hancock’s] Chameleon is one of those. And we were tired of playing it. But, of course, that’s the one song he asks us to play with him.”

DOMi added: “We thought it was a cliché. But then we thought: hold on, we’ll be playing Chameleon with Herbie Hancock. And it was great.”

That the hip young guns should secure an 82-year-old elder jazz statesman to play on their (excellent) debut record is remarkable. The fact that apparently most of the LA jazz jam scene is playing Chameleon is perhaps not so surprising, as that track is the opener on Herbie’s hugely influential Head Hunters record, which in 2023 celebrates five whole decades since its release. Fifty years? I find that hard to believe, too.

What’s so special about the album? Well, it was a dramatic swerve in direction for Hancock who had, of course, played in Miles Davis’s second great quintet, with Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams, before forming his own group, Mwandishi. The latter were pretty “out”, about as far removed from a danceable jazz outfit as you could get. But after a few years of that outfit, Hancock had a Damascene conversion.

“When I heard [Sly & the Family Stone’s] Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) it just went to my core. I didn’t know what he was doing. I mean, I heard the chorus, but how could he think of that? I was afraid that was something I couldn’t do. And here I am, I call myself a musician. It bothered me… I decided to try my hand at funk.”

Retaining only reeds man Bennie Maupin from his earlier group – who was, coincidentally, also listening to James Brown, Sly and Stevie Wonder records – Hancock went in the studio with his new line-up. And he soon knew he was onto something.

“As we worked out the songs we were turning into a new kind of band: a jazz-funk fusion band. And it was exciting, because even though jazz-rock had appeared on the scene [with The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report and Return to Forever], there weren’t really any instrumental jazz-funk bands, so this was a new niche.”

(Although Hancock’s old mentor Donald Byrd was heading in the same direction – listen to the new “lost” album Live: Cookin’ with Blue Note at Montreux which was recorded in 1973 and is definitely funky. And Miles had already released his Sly-inspired On the Corner, of course, which Herbie played on.)

Not everyone appreciated Hancock’s new direction. When his manager/producer David Rubenstein took the tapes to Columbia, he was amazed by the reaction.

“It was met with very little enthusiasm by the record company. The only person who liked it was the [work experience] guy. The R&B side didn’t want anything to do with it. The white jazz guys didn’t want anything to do with it. The music industry doesn’t know what to do with those who don’t fit into a particular slot. But Herbie was in tune with the people, and so the people found it.”

Shortly after its release Head Hunters was selling 75,000 copies a week and on its way to being the lodestar for electronic jazz-funk-fusion as well as the second biggest-selling jazz album of all time (after Miles’s Kind of Blue).

To celebrate 50 years of this groundbreaking record there is a show at Camden’s Koko on January 19 with a cracking ensemble able to do those four seminal tracks full justice. Led by keyboard player Xantoné Blacq (Laura Mvula, Mark Ronson) it features alumni of the Gregory Porter, Nile Rogers and Eric Clapton bands, alongside special guests saxophonist/rapper Soweto Kinch and trumpeter Jay Phelps, both masterly players.

I have one question: Who is going to reproduce the beer-bottle-with-chanting that opens Watermelon Man?

Tickets are a bargain £20: https://koko.co.uk/artist/50-years-of-headhunting-celebrating-herbie-hancocks-jazz-funk-legacy

• GUEST saxman Soweto Kinch has a new album out called White JuJu and it’s a corker. Recorded live at the Barbican with the LSO in 2021, it is an ambitious state-of-the-nation suite, featuring straightheaded jazz, hip-hop (Kinch is one our most convincing jazz rappers), classical and “found sound”, including excerpts from speeches by Boris Johnson and Priti Patel as well background from race riots and George Floyd’s funeral.

It is angry, ambitious and overtly political and reminds me in spirit of polemical recordings by the likes of Archie Shepp, Charles Mingus and Max Roach. The accomplished string arrangements have hints of Stravinsky, Vaughn Williams and (to me) some of trumpeter Ian Carr’s half-forgotten Old Heartland, while retaining their own identity. If that all sounds like over-egging, rest assured, it gels into a compulsive whole. I’ve been listening on streaming, but vinyl copies will be available for Record Store Day on April 15.

Meanwhile, White Juju will be played live in full, again with the LSO, on March 16 over at Printworks in Rotherhithe. It’ll be worth the journey. https://printworkslondon.co.uk/event/lso-and-soweto-kinch-present-white-juju/

• Another pioneer of jazz-rap will be celebrated at Kentish Town’s Dartmouth Arms in York Rise on Sunday January 15. As part of the pub’s vinyl playback series, it is presenting the new 2-disc 45 rpm version of Gil Scott-Heron’s Pieces of a Man, which appeared on the Flying Dutchman label back in 1971. There’ll be other G S-H tracks on the hi-fi system, such as The Bottle and Johannesburg and special guest BBC London’s Robert Elms will be dropping by to chat about the man, his music and the record label. There’ll also be a prize draw for two tickets for a Pizza Express Live show (https://www.pizzaexpresslive.com/). Entry is free, 6pm start.

• Finally, a second seminal record celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2023. Sun Ra’s Space in the Place is not so well-known as Head Hunters, perhaps, but its cosmic, Afro-futuristic soundscapes have played a key role in the current jazz resurgence (just ask Ezra Collective). The six-piece Emanative & The Mutual Appreciation Society recreate the album and play music inspired by it at Camden’s Jazz Café on January 31 (https://thejazzcafelondon.com/event/sun-ras-space-is-the-place-50th-anniversary/)