Herbie Hancock - "Chameleon"

[Deleted]

I'm sure this will go unnoticed but IDC. This is from his 12th album, Head Hunters. My step-dad constantly played the album around me as a kid. I eventually grew to love it. I would like to think this is his most well-known work. Maybe "Rockit" is more popular IDK. It is considered to be a jazz standard.




It's pretty long, but amazing.

[Deleted]

Good song but my favorite from the Head Hunters album is "Watermelon Man".

I prefer his 60s work over his jazz fusion material overall though.

[Deleted]

May 15, 2012 21:22:25 GMT -5 @jazzysoul47 said:

Good song but my favorite from the Head Hunters album is "Watermelon Man".

Me too. I believe Madonna sampled it on "Sanctuary" from Bedtime Stories.

[Soulsista]

Classic.

[horchata]

Funky and pretty much perfect.

[Kurt]

High school jazz combo jam.

[halo19]

Love it. Great album as well. I love the album's cover as well. To me it's second, right after "Watermelon Man."

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Apr 1, 2013 0:30:33 GMT -5 Kurt said:

High school jazz combo jam.

One time my high school band played this song too! I guess it's the norm? lol

[Agent Yoncé]

My dad played this & 'Watermeleon Man' A LOT growing up. Lol

[Deleted]

#128 on Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 1970's

In the early ’70s, Herbie Hancock, a practicing Nichiren Buddhist, had a vision while chanting his mantra, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. He saw himself—the hard bop piano legend—playing straight-ahead funk in Sly Stone’s band. It was in that spiritual moment when his jazz transformed. Hancock wrote in the liner notes of the reissue of Head Hunters, “I was tired of playing something heavy. I wanted to play something light....Would I like to have a funky band that played the kind of music Sly or someone like that was playing? My response was, ‘Actually, yes.’”

Out of this holy revelation “Chameleon” was born, over 15 minutes of funk and fusion that would introduce jazz into arenas. The four-decade run of “Chameleon” is due not only to Hancock’s vision of the interconnectedness of black American music, but his Head Hunters band’s funk exactitude: Bennie Maupin’s choppy sax riff clicks against Harvey Mason’s well-pocketed drums, and it all marches around Paul Jackson’s iconic six-note bass line, so sticky it would gum up any other engine but this. Mason’s switch to the ride cymbal around the six-minute mark sounds like the sun exploding all over Hancock’s ARP Odyssey synth solo. The song is a rhythmic knot, deceptively complex but savagely cool. Hancock’s pivot to funk and fusion helped amplify traditional jazz in the mainstream, and “Chameleon” was the first song you could feel right in your ribs. –Jeremy Larson

[Saul H.]

Extraordinary! Hancock implements so very sophisticated 6-stroke rolls, and numerous other drumming components! And to think, how complex melodically!

-I happen to be listening to this track simultaneous to writing this reply! 

[Saul H.]

May 15, 2012 21:22:25 GMT -5 Deleted said:

Good song but my favorite from the Head Hunters album is "Watermelon Man".

I prefer his 60s work over his jazz fusion material overall though.

I suppose, they are both such remarkable and complex songs!