Bill Summers

Bill Summers’ groove has been in every recorded lineup of the Headhunters’ redefinition of jazz

For an album with only four tracks on it, Herbie Hancock’s 1973 opus Head Hunters made a mighty impression. It expanded the bounds of fusion, resonating with funk/R&B fans the way Mahavishnu and Chick Corea had looped in the prog-rockers. It contributed at least two standards to the repertoire, “Chameleon” and the reworked version of “Watermelon Man.” And it birthed ...