“Chameleon” is a foundational track in the history of funk-jazz. It appeared in 1973 on Herbie Hancock’s classic album Head Hunters, and remains influential more than 50 years after its release. It has not only become a benchmark for funk-jazz, but also a jazz standard. On top of this, “Chameleon” pioneered the use of synthesizers in funk and in jazz, and it had a significant impact on hip-hop.
“Chameleon” sounds deceptively simple, with a straightforward 12-note bass line, funky drums, just two chords, and a minimalist melody played by the horns. But there are many subtleties hidden in the track that contribute to making it one of the greatest pieces of music of all time. We will examine all these elements in this video to find out what makes this song so great.
In addition, “Chameleon” and the Head Hunters album were a commercial and artistic breakthrough for Herbie Hancock, who has become one of the most iconic keyboard players in the history of modern music. We will also be looking at what made Hancock such a prominent keyboard player, and how he and his band ended up making “Chameleon,” and the Head Hunters album.
TURNING POINT
One of the most remarkable aspects of the story of Herbie Hancock and “Chameleon” is that the keyboard player started off as a jazz purist, who regarded electric instruments with disdain. The turning point in his life came in December, 1967, at Columbia Studios in New York, when the legendary trumpeter and band leader Miles Davis asked Hancock to play electric piano at a recording session.
Herbie Hancock himself later admitted that he was a “jazz snob,” at the time. He recalled about that pivotal session in 1967, “I was thinking: ‘That toy?’ I turned it on and played a chord, and it sounded beautiful, with a really warm, bell-like sound. I learnt that night not to form an opinion about things you have no experience of. I also found out that Miles was already listening to Jimi Hendrix and other rock artists, as well as to flamenco and classical music, and when I saw that my hero, my musical mentor, was open to these things, I changed my whole attitude.”
Hancock was born in Chicago in 1940, and started receiving classical piano lessons when he was seven. He became a child prodigy and gave his first concert when he only 11, in 1952, when he played the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 26 in D Major, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
In his teenage years, Hancock developed an interest in jazz, and he listened to jazz pianists like Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Clare Fisher, Erroll Garner, George Shearing, and Chris Anderson. He has also quoted classical composer Maurice Ravel and jazz composer and arranger Gil Evans as major influences. All this contributed to Hancock becoming an outstanding jazz piano player with an extraordinary talent for harmonic innovation.
After graduating from Grinnell College in 1960 with degrees in electrical engineering and music, Hancock started working with well-known jazz players like trumpeter Donald Byrd, and saxophonists and band leaders like Coleman Hawkins, Oliver Nelson and Phil Woods.
Hancock recorded his first solo album in 1962. Called Takin’ Off, it was released on the famous jazz label Blue Note, and contains small band acoustic jazz. The album opens with his composition “Watermelon Man,” which also became a jazz standard. Hancock recorded a jazz-funk version of “Watermelon Man” eleven years later on his Head Hunters album, as a companion piece to “Chameleon.”
WILD EXPERIMENTATION
Around the time of the release of Takin’ Off, Miles Davis was looking for a new band, and a new direction in music. Already an icon in the world of jazz, Davis formed a new band in 1963, with Hancock on piano, Tony Williams on drums, Ron Carter on bass and Wayne Shorter on saxophone. The avant-garde hardbop of what became known as Davis’s Second Great Quintet proved enormously influential.
After four years Davis felt that the quintet had exhausted its creative potential, and he started his explorations of electric music in the above-mentioned sessions in December 1967, when he presented Hancock with a Fender Rhodes piano. Davis dissolved his Second Great Quintet a few months into 1968.
When Hancock returned to his solo career, he was eager to continue with the spirit of wild experimentation of his former mentor, while also forging his own musical identity. While playing with Davis, he had taken part in many recording sessions with others, and also released several jazz solo albums, My Point of View (1963), Inventions & Dimensions (1963), Empyrean Isles (1964), Maiden Voyage (1965), Speak Like a Child (1968).
On his first album after leaving the Second Great Quintet, The Prisoner (1969) Hancock played electric piano for the first time, and on the follow-up, Fat Albert Rotunda (1969), he started to explore a jazz-funk direction, even as the instruments remained mostly acoustic.
DRAMATIC CHANGE
Two years later, in 1971, Hancock started his exploration of jazz-rock in earnest, with his Mwandishi album. He founded a band with the same name. Two more Mwandishi albums followed, Crossings (1972) and Sextant (1973).
The Mwandishi albums were mostly recorded in studios in San Francisco. Around this time, a young synthesizer enthusiast called Patrick Gleeson was the owner of Different Fur Trading Company studio in San Francisco, and he ended up playing a Moog 3 on a track by Hancock called “Quasar.”
The influence of Gleeson and his synthesizers on Hancock was profound. The keyboardist expanded his arsenal from acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes to also include a Hohner D6 clavinet, Mellotron, ARP 2600, ARP Pro Soloist, and a Moog synthesizer.
Sextant had been recorded in the beginning of 1973, at Wally Heider and Different Fur Trading Company, and Head Hunters, Hancock’s next and twelfth solo album, was recorded in September at the same two studios, with Hancock now co-producing with David Rubinson.
Despite the brief half year gap between the recording sessions for the two albums, Hancock dramatically changed musical direction. He disbanded the Mwandishi band, only retaining saxophonist and bass clarinetist Bernie Maupin, and enlisted bassist Paul Jackson, drummer Harvey Mason, and percussionist Bill Summers. The new band was called The Headhunters, and Hancock now played all synths himself.
BLUEPRINT
The commercial failure of the experimental Mwandishi albums may have focused Hancock’s mind to switch to making more accessible jazz-funk. The first result was “Chameleon,” which became not only the opening track of the Head Hunters album, but also laid the blueprint for the music of the Headhunters, and for the jazz-funk genre.
The track is credited to Hancock, Maupin, Jackson, and Mason, and the chromatic, 12-note bass line that opens the piece is played by Hancock on the Minimoog. The amazing groove is created by the tension between this bass line and Harvey Mason’s drum pattern, which swings and pushes and pulls and changes the rhythm, and even the tempo, and incorporates elements of rock, funk, jazz and Latin rhythms. According to one academic analysis, there are five layers to the multi-rhythms.
The arrangement features an instrument that sounds remarkably like a clean, funky, rhythm guitar, but it is, in fact, a Clavinet. The eight and a half minute long opening section of “Chameleon,” featuring the iconic chromatic bass line and a main melody played by horns, is the most well-known section of the song, and the most frequently covered.
This section also has a second bassline (7:05), which is used as a turnaround throughout the piece. Plus there’s a 3-minute solo by Hancock on the ARP Soloist synthesizer, in which he showcases his astonishing capacity for harmonic and melodic invention.
After a turnaround at 7:05, a new bass line enters at 7:42, steering the piece into more abstract jazz-like territory, with an extended and imaginative Fender Rhodes solo by Hancock. There are more turnarounds at 11:52, and at 13:09, after which the band returns to the opening bass riff, played in a faster tempo. This reprise has a saxophone solo, until the piece is slowly faded out.
NUMBER ONE
“Chameleon” is followed on Head Hunters by Hancock’s 1962 composition “Watermelon Man,” naturally in a very different arrangement, starting with percussionist Bill Summers blowing a melody on beer bottles and chanting, in the style of hindewhu, a way of combining singing and whistling that is used in Pygmy music in Central Africa. The piece is again underpinned by a funky rhythm section, with a rhythm guitar-like part played on the clavinet.
The Head Hunters album is completed by the 10-minute long “Sly,” which is dedicated to funk icon Sly Stone, and contains one of Hancocks’ most impressive Fender Rhodes solos. The more impressionistic, jazzy track “Vein Melter” closes the album.
Head Hunters was released on October 26, 1973, and went to number one on the US Jazz chart, and became the best-selling jazz album of the time, selling more than a million copies.
However, arguably more important than Head Hunters’ commercial success are the enormous cultural and musical impact of the album, and of “Chameleon” in particular, which continue to this day. It influenced several generations of listeners and musicians in the funk, pop, electronic music, and hip-hop genres. It has also been used in commercials, movies, TV shows and video games.
HIGHLIGHTS
Herbie Hancock would go on to many other pioneering and commercially successful projects, not least the follow-up album with the Headhunters, Thrust (1974). Hancock enjoyed a major hit single “Rockit” in 1983, with producer Bill Laswell, which pushed the album Future Shock high up the charts in many countries.
Major artistic achievements also include Gershwin’s World (1998), and River: The Joni Letters (2007) In total, Hancock has received 14 Grammy Awards. However, in a lifetime full of music-changing highlights, with an oeuvre that includes 49 studio albums, twelve live albums, five soundtrack albums, and countless appearances as a sideman, Head Hunters continues to loom large.
In a comment to one of the re-issues of the Head Hunters album, producer Bob Belden summarized one of the reasons for its enormous and lasting success in this way:
“Herbie’s recordings with The Head Hunters Band changed the world of jazz by opening up the mindset of both jazz musicians and the listening public to the fact that music could have the power of communicating to a larger set of minds and voices, yet retain its musical complexity, quality, and integrity.”
© 2024, Paul Tingen.