The Headhunters gather around the campfire at Lizard Lounge on Friday, 27 October 2023.

The groundbreaking jazz, funk, world fusion outfit brings the old, the new, the borrowed, the puce.

The Headhunters

50th anniversary?

The band led by Herbie Hancock released its first album in 1973, which makes 2023 a special year.

It’s been a minute since 1973. Look around, though, and all these artists have been going strong. Herbie Hancock just headlined Newport Jazz Fest this year and The Headhunters have been on the road since Richard Milhous Nixon was in the White House.

Not that you need a magic anniversary to celebrate longevity in art. The Headhunters have been crafting a signature mix of jazz, funk, and Afro-pop beats that broke new ground back then and is still attracting new listeners now.

Unsurprisingly, some of the players have changed. Hancock departed around 1975. But a solid quartet, including Bennie Maupin (saxophone), Paul Jackson (bass), Mike Clark (drums), and Bill Summers (percussion), soldiered on for years, with a few guests now and then.

Rest in peace Maupin and Jackson – the percussionists Clark and Summers remain the sole link to 1973.

But music builds its own bridges. There are new faces in old places. Dynamite new hands on the saxophone. Smooth new fingers on the keys (a double-stack rig, though the player only used the first floor). And a bassman swinging a seven-stringed behemoth easier than you’d rock a baby.

It was a night of music and storytelling. You can tell that the younger musicians know how to take the proverbial smoke when Summers regals the audience with a longer anecdote.

Chief among the anecdotes? The story (this one told with Clark’s help) behind the meaning of the album title Rocking At The Mole House. Plus, a mini-suite of stories about life and times hanging with Wayne Shorter, culminating in a cover of the shorter tune “E.S.P.”

Shout out to the funky crowd kicking it like a Great Woods lawn crowd at a Steely Dan show.

Extra points to Summers for transmogrifying a beer bottle into a top flight jazz instrument.

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