Herbie Hancock’s 1973 reboot of Watermelon Man takes his 1962 hard‑bop classic and pours it into a slow‑rolling jazz‑funk hit on Head Hunters. It’s the same tune but newly engineered for the body as much as the head, and a perfect snapshot of Hancock’s pivot from Blue Note classicism to dance‑floor futurism.
The remake’s calling card is its uncanny intro with percussionist Bill Summers conjuring Central African hindewhu by blowing across a beer bottle leading to a breathy, elastic timbre that slides into the groove like a spell being cast. From there, the track’s become a magnet for reinterpretation and reuse, sampled and covered across genres, while the Head Hunters recording itself was enshrined in the National Recording Registry in 2007 for its cultural significance. It’s a landmark that links the tune’s hard‑bop origins to a funk‑driven future and still sounds like tomorrow.
