Watermelon Man

Hancock re-recorded the tune for Head Hunters (1973), combining synthesizers with a Sly Stone and James Brown funk influence, adding an eight-bar section. Hancock described his composition "Chameleon", also from Head Hunters, to Down Beat magazine in 1979: "In the popular forms of funk, which I've been trying to get into, the attention is on the rhythmic interplay between different instruments. The part the Clavinet plays has to fit with the part the drums play and the line the bass plays and the line that the guitar plays. It's almost like African drummers where seven drummers play different parts"; "Watermelon Man" shares a similar construction. A live version was released on the double LP Flood (1975), recorded in Japan.

On the intro and outro of the tune, percussionist Bill Summers blows into a beer bottle imitating hindewhu, a style of singing/whistle-playing found in Pygmy music of Central Africa. Hancock and Summers were struck by the sound, which they heard on the ethnomusicology LP, The Music of the Ba-Benzélé Pygmies (1966), by Simha Arom and Genviève Taurelle.

• Category

  Music

[juleskavanagh]

Off The Ball, Football Show.

May she Rest In Peace  :-(

[MUFC689908]

This has been the themesong of my every weeknight since 2005. RIP Ken Early's Football show.

[steven knapp]

jamming. anyone who played with Miles is badass.

[Ethan Perry]

awesome



[Rafikolors]

Madonna's "Sanctuary" brought me here.

[Sohaib Zerrouk]

GUY MARIANO! 

[Georgiaansell]

So fucking sexy

[Kung Fu]

awesome song...

[Jip van Steenis]

This song -

it reminds me of so manny good memories.

All that jazz.

It does me so good. THis is funky shit. This is something that brings me further in life. This is truly emotional. I dont want to sound like a youtube freak - if you get me, im honest here. This song I always safe for those special moments...it will always be like this till the rest of my life.

[griddine]

just lay back !!!!!

[Steven Simard]

My School Jazz band played this song, It was fucking awesome.

[noshinematt]

mouse.