Not Fade Away

PAUL JACKSON

Headhunters bassist (1947-2021)

HERBIE Hancock’s immersion in jazz-funk fusion, first heard on 1973’s Head Hunters, was partly reliant on the spontaneity and deep grooves of electric bassist Paul Jackson. The first jazz album to sell more than a million copies, its lead-off trackwas“Chameleon”, co-writtenby Jackson and featuring an infectious Afro-Cuban vamp. The song has since become a jazz standard.

Jackson was a founder member of Hancock’s Headhunters band, alongside saxophonist/clarinet player Bennie Maupin, drummer Harvey Mason and percussionist Bill Summers. The ensemble, with Jackson’s good friend Mike Clark replacing Mason, proceeded to make three more albums with Hancock in the mid-’70s: (including “Spank-A-Lee”, another Jackson co-creation), and the live . Jackson’s restless style was a perfect fit for Hancock’s intuitive approach. “Paul Jackson was an unusual funk bass player, because he never liked to play the same bassline twice, so during improvised solos he responded to what the other guys played,” noted Hancock in his memoir, . “I thought I’d hired a funk bassist, but as I