The sixties were an era when younger musicians started to write extensively, with many of the then-new compositions becoming standards in the decades that followed. Among the most prolific authors of the time was Herbie Hancock, who started his career by writing one of the best-known tunes of all times - Watermelon Man. The composition was initially released on his debut album, ‘Takin' Off’ (1962,) as a grooving hard bop song which featured improvisations by Freddie Hubbard and Dexter Gordon. it was the first piece of music that Herbie composed with a commercial goal in mind. Although the original version entered the Top 100 charts, it was Mongo Santamaría’s version that paid Hancock's bills for the next five or six years. The Cuban percussionist recorded and released the tune as a Latin pop single in 1963 on Battle Records, where it became a surprise hit, reaching #10 on the pop charts. It was also this version that got inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.
Although Hancock wrote the composition with a commercial goal in perspective, he did not think of the song as a sellout. On the contrary, he insisted that, structurally, it was one of his strongest pieces due to its almost mathematical balance. The form is a sixteen bar blues based on a bluesy piano riff, drawing on elements of R&B, soul jazz, and bebop, all combined into a pop hook. Later, Hancock recalled: "I remember the cry of the watermelon man making the rounds through the back streets and alleys of Chicago. The wheels of his wagon beat out the rhythm on the cobblestones." For the 1960 original version, Hancock was joined by bassist Butch Warren and drummer Billy Higgins as the rhythm section, with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and Dexter Gordon on tenor saxophone.
The story of Santamaria’s rework is quite interesting. One weekend, Hancock filled in for pianist Chick Corea in Mongo Santamaría's band at a nightclub in The Bronx when Corea gave notice that he was leaving. Hancock played the tune for Santamaría at friend Donald Byrd's urging. Santamaría started accompanying him on his congas, then his band joined in, and the small audience slowly got up from their tables and started dancing, laughing and having a great time. Santamaría later asked Hancock if he could record the tune. On December 17, 1962, Mongo Santamaría recorded a three-minute version, suitable for radio, where he joined timbalero Francisco "Kako" Baster in a cha-cha beat, while drummer Ray Lucas performed a backbeat. Santamaría included the track on his album ‘Watermelon Man’ from 1962. This recording is sometimes considered the beginning of Latin boogaloo, a fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms with those of R&B.
More than ten years after these events, Hancock reworked the tune in a funkier version for his classic 1973 album ‘Head Hunters’. Describing his view on funk and his music in those days, the pianist stated the following: "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." 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 the 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 Geneviève Taurelle.
Watermelon Man is now a jazz standard and has been recorded over two hundred times so far. Jazz lyricist Jon Hendricks set words to the composition and recorded it on Jon Hendricks ‘Recorded in Person at the Trident’ (1963). The song was also heavily sampled, especially by hip hop and pop artists in the nineties and beyond.
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