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Bill Summers

The Billboard Music Award Winning and Multiple Grammy Award Nominee Bill Summers is New Orleans based Afro-Cuban jazz/Latin jazz percussionist, a multi-instrumentalist who plays primarily on conga drums. Summers is probably most well known due to his work with Los Hombres Calientes along with his friend and co-leader of the group, trumpeter Irvin Mayfield. However, despite this musical relationship, Summers has a much longer musical career than that, often working behind the scenes on film scores for various movies such as The Color Purple and the television miniseries Roots with Quincy Jones. He also played with Herbie Hancock during The Headhunters years, and is mentioned in passing by the liner notes of The Headhunters' 2003 release Evolution Revolution as contributing to that recording. His former wife is Yvette Bostic-Summers, who often sings on Los Hombres' albums.

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6
Album Review

The Headhunters: Speakers In The House

Read "Speakers In The House" reviewed by Doug Collette


Herbie Hancock's Headhunters (Columbia, 1973) remains one of the seminal works of the jazz fusion era. The group's heavy emphasis on rhythm not only separated it from its guitar-oriented peers of the era, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the middle-period Return to Forever, but also from Weather Report: grooves became increasingly more prominent as that band evolved, but never to the depth of Hancock and company's all-encompassing funk. That solid foundation is more than enough distinction for the first ...

3
Album Review

The Headhunters: Speakers In The House

Read "Speakers In The House" reviewed by Chris May


Although it appears to have been self-released in limited numbers in 2019, this Ropeadope release of Speakers In The House is effectively the Headhunters's first album since Platinum (Owl) in 2011. The band continues to be led and produced by its two Herbie Hancock-era members, percussionist Bill Summers and drummer Mike Clark, who together have kept the outfit intermittently active since Hancock moved on to other things in the mid 1970s. Summers played on the band's debut, ...

3
Album Review

Tony Adamo: Was Out Jazz Zone Mad

Read "Was Out Jazz Zone Mad" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello


The translation of “Adam" from Hebrew--from which the surname Adamo springs--means from the “ground" or “soil." It also derives from the Hebrew word for red, a la “red clay." Perhaps that is why any work from Tony Adamo is rare earth--gritty, and flaming crimson. Was Out Jazz Zone Mad Adamo's latest, his first for Ropeadope, is all of those things and more.Adamo is the Heavyweight Champion of “hipspokenword," wherein lingo meets vocalizing at the corner of jazz and ...

5
Album Review

Tony Adamo: Was Out Jazz Zone Mad

Read "Was Out Jazz Zone Mad" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


Some African cultures preserved their history not by the written but by the spoken word, kept by oral cultural historians known as griots. On Was Out Jazz Zone Mad, vocalist Tony Adamo aspires to serve in this same role, as a verbal historian of both official and unofficial African-American jazz and blues culture. This type of jazz jive might wear quickly thin but Adamo writes about jazz and jazz musicians with such detailed intimacy and vision that his words snap, ...

184
Album Review

Bill Summers/Irvin Mayfield: Los Hombres Calientes: Volume 4: Vodou Dance

Read "Volume 4: Vodou Dance" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


Trumpet player Irvin Mayfield has been a primary shaper of the modern musical landscape of New Orleans. He serves as artistic director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and as executive director and artistic director of the Institute of Jazz Culture at Dillard University in New Orleans, and has performed his own arrangements of spirituals and original works with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra (2001 commission) and the Louisiana Philharmonic String Quartet. Mayfield also leads his own Quintet and performs with ...

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1

Performance / Tour

Jazz Legends The Headhunters Featuring Founding Members Mike Clark And Bill Summers To Play West Coast Dates

Jazz Legends The Headhunters Featuring Founding Members Mike Clark And Bill Summers To Play West Coast Dates

Source: Glass Onyon PR - William James

New York, NY: The Headhunters have redefined modern funk, world music, and jazz as one of the most innovative groups in history. They recorded for several years with legendary pianist Herbie Hancock, representing a major turning point for Hancock with the formation of this popular band in 1973. The Columbia album Head Hunters became extremely popular, fusing jazz with funk and rock, the album sold over a million copies and attracted many R&B and rock fans, even out— selling Miles ...

128

Video / DVD

One Track Mind: Bill Summers on "God Make Me Funky," "Watermelon Man," Others

One Track Mind: Bill Summers on "God Make Me Funky," "Watermelon Man," Others

Source: Something Else!

On this special edition of Something Else! Reviews' One Track Mind, we hand the reins over to percussionist Bill Summers. As he and the rest of the Headhunters are set for the June 14 release of Platinum—a multi-faceted new release that blends jazz, funk, hip hop and Afro-Cuban sounds—Summers remembers a previous Headhunters reunion, then looks back on a classic R&B groove that will still “sno-nuff make you wanna move." Find out which track he simply describes as “nasty" on ...

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Interview

Something Else! Interview: Percussionist Bill Summers, of the Headhunters

Something Else! Interview: Percussionist Bill Summers, of the Headhunters

Source: Something Else!

The Headhunters, who with Herbie Hancock crafted jazz music's first platinum release, return this month with an aptly titled new project—Platinum. In 2003, their million-selling 1973 debut Head Hunters was ranked No. 498 in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Led by longtime drummer Mike Clark and percussionist Bill Summers, the Headhunters had later stand-alone success after Hancock's departure—producing the dance anthem “God Make Me Funky," one of the most sampled fusion songs in history. ...

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Performance / Tour

Los Hombres Calientes: Irvin Mayfield & Bill Summers On Tour

Los Hombres Calientes: Irvin Mayfield & Bill Summers On Tour

Source: All About Jazz


Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Kosen Rufu

Wide Hive Records
2023

buy

Was Out Jazz Zone Mad

Ropeadope Records
2018

buy

Volume 4: Vodou Dance

Basin Street Records
2003

buy

Los Hombres...

Basin Street Records
2003

buy

Feel The Heat

Birdology
1977

buy

One For Mganga

From: Kosen Rufu
By Bill Summers

Chameleon

From: Wade In The Water
By Bill Summers

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