I never would have expected this week's entry, although it might not be a bad choice considering the genre. Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters (1973)

It definitively wedded jazz to funk and R & B, and did it with such joyful confidence that it launched a whole new, open-minded approach to the music. Equally important was the use of electronic keyboards, then in their infancy, which vastly expanded the range of available textures. Head Hunters kickstarted the stylistic and ethnic fusions that have enlivened jazz for almost 30 years. Without this...suffice to say, almost everything in the jazz-funk idiom can be traced back to this.

This is certainly not my favorite style of jazz, as I leaned toward bands like Weather Report back in the mid to late 70s. Nothing wrong with it, just not my thing, but I can certainly agree to the degree of influence that it generated.

Swish