Paul Jackson, 73: Funk bassist with Herbie Hancock

Paul Jackson, whose springy and grooving electric bass lines drove much of Herbie Hancock’s pioneering jazz-funk in the 1970s, died Thursday at a hospital in Japan, where he had lived for more than 30 years. He was 73.

Mike Clark, a drummer and lifelong Jackson collaborator, said the cause was sepsis brought on by complications of diabetes.

In 1973, inspired by the music of Sly Stone and the Pointer Sisters, and frustrated by many jazz musicians’ habit of dismissing groove-based music offhand, Hancock started the Headhunters, with Jackson on bass.

“I didn’t want to make a record that combined jazz and funk,” Hancock remembered in “Possibilities,” his 2014 autobiography, written with Lisa Dickey. “I wanted pure funk.”

The band’s first album, “Head Hunters,” became a smash. It was the first jazz LP to sell over a million copies, and it hit No. 13 on the Billboard albums chart. Combining the rich acoustic-electric layering of Hancock’s previous band, Mwandishi, with a brawny backbeat, the group modeled a new brand of slyly sophisticated funk. And Jackson’s restless bass playing had everything to do with it.

“Paul Jackson was an unusual funk bass player, because he never liked to play the same bass line twice, so during improvised solos he responded to what the other guys played,” Hancock wrote. “I thought I’d hired a funk bassist, but as I found out later, he had actually started as an upright jazz bass player.”

Paul Jerome Jackson Jr. was born on March 28, 1947, in Oakland, one of four siblings raised by two piano-playing parents, Rosa Emanuel and Paul Sr., in a musical household.

His father was a heavyweight boxer and later a contractor who sometimes worked as a security guard for music venues. Paul Sr. befriended a number of famous musicians, including James Brown and the trombonist J.J. Johnson, who sometimes hung out at the family house.

When he worked security at concerts, Paul Sr. often brought along his son, and later in life Jackson would treasure the memory of hearing the Miles Davis Quintet perform at the Blackhawk in San Francisco, with Paul Chambers on bass.

“As soon as I heard that bass, man, I said, ‘Oh!’ ” Jackson said in an interview with ukvibe.org. “I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to go and try that out, man.’ So I went back to my junior high school music teacher and picked one up. And that’s when I found out what was happening!”

Letting his devilish sense of humor peek through, he added: “Playing wood bass, the first thing you do is you grab it and you put it in between your legs. You play that E string and it vibrates your adolescence! I said, ‘I like this instrument. I really like this instrument. I’m going to play this.’ ”

He is survived by his wife, Akiko Suzuki, and a sister, Denise Perrier. A previous marriage ended in divorce, and a son from that marriage died.