• Real Name: Herbert Jeffrey Hancock
• Genre: Jazz
• Active: '60s - 2000s
• Instruments: Fender Rhodes, Guitar (Synthesizer), Piano (Electric), Keyboards, Piano, Synthesizer

Biography

Herbie Hancock will always be one of the most revered and controversial figures in jazz -- just as his employer/mentor Miles Davis was when he was alive. Unlike Miles, who pressed ahead relentlessly and never looked back until near the very end, Hancock has cut a zigzagging forward path, shuttling between almost every development in electronic and acoustic jazz and R&B over the last third of the 20th century. Though grounded in Bill Evans and able to absorb blues, funk, gospel, and even modern classical influences, Hancock's piano and keyboard voices are entirely his own, with their own urbane harmonic and complex, earthy rhythmic signatures -- and young pianists cop his licks constantly. Having studied engineering and professing to love gadgets and buttons, Hancock was perfectly suited for the electronic age; he was one of the earliest champions of the Rhodes electric piano and Hohner clavinet and would field an ever-growing collection of synthesizers and computers on his electric dates. Yet his love for the grand piano never waned, and despite his peripatetic activities all around the musical map, his piano style continues to evolve into tougher, ever-more-complex forms. He is as much at home trading riffs with a smoking funk band as he is communing with a world-class post-bop rhythm section -- and that drives purists on both sides of the fence up the wall.

Having taken up the piano at age seven, Hancock quickly became known as a prodigy, soloing in the first movement of a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony at the age of 11. After studies at Grinnell College, Hancock was invited by Donald Byrd in 1961 to join his group in New York City, and before long, Blue Note offered him a solo contract. His debut album, Takin' Off, took off indeed after Mongo Santamaria covered one of the album's songs, "Watermelon Man." In May 1963, Miles Davis asked him to join his band in time for the Seven Steps to Heaven sessions, and he remained there for five years, greatly influencing Miles' evolving direction, loosening up his own style, and upon Miles' suggestion, converting to the Rhodes electric piano. In that time span, Hancock's solo career also blossomed on Blue Note, pouring forth increasingly sophisticated compositions like "Maiden Voyage," "Cantaloupe Island," "Goodbye to Childhood," and the exquisite "Speak Like a Child." He also played on many East Coast recording sessions for producer Creed Taylor and provided a groundbreaking score to Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow Up, which gradually led to further movie assignments.

Having left the Davis band in 1968, Hancock recorded an elegant funk album, Fat Albert Rotunda, and in 1969 formed a sextet that evolved into one of the most exciting, forward-looking jazz-rock groups of the era. Now deeply immersed in electronics, Hancock added the synthesizer of Patrick Gleeson to his Echoplexed, fuzz-wah-pedaled electric piano and clavinet, and the recordings became spacier and more complex rhythmically and structurally, creating its own corner of the avant-garde. By 1970, all of the musicians used both English and African names (Herbie's was Mwandishi). Alas, Hancock had to break up the band in 1973 when it ran out of money, and having studied Buddhism, he concluded that his ultimate goal should be to make his audiences happy.

The next step, then, was a terrific funk group whose first album, Head Hunters, with its Sly Stone-influenced hit single, "Chameleon," became the biggest-selling jazz LP up to that time. Now handling all of the synthesizers himself, Hancock's heavily rhythmic comping often became part of the rhythm section, leavened by interludes of the old urbane harmonies. Hancock recorded several electric albums of mostly superior quality in the '70s, followed by a wrong turn into disco around the decade's end. In the meantime, Hancock refused to abandon acoustic jazz. After a one-shot reunion of the 1965 Miles Davis Quintet (Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, with Freddie Hubbard sitting in for Miles) at New York's 1976 Newport Jazz Festival, they went on tour the following year as V.S.O.P. The near-universal acclaim of the reunions proved: that Hancock was still a whale of a pianist; that Miles' loose mid-'60s post-bop direction was far from spent; and that the time for a neo-traditional revival was near, finally bearing fruit in the '80s with Wynton Marsalis and his ilk. V.S.O.P. continued to hold sporadic reunions through 1992, though the death of the indispensable Williams in 1997 cast much doubt as to whether these gatherings would continue.

Hancock continued his chameleonic ways in the '80s: scoring an MTV hit in 1983 with the scratch-driven, proto-industrial single "Rockit" (accompanied by a striking video); launching an exciting partnership with Gambian kora virtuoso Foday Musa Suso that culminated in the swinging 1986 live album Jazz Africa; doing film scores; and playing festivals and tours with the Marsalis brothers, George Benson, Michael Brecker, and many others. After his 1988 techno-pop album, Perfect Machine, Hancock left Columbia (his label since 1973), signed a contract with Qwest that came to virtually nothing (save for A Tribute to Miles in 1992), and finally made a deal with PolyGram in 1994 to record jazz for Verve and release pop albums on Mercury. Well into a youthful middle age, Hancock's curiosity, versatility, and capacity for growth showed no signs of fading, and in 1998 he issued Gershwin's World. His curiosity with the fusion of electronic music and jazz continued with 2001's Future 2 Future, but he also continued to explore the future of straight-ahead contemporary jazz with 2005's Possibilities. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide

Jazz to Funk Buy this CD	Great Sessions Buy this CD	The Essential Herbie Hancock Buy this CD	Speak Like a Child [RVG Edition] Buy this CD	Inventions & Dimensions [Bonus Track] Buy this CD
Possibilities Buy this CD	Jazz Moods: 'Round Midnight Buy this CD	The Piano [Bonus Tracks] Buy this CD	Prisoner [Bonus Tracks] Buy this CD	The Essential Buy this CD

Show More Albums Show Fewer Albums

• Born: Apr 12, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '80s-2000s
• Major Genres: Music, Drama
• Career Highlights: 'Round Midnight, A Soldier's Story, Death Wish
• First Major Screen Credit: Blow-Up (1966)

Biography

Influential jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock has scored a number of feature films beginning with the music for Blow Up (1966). Hancock's best-known score was that for the jazz lover's delight 'Round Midnight. It won Hancock an Oscar for Best Original Score. Hancock also appeared in the film as a piano player. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

BET on Jazz: The Jazz Channel Presents Herbie Hancock Buy this Movie	Classic Albums: Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life Buy this Movie	Indecent Proposal Buy this Movie	Listen Up!: The Lives of Quincy Jones Buy this Movie
Livin' Large Buy this Movie	Celebrity Guide to Wine Buy this Movie	DeJohnette, Hancock, Holland and Metheny in Concert Buy this Movie	Harlem Nights Buy this Movie

Show More Movies Show Fewer Movies

jazz musician; pianist; composer

Personal Information

Born Herbert Jeffrey Hancock, April 12, 1940, in Chicago; son of Wayman Edward and Winnie (Griffin) Hancock; married Gudrun (Gigi) Meixner, 1968.
Education: Attended Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA, 1956-60; Roosevelt University, Chicago, 1960; Manhattan School of Music, 1962; and New School for Social Research, New York, 1967.

Career

Jazz pianist and composer. Joined Donald Byrd ensemble, 1960; released debut album Takin' Off, 1962; joined Miles Davis Quintet, 1963; released breakthrough jazz fusion album Mwandishi, 1971; formed acoustic jazz band V.S.O.P., mid-1970s; released top-selling dance-jazz albums Headhunters, 1973, and Future Shock, 1983; extensive international concert and recording career; assumed artistic direction of Thelonious Monk Jazz Institute, Los Angeles, 1998.

Life's Work

Herbie Hancock is one of the few living musicians who has been able to command respect simultaneously in the high-art field of jazz and in the commercially-oriented world of popular music. Since coming to prominence with jazz trumpeter Miles Davis's pathbreaking fusion ensemble of the 1960s, Hancock has in effect maintained two separate careers, winning acclaim as an acoustic jazz pianist in pure bebop and post-bop traditions on one hand while keeping up with, making creative use of, and sometimes even giving birth to trends in black popular music on the other. In the words of Down Beat writer Pat Cole, "Hancock has been the quintessential border crosser."

An adherent of the chant-oriented Nichiren Shoshu sect of Buddhism, Hancock might also be said to have led a quintessentially creative life. He was born April 12, 1940 to Wayman and Winnie Hancock, and was recognized as a piano prodigy as a child. His musical career has been shaped and defined by the sheer fascination he feels when new sounds come his way; when a string on his piano broke during a 1986 New York concert, Hancock adapted by seamlessly weaving the twang of the damaged string into the thread of his improvisation. People magazine once described him with this memorable headline: "Cat curious, with as many creative lives, he thrives Round Midnight," the last phrase referring both to Hancock's tendency to work through the night when excited by a project and to his award- winning score for the film biography of jazzman Dexter Gordon, Round Midnight.

Born April 12, 1940, in Chicago, Herbert Jeffrey Hancock showed enthusiasm for the sound of a piano while still a toddler. His parents bought him a five-dollar, church-basement-salvaged piano when he was seven, and the quiet, determinedly investigative young man mastered the instrument rapidly. A mere four years later he performed the first movement of a Mozart piano concerto with the prestigious Chicago Symphony Orchestra after winning a school contest. He continued studying classical music at Chicago's Hyde Park High School, but turned to jazz after becoming interested in the improvisational performances of a classmate named Don Goldberg. "People laugh when they find out Herbie Hancock learned to play the blues from a nice Jewish boy," he told People.

Hancock enrolled at Iowa's Grinnell College, beginning with a parentally-mandated engineering major, but eventually switching his major to music. He returned frequently to Chicago and began to search out performing opportunities there; in the winter of 1960 a blizzard provided the opportunity for him to sit in on piano with the band of trumpeter Donald Byrd during a Chicago club date. Byrd sensed the young pianist's creativity and worked to open doors that made possible Hancock's 1962 debut LP, Takin' Off. The album offered a foretaste of Hancock's split career to come: it featured high-minded bebop greats Dexter Gordon and Freddie Hubbard, but also included a composition titled "Watermelon Man" that became a Top Ten pop hit for Mongo Santamaria and was later re-recorded by many other artists.

It was also through Byrd's influence that Hancock joined Miles Davis's seminal quintet of the 1960s, remaining with the group from 1962 to 1968. Davis introduced Hancock to the electric piano, and Hancock's talents flowered in the atmosphere of wide-ranging musical investigation that the quintet cultivated. Davis broke barriers between art and commercialism by incorporating rock and funk elements into jazz on such "fusion" albums as Filles de Kilimanjaro, even as his drummer Tony Williams schooled Hancock in the complex modern classical compositions of such composers as Igor Stravinsky and Edgar Varese. Hancock gained wide recognition for both his keyboard work with Davis and his growing body of solo recordings.

Davis himself had scandalized many a jazz purist with his 1960s recordings, and Hancock soon went even further than Davis had. He took criticism for his 1971 LP Mwandishi, which featured a full- blown fusion sound, and especially for 1973's Headhunters, which incorporated synthesizers and spawned a million-selling proto-disco dance hit, "Chameleon." With 1983's Future Shock, Hancock (working with the innovative New York electronic ensemble Material) leapt to the forefront of the emerging hip-hop style; the album generated a massive hit called "Rockit," which featured the rap-DJ technique of scratching--creating percussive sounds with a needle on a turntable. Its successor, Sound-System, integrated world music into the mix, anticipating trends in 1990s dance music by many years; the album earned Hancock a Grammy award. Hancock's electronic albums likewise looked forward to the primacy of production and editing over instrumental performance that would characterize some dance music of the 1990s.

All this time, even as he worked on the cutting edge of popular music, Hancock continued to work within the jazz tradition. He formed an acoustic quintet called V.S.O.P. ("Very Special One-Time Performance") and a quartet that featured Tony Williams and the young trumpet sensation Wynton Marsalis, toured with fellow fusion pioneer Chick Corea, and recorded with such pure jazz players as pianist Oscar Peterson. In 1998 Hancock recorded the most traditional of jazz projects--a tribute to composer George Gershwin in the centennial year of his birth. Entertainment Weekly commented that "Hancock's striking tribute runs deeper and wider than most, clearly revealing Gershwin's cross-stylistic imprint, from jazz to pop to classical ... a feat Hancock is familiar with."

Hancock continued to make hip-hop-oriented albums, such as 1995's Dis Is Da Drum, which explored the kinship between hip-hop and traditional African music, and 1998's Return of the Headhunters. He made use of his classical training in a series of film scores that began with Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up (1967), and included the Stravinsky-influenced Death Wish score of 1974, music for Colors, A Soldier's Story, Action Jackson, Richard Pryor's Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, and Round Midnight. The relentlessly eclectic Hancock also scored a number of television commercials. By the mid-1990s Hancock had worked out record deals that would let him follow his creative impulses into whatever genre suited him at the moment--the giant Polygram places his R & B and pop projects with its Mercury label and his jazz albums with its prestigious Verve imprint. He recorded and toured in the late 1990s with saxophonist Wayne Shorter.

Looking toward a legacy for the future, Hancock assumed the artistic direction of a Los Angeles jazz education institution, the Thelonious Monk Institute, in 1997. He released a CD-ROM that interwove the history of jazz with a general history of America in the 20th century, and announced a more general ambition toward the creation of projects that combined education and entertainment. It seemed a logical goal for a musician who had already accomplished so much of both.

Awards

First Place, Piano Category, Down Beat Critics' Poll, 1968, 1969, 1970; Jazzman of the Year, Down Beat Critics' Poll, 1974; Grammy award, Best Rhythm and Blues Instrumental Performance, 1983, 1984; Academy award, Best Original Score (Round Midnight), 1986; Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Composition, 1987.

Works

Selective Discography

• Takin' Off, Blue Note, 1962 (reissued 1987).
• Herbie Hancock, Blue Note, 1964.
• Mwandishi, Warner Bros., 1971.
• Headhunters, Columbia, 1973.
• Feets Don't Fail Me Now, Columbia, 1979.
• Future Shock, Columbia, 1983.
• Sound-System, Columbia, 1984.
• The Best of Herbie Hancock, Columbia, 1988.
• Corea and Hancock (with Chick Corea), Polydor, 1988.
• The Quintet: V.S.O.P.: Live, Columbia, 1988.
• Dis Is Da Drum, Mercury, 1995.
• The New Standard, Verve, 1996.
• Gershwin's World, Verve, 1998.

Further Reading

Books

• Contemporary Musicians, volume 8, Gale, 1993.
• Larkin, Colin, ed., The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Guinness, 1992.
• Romanowski, Patricia, and Holly George-Warren, The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, Fireside, 1995.
• Stambler, Irwin, The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock & Soul, St. Martin's, 1989.

Periodicals

• American Visions, June-July 1998, p. 14.
• Down Beat, June 1994, p. 16; July 1995, p. 45; April 1996, p. 22; December 1997, p. 20; September 1998, p. 42.
• Entertainment Weekly, October 9, 1998, p. 84.
• People, January 19, 1987, p. 64.
• Rolling Stone, October 25, 1984, p. 45.

— James Manheim

For more information on Herbie Hancock, visit Britannica.com.