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Herbie Hancock

Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is a Academy Award and multiple-time Grammy Award winning jazz pianist and composer from Chicago, Illinois, USA. Hancock is one of jazz music's most important and influential pianists and composers. He embraced elements of rock, funk, and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz. He was the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence.

As part of Miles Davis' "second great quintet" Hancock helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section, and was later one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk. Yet for all his restless experimentalism, Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "crossover" and achieve success among pop audiences.

Hancock's best-known solo works include "Cantaloupe Island", "Watermelon Man" (later perfomed by dozens of musicians, including bandleader Mongo Santamaria), "Maiden Voyage", "Chameleon", and the single "Rockit."

Early life and career

Like many jazz pianists, Hancock started with a classical music education; Hancock studied from age seven. His talent was recognized early, and he played the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 5 in D Major at a young people’s concert with the Chicago Symphony at age eleven.

Through his teens, Hancock never had a jazz teacher. Instead, around college age, Hancock grew to like jazz after hearing some Oscar Peterson and George Shearing recordings, which he transcribed on his own time, and which developed his ear and sense of harmony. Hancock also listened to other pianists, including McCoy Tyner, Wynton Kelly and Bill Evans, and studied recordings by Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Lee Morgan.

After Hancock spent three and a half years studying musical composition at Grinnell College, Donald Byrd hired Hancock in 1961.(He later received a double major in music and electrical engineering from Grinnell in 1971.) The pianist quickly earned a reputation, and played subsequent sessions with Oliver Nelson and Phil Woods. He recorded his first solo album Takin' Off for Blue Note Records in 1962. "Watermelon Man" (from Takin' Off) was to provide Mongo Santamaria with a hit single, but crucially Takin' Off was to catch the attention of Miles Davis, who was at that time assembling a new band.

Miles Davis quintet and Blue Note

Hancock received considerable attention when, in 1963, he joined Miles Davis's "second great quintet." This new band was basically Miles Davis surrounded by fresh, new talent. Davis personally sought out Hancock, who he saw as one of the most promising talents in jazz. The rhythm section Davis organized was young but effective, comprising bassist Ron Carter, seventeen year old drummer Tony Williams, and Hancock on piano. After George Coleman and Sam Rivers each taking turns at the saxophone spot, the quintet would gel with Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone. This quintet is often regarded as one of the finest jazz ensembles, and the rhythm section has been especially praised for their innovation and flexibility.

The second great quintet is the place where Hancock found his own unique voice as a master of jazz piano. Not only did he find new ways to use common chords, he also popularized chords then rarely used in jazz. Hancock also developed a unique taste for "orchestral" accompaniment with stark contrasts then unheard of in jazz (listen to one of the famous live versions of "My Funny Valentine" recorded by the quintet).

With Williams and Carter he would weave a labyrinth of rhythmic intricacy on, around and over existing melodic and chordal schemes. In the later half of the sixties their approach would be so sophisticated and unorthodox that conventional chord changes would hardly be discernable, hence their improvisational concept would somewhat inaccurately be called "Time, No Changes".

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Maiden Voyage (1965)

While in the Davis band, Hancock also found time to record dozens of sessions for the Blue Note label, both under his own name and as a sideman with other musicians such as Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Grant Green, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard.

His albums Empyrean Isles (1964) and Maiden Voyage (1965) were to be two of the most famous and influential jazz LPs of the sixties, winning praise for both their innovation and accessibility (the latter demonstrated by the subsequent enormous popularity of the Maiden Voyage title track as a jazz standard, and by the jazz rap group US3 having a hit single with "Cantaloupe Island" from Empyrean Isles some twenty five years later). Empyrean Isles featured the Davis rhythm section of Hancock, Carter and Williams with the addition of Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, while Maiden Voyage also added former Davis saxophonist George Coleman.

Hancock also recorded several less-well-known but still critically acclaimed albums with larger ensembles — My Point of View (1963), Speak Like A Child (1968) and The Prisoner (1969) featured flugelhorn, alto flute and bass trombone. 1963's Inventions and Dimensions was an album of almost entirely improvised music, teaming Hancock with bassist Paul Chambers and two Latin percussionists, Willie Bobo and Osvaldo Martinez.

During this period, Hancock also composed the score to Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup which was to be the first of many soundtracks he would record in his career.

Davis had begun incorporating elements of rock and popular music into his recordings by the end of Hancock's tenure with the band. Despite some initial reluctance, Hancock began doubling on electric keyboards including the Fender Rhodes electric piano at Davis's insistence. Hancock adapted quickly to the new instruments which would be instrumental in his future artistic endeavors.

In the summer of 1968, Hancock left Davis's band to form his own sextet, although he was formally kicked out under the pretext that he was late coming back from a honeymoon in Brazil. Davis would soon disband his quartet to search for a new sound himself. Despite his departure from the working band, Hancock would continue to appear on Miles Davis records for the next few years; noteworthy appearances include In a Silent Way, A Tribute to Jack Johnson and On the Corner.

Fat Albert & Mwandishi

Hancock left Blue Note in 1969, signing up with Warner Brothers. In 1969, Hancock composed the soundtrack for the Bill Cosby TV show called Fat Albert. Titled Fat Albert Rotunda, the album was mainly a R&B-influenced album with strong jazz overtones. One of the jazzier songs on the record, "Tell Me A Bedtime Story", was later re-worked as a more electronically sounding song for the Quincy Jones album, "Sounds...and Stuff Like That".

Hancock was fascinated with accumulating musical gadgets and toys. Together with the profound influence of Davis's Bitches Brew, this fascination would culminate in a series of albums in which electronic instruments are coupled with acoustic instruments.

Hancock's first ventures into electronic music started with a sextet comprised of Hancock, drummer Billy Hart and bassist Buster Williams, and a trio of adventurous horn players: Eddie Henderson (trumpet), Julian Priester (trombone), and multireedist Bennie Maupin. Dr. Patrick Gleeson was eventually added to the mix to play and program the synthesizers.

The sextet made three experimental albums under Hancock's name: Mwandishi (1971), Crossings (1972) (both on Warner Brothers) and Sextant (1973) (released on Columbia Records); two more, Realization and Inside Out were recorded under Henderson's name with essentially the same personnel. The music often had very free improvisations and showed influence from the electronic music of some contemporary classical composers.

Synthesizer player, Patrick Gleeson, has claimed that it was his idea to use synthesizer sound on a jazz recording and that he had to "fight" his way to the band. Crossings, released in 1972, was one of the first jazz/fusion recording to feature synthesizer (Weather Report also had some synth on their 1972 recording I sing the Body Electric — played by Roger Powell). On Crossings (as well as on Weather Report's 1972 recording) synthesizer is used rather to create atmospheric effects than as a melodic instrument. A review of the record on Downbeat magazine complained that synthesizer sounds were not a reasonable addition. Gleeson's moog sounds were recorded in a different studio than the rest of the album, but moog was used on group's live performances. On Sextant Gleeson used ARP synthesizers instead of moog.

Hancock's three records released in 1971-1973 became later known as the "Mwandishi" albums, so-called after a Swahili name Hancock sometimes used during this era (Mwandishi is Swahili for writer). The first two, including Fat Albert Rotunda were made available on the 2-CD set Mwandishi: the Complete Warner Bros. Recordings, released in 1994, but are these days sold as individual CD editions. Of the three electronically sounded albums, Sextant is probably the most experimental since the Arp synthesizers are used extensively and some advanced improvisation ("post-modal free impressionism") is found on the tracks "Hornets" and "Hidden Shadows" (which is in the meter 19/4). "Hornets" was later revised on the 2001 album Future2Future as "Virtual Hornets".

Among the instruments Hancock and Gleeson utilized were Fender Rhodes piano, ARP Odyssey, ARP Pro-Soloist Synthesizer and the Minimoog. All three Warner Brothers albums Fat Albert Rotunda, Mwandishi and Crossings were remastered in 2001 but were not released in the U.S.A. as of June 2005.

Head Hunters and Death Wish

After the sometimes "airy" and decidedly experimental "Mwandishi" albums, Hancock was eager to perform more "earthy" and "funky" music. The Mwandishi albums — though these days seen as respected early fusion recordings — had seen mixed reviews and poor sales, so it is probable that Hancock was motivated by financial concerns as well as artistic restlessness. Hancock also was bothered by the fact, that many people did not understand avant-gardish music. He explained that he loved funk music, especially Sly Stone's music, so he wanted to try to make funk himself.

He gathered a new band, which he called The Headhunters, keeping only Maupin from the sextet and adding bassist Paul Jackson, percussionist Bill Summers, and drummer Harvey Mason. The album Head Hunters, released in 1973, was a major hit and crossed over to pop audiences, though it prompted criticism from some jazz fans.

Despite charges of "selling out", later ears have regarded the album well: "Head Hunters still sounds fresh and vital three decades after its initial release, and its genre-bending proved vastly influential on not only jazz, but funk, soul, and hip-hop." Allmusic.com entry

Mason was replaced by Mike Clark, and the band released a second album, Thrust, the following year (a live album from a Japan performance consisting of songs from those first two Head Hunters releases was released in 1975 as Flood. The record has since been released on CD in Japan.) This was almost as well-received as its predecessor, if not attaining the same level of commercial success. The Headhunters made another successful album (called "Survival of the Fittest") without Hancock, while Hancock himself started to make even more commercial albums (often featuring members of the band, but no longer billed as The Headhunters). The Headhunters reunited with Hancock in 1998 for Return of the Headhunters, and a version of the band (featuring Jackson and Clark) continues to play live and record.

In 1973, Hancock composed his second masterful soundtrack to the controversial film The Spook Who Sat By The Door. Then in 1974, Hancock also composed the soundtrack to the Charles Bronson starred movie, Death Wish Part 1. One of his memorable songs, Joanna's Theme would later be re-recorded in 1997 on his Wayne Shorter duet album 1+1.

Hancock's next jazz-funk albums of 1970s albums were Man-Child (1975) ; and Secrets (1976), which point toward the more commercial direction Hancock would take over the next decade. These albums feature the members of "Headhunters band" but also variety of other musicians in important roles.

Back to the Basics: VSOP and the Future Shock

During late 1970s and early 1980s, Hancock toured with his "V.S.O.P." quintet, which featured all the members of the 1960s Miles Davis quintet except Davis, who was replaced by trumpet giant Freddie Hubbard. There was constant speculation that one day, Davis would reunite with his classic band, but never did. VSOP recorded several live albums in Japan during the late 70s including VSOP (1976) and VSOP: The Quintet (1977).

In 1978, Hancock recorded a duet with Chick Corea, who had replaced him in the Miles Davis band a decade earlier. He also released a solo acoustic piano album titled The Piano (1978) which, like so many Hancock albums at the time, was released only in Japan, though it was finally released in the US in 2004. Several other Japan-only releases have yet to surface in the US, such as Dedication (1974), VSOP: Tempest at the Colosseum (1977) and Direct Step (1978). Live Under the Sky was a VSOP album remastered for the US in 2004, and included an entire second concert from the July 1979 tour.

From 1978-1982, Hancock recorded many albums consisting of jazz-inflected disco and pop music, beginning with Sunlight (featuring guest musicians like Tony Williams and Jaco Pastorius on the last track) (1978); singing through a vocoder, he earned a British hit, "I Thought It Was You", although critics were unimpressed. . This led to more vocoder on the 1979 follow-up, Feets, Don't Fail Me Now, which gave him another UK hit in "You Bet Your Love". Albums such as Monster (1980), Magic Windows (1981), and Lite Me Up (1982) were some of Hancock's most criticized and unwelcomed albums, the market at the time being somewhat saturated with similar pop-jazz hybrids from the likes of former bandmate Freddie Hubbard. Hancock himself had quite limited role in some of those albums, leaving singing, composing and even producing to others. Mr Hands (1980) is perhaps the one album during this period that was critically acclaimed. To the delight of many fans, there were no vocals on the album, and one track featured Jaco Pastorius on bass. The album contains a wide variety of different styles, including a disco instrumental song, a latin-jazz number and an electronic piece in which Hancock plays alone with the help of computers.

Hancock also found time to record more traditional jazz whilst creating more commercially-oriented music. He toured with Tony Williams and Ron Carter in 1981, recording Herbie Hancock Trio, a five-track live album released only in Japan. A month later, he recorded Herbie Hancock Quartet with Wynton Marsalis, released in the US the following year.

In 1983, Hancock had a mainstream hit with the Grammy-award winning instrumental single "Rockit" from the album Future Shock. It was perhaps the first mainstream single to feature scratching, and also featured an innovative animated music video with a breakdancing robot. The video was a hit on MTV, but became somewhat notorious when it was revealed that Hancock's minimal presence in the video was due to MTV's perceived unwillingness at the time to show black musicians. Regardless of any controversy, the video won 5 different categories at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards, including the category for Video Of The Year. This single ushered in a collaboration with noted bassist and producer Bill Laswell. Hancock experimented with electronic music on a string of three LPs produced by Laswell: Future Shock (1983), Sound-System (1984) and Perfect Machine (1988). Despite the success of "Rockit," Hancock's trio of Laswell-produced albums (particularly the latter two) are among the most critically derided of his entire career, perhaps even more so than his erstwhile pop-jazz experiments. Hancock's level of actual contribution to these albums was also questioned, with some critics contending that the Laswell albums should have been labelled "Bill Laswell featuring Herbie Hancock."

During this period, he appeared onstage at the Grammy awards with Stevie Wonder, Howard Jones, and Thomas Dolby, in a famous synthesizer jam. Lesser known works from the 80s are the live album Jazz Africa and the studio album Village Life (1984) which were recorded with Gambian kora player Foday Musa Suso.

In 1986, Hancock performed and acted in the film 'Round Midnight. He also wrote the score/soundtrack, for which he won an Academy Award for Original Music Score. Often he would write music for TV commercials. "Maiden Voyage", in fact, started out as a cologne advertisement. At the end of the Perfect Machine tour, Hancock decided to leave Columbia Records after a 15-plus-year relationship.

As of June 2005, almost half of his Columbia recordings have been remastered. The first three US releases, Sextant, Head Hunters and Thrust as well as the last four releases Future Shock, Sound-System, the soundtrack to 'Round Midnight and Perfect Machine. Everything released in America from Man-Child to Quartet has yet to be remastered. Some albums, made and initially released in the US, were remastered between 1999 and 2001 in other countries such as Magic Windows and Monster. Hancock also re-released some of his Japan-only releases in the West, such as The Piano.

1990s and later

After leaving Columbia, Hancock took something of a break. Three years after Perfect Machine was released, his mentor Miles Davis, died in 1991. Along with friends Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter and Davis admirer Wallace Roney, they recorded A Tribute To Miles which was released in 1994. The album contained two live recordings and studio recording classics with Roney playing Davis's part as trumpet player. The album won a Grammy for best group album. He also toured with Jack DeJohnette and Pat Metheny in 1990.

Hancock's next album, Dis Is Da Drum released in 1994 saw him return to Acid Jazz. 1995's The New Standard found him and an all-star band including John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette and Michael Brecker interpreting pop songs by Nirvana, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, Prince, Peter Gabriel and others. A 1997 duet album with Wayne Shorter titled 1 + 1 was successful, the song "Aung San Suu Kyi" winning the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition, and Hancock also achieved great success in 1998 with his album Gershwin's World which featured inventive readings of George & Ira Gershwin standards by Hancock and a plethora of guest stars including Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell and Shorter.

In 2001, Hancock recorded Future2Future, which reunited Hancock with Bill Laswell and featured doses of electronica as well as turntablist Rob Swift of The X-Ecutioners. Hancock later toured with the band, and released a live concert DVD with a different lineup which also included the "Rockit" music video. Also in 2001, Hancock partnered with Michael Brecker and Roy Hargrove to record a live concert album saluting Davis and John Coltrane called Directions in Music: Live At Massey Hall recorded live in Toronto. The threesome then toured together, and have toured on and off through 2005.

2005 saw the release of a duet album called Possibilities. It features duets with Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Annie Lennox, John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Sting and others. In 2006, Possibilities was nominated for Grammy awards in two categories: "A Song For You," featuring Christina Aguilera was nominated in the Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals category, and "Gelo No Montanha," featuring Trey Anastasio on guitar was nominated in the Best Pop Instrumental Performance category. Neither nomination resulted in an award.

Also in 2005, Hancock toured Europe with a new quartet that included Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, and explored textures ranging from ambient to straight jazz to African music. Plus, during the Summer of 2005, Hancock re-staffed the famous Head Hunters and went on tour with them.

Also in 2006, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (which bought out Hancock's old label, Columbia Records) released the two-disc retrospective The Essential Herbie Hancock. This two-disc set is the first compliation of Herbie's work at Warner Brothers, Blue Note Records, Columbia and at Verve/Polygram. This became Hancock's second major compliation of work since the 2002 Columbia-only The Herbie Hancock Box which was released at first in a plastic 4x4 cube then re-released in 2004 in a long box set.

Trivia

Prior to the VSOP period of the mid-1970s, Wayne Shorter never appeared as a side-man on Hancock's own records; however, Hancock appeared on some of Shorter's Blue Note records of the 1960s and also his 1975 album Native Dancer.

Hancock was one of the first mainstream musicians to use an Apple computer in creating music in the early 1980s. First using an Apple II on his 1980 album Mr. Hands. Later on towards Sound-System, Perfect Machine and beyond he was using an Apple Macintosh.

Hancock is a Nichiren Buddhist, and writes about the influence Buddhism has had on his life and his music in the introduction he wrote to the nonfiction bestseller The Buddha In Your Mirror. He is a member of the California-based Soka Gakkai International sect, which also counts Tina Turner among its members.

Hancock filmed an infomercial where he served as spokesman for the Bose Corporation.

Hancock is the musical director of the Tokyo Jazz Festival as well as a patron member of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.

Hancock also started an organization called ROLO -- the Rhythm of Life Organization dedicated to using technology in a responsible way to make the world a better place. Through the vision of ROLO, he helped found BAYCAT (Bayview-Hunters Point Center for Arts & Technology), an educational facility in the Bay Area which provides free classes to youth in digital arts.

In the movie Tommy Boy, Chris Farley's character inadvertently confuses Herbie Hancock with John Hancock when he's asked on a history final to identify the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. In a later scene, when David Spade's character asks Brian Dennehy's character to put his "John Hancock" on forms, Tommy then says, "John Hancock....it's Herbie Hancock."