Herbie Hancock

📍Chicago, IL, USA

“Herbert Jeffrey Hancock was born in Chicago in April 1940, and grew up on the city's South Side, the son of Wayman Hancock, a government meat inspector, and Winnie Hancock. His parents bought an old upright piano for twenty-five dollars, and Herbie, who began lessons at seven, would rather stay home and practise than play outside with his schoolmates. He was a bright, curious boy who loved taking things apart to see how they worked. He was soon recognised as a child prodigy. In February 1952, at eleven, after winning a youth audition, he played the first movement of Mozart's Coronation Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at a young people's concert in Orchestra Hall. He later said the experience solidified his desire to be a musician; at the time, he expected to become a concert pianist. Then, at Hyde Park High School, he saw a classmate improvising jazz on the piano at a student variety show, and was amazed. The boy told him to listen to George Shearing records, and Herbie never had a jazz teacher; he learned by listening to records by Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, transcribing their solos. He studied electrical engineering and music at Grinnell College in Iowa, and in 1961 moved to New York, where Donald Byrd took him under his wing. He released Watermelon Man in 1962, joined Miles Davis's great quintet in 1963, and went on to explore funk, electronics and hip-hop with Head Hunters and Rockit. He has won fourteen Grammy Awards, including album of the year, and is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. In 2026, he returned home to Chicago to lead the celebrations for International Jazz Day.”

Sources: cso.org cso.org wbez.org Wikipedia: Herbie Hancock