Herbie Hancock - Music Biography, Credits and Discography - AllMusic

Herbie Hancock - Music Biography, Credits and Discography : AllMusic
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Herbie Hancock
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by Richard S. Ginell
biography [-]
photo credit: Douglas Kirkland
GENRES STYLES
Jazz Electro Funk Fusion Hard Bop Jazz-Funk Modal Music Post-Bop Piano Jazz Jazz Instrument
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 and into the 21st. 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 continued 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
ACTIVE BORN ALIASES MEMBER OF
1960s - 2010s April 12, 1940 in Chicago, IL Herbert Jeffrey Hancock The Headhunters V.S.O.P.
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photo gallery
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/herbie-hancock-mn0000957296[27/2/2013 5:52:10 ]
artist moods
- Amiable/GoodNatured - Elegant - Poignant - Rousing - Sophisticated - Sprawling Dramatic Energetic Insular Lively Playful Slick Witty - Cerebral - Complex - Freewheeling - Refined - Searching - Spacey - Stylish Earnest Exuberant Literate Passionate Quirky Warm Wry
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. An intriguing album of jazz treatments of Joni Mitchell compositions called River: The Joni Letters was released in 2007. In 2010 Hancock released his The Imagine Project album, which was recorded in seven countries and featured a host of collaborators, including Dave Matthews, Anoushka Shankar, Jeff Beck, the Chieftains, John Legend, India.Arie, Seal, P!nk, Juanes, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Chaka Khan, K'NAAN, Wayne Shorter, James Morrison, and Lisa Hannigan. He was also named Creative Chair for the New Los Angeles Philharmonic.
COLLAPSE
artist themes
- Freedom - Victory - Late Night - Affirmation - The Great Outdoors - Romance - Playful - Empowering - Motivation - Cool & Cocky - Introspection - Relaxation - The Creative Side
discography
Year
list
Title
condensed
Label
MAIN ALBUMS
COMPILATIONS
SINGLES & EPS
DVDS & VIDEOS
Editors' Rating
Average User Rating
1962
Takin' Off
Blue Note
(36)
1963
My Point of View
Blue Note
(16)
1964
Empyrean Isles
Blue Note
(60)
1964
Inventions & Dimensions
Blue Note
(15)
1964
Succotash
(1)
1965
Maiden Voyage
Blue Note
(75)
1966
Blow-Up
CBS Records
(4)
1968
Hear, O Israel
Jonny
No User Ratings
1968
Speak Like a Child
Blue Note
(21)
1969
Fat Albert Rotunda
Warner Special Marketing / WEA International

(22)
1969
The Prisoner
Blue Note
(15)
1970
Mwandishi
WEA International
(26)
1972
Crossings
Warner Bros.
(44)
1973
Head Hunters
Legacy / Columbia/Legacy
(150)
1973
Sextant
Columbia / Columbia/Legacy
(26)
1974
Dedication
Sony Music Distribution

(1)
1974
Death Wish
One Way Records

(1)
1974
Thrust
Columbia/Legacy
(32)
1975
Flood

(7)
1975
Love Me by Name
A&M
No User Ratings
1975
Man-Child
Columbia
(15)
1976
Secrets
Columbia
(4)
1976
Kawaida
GB Records
No User Ratings
1976
V.S.O.P., Vol. 1
Columbia / Sony Music Distribution Original Jazz Classics / Universal Polska SP. Z O.O.
(4)
1977
Third Plane
(1)
1977
Live in Japan
Columbia
No User Ratings
1977
Sunlight

(6)
1977
The Herbie Hancock Trio [1977] V.S.O.P.: The Quintet

(2)
1977
Columbia
(5)
1978
An Corea/Hancock
Polydor
(3)
1978
An Evening with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea: In Concert Tempest in the Colosseum
Legacy / Columbia
(4)
1978
Columbia
(2)
1979
Directstep
No User Ratings
1979
Feets Don't Fail Me Now
Columbia
(3)
1979
In Concert
CBS Records
No User Ratings
197?
Jingle Bells Jazz
Columbia
No User Ratings
1980
Monster

(1)
1980
Mr. Hands
Columbia / Sony Music Distribution
(9)
1980
The Piano

(5)
1981
Live Under the Sky
TriStar Music
No User Ratings
1981
Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner Herbie Hancock Quartet
Atlantic
(4)
1981
Columbia
No User Ratings
1981
Magic Windows

(1)
1982
The Herbie Hancock Trio [1982]

(2)
1982
Lite Me Up

(1)
1983
Future Shock
Legacy / Columbia
(18)
1984
Sound-System
Columbia
(3)
1985
Village Life
Columbia
No User Ratings
1988
Perfect Machine
Columbia / Legacy / Columbia/Legacy

(2)
1988
Songs for My Father
Blue Note
(1)
1994
Dis Is Da Drum
Mercury
(4)
1996
The New Standard
Verve / Polygram
(5)
1997
1+1
Verve / Polygram
(13)
1998
Gershwin's World
Verve
(10)
2001
Future 2 Future Directions in Music: Live at Massey Hall
Transparent Music
(3)
2002
Verve
(10)
2004
Portrait of Bill Evans
JVC Compact Discs
No User Ratings
2004
Jazz Soundtracks: Bird/Straight No Chaser/Round Midnight
Sony Jazz / Sony Music Distribution
No User Ratings
2005
Live: Detroit/Chicago
Hudson Street
No User Ratings
2005
Possibilities
Hear Music (Starbucks) / Vector/Hancock
(7)
2007
River: The Joni Letters
Verve
(24)
2010
The Imagine Project
Hancock Records
(3)
2010
Live in Lugano: Supertrio in Concert
Jazzdoor / Mc
No User Ratings
2010
Under Tokyo Skies
Jazz World
No User Ratings
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