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Hancock, Herbert Jeffrey (Herbie)
3 articles on Hancock, Herbert Jeffrey (Herbie)
Hancock, Herbie
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
Word Count: 715 Includes: Bibliography(b. 12 April 1940), jazz pianist and composer. Herbert Jeffrey “Herbie” Hancock was born in Chicago, son of Wayman Hancock, a meat inspector, and Winnie (Griffin) Hancock, a secretary. Herbie began playing piano at age seven and was introduced to jazz at age fourteen. At age sixteen he enrolled at Grinnell College in Iowa as an engineering major, but after two years he switched to music.When he returned to Chicago in 1961, Hancock joined the trumpeter Donald Byrd's group and moved with them to New York. Hancock gained his first record contract in 1962 with the Blue Note label, known for blues- and soul-oriented leaders such as Byrd, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, and Lou Donaldson. Takin’ Off, Hancock's debut album, included the tune “Watermelon Man,” which the percussionist Mongo Santamaria1963 ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 624 Includes: Bibliography1940–
Piano and keyboard player, composer, and group leader who has contributed to modal, free, and fusion jazz. Since the 1960s, Herbie Hancock has been, along with trumpet player Miles Davis, one of the most popular Jazz musicians in the United States. Like Davis, he has played effectively in a wide range of styles, including modal, free jazz, and, most controversially, fusion or jazz-rock. Hancock first gained national acclaim in Davis's mid-1960s quintet along with Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone), Tony Williams (drums) and Ron Carter (bass), but his talent was evident at an early age.Hancock began studying piano at age seven and performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a young people's concert when he was eleven years old. After graduating from college in 1960, Hancock played piano ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 1429 Includes: Further Reading(12 Apr. 1940– ), jazz pianist and composer, was born Herbert Jeffrey Hancock in Chicago, Illinois. His father owned a neighborhood meat business, allowing his son to grow up in relatively comfortable middle-class circumstances. After receiving a piano for his seventh birthday, Hancock began his initial training not in an African American music form but in the classical European canon. Showing prodigious talent for his instrument, he advanced quickly and, at the age of eleven, was chosen to play the first movement of Mozart'sfifth piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He became interested in jazz, however, after hearing a boy his age improvise at a student talent show. Impressed by his peer's spontaneous compositions, he further educated himself in the language and idiom of jazz by imitating and transcribing the music of ...
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