Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancockis an American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, composer and actor. Starting his career with Donald Byrd, he shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet where Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk music. Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "cross over" and achieved success...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPianist
Date of Birth12 April 1940
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
I would be all over the piano, but Miles would play a few notes that would just wipe out all that fancy stuff I was playing.
He just blew me away and what it taught me was that Miles didn't hear it as a mistake.
As the 1960s began, jazz music was still at an apex, with hard bop groups led by the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane remaining a force on the musical landscape.
Other highlights? When I started practicing Buddhism 21 years ago. Marrying the woman I married 26 years ago; my wife is quite a woman. The birth of my daughter. Joining Miles Davis' band.
Still, when I finally left Miles in '68 and got my own band, it was a logical step; because anybody that left Miles always had their own band.
After a long day of playing, John took me aside and said, 'Was that OK? Was it usable? What's going on?' ... All I said was, 'Welcome to a Miles Davis session.'
I said, 'If Miles is so open, it must be cool to be open to all this other stuff.'
But once Miles would start to play on top of these things we were doing, all of a sudden, it was as though he would go to the core of it.
Americans are taught that white people did everything, but that is changing. American history and our dealings with other cultures are a constant conflict of understanding.
Actually, African Americans I think are completely now all mixed.
Technology has made so much information available but what the technological community has not done is to make any attempt for us to figure out how we're going to assimilate all this information.
It might have been somewhat derivative otherwise, and I'm not the kind of person who's satisfied with being derivative.
Nowadays people jog and listen to music. Work out and listen to music. They've got these headphones on all the time. It's just the normal scene.
Then I would watch him improvise, and I would be fascinated by what he was doing.