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• Herbie Hancock is one of the most influential and prolific jazz musicians in history and continues to expand the boundaries of jazz by including elements of funk, rock and soul in his work.

• Fast Facts

  1. Born: April 12, 1940
  2. Origin: Chicago, Illinois
  3. Grammy Awards: 10

• Herbie's Career

  Hancock's early career found him playing with Donald Byrd in New York in 1961. He released a solo album on Blue Note, Takin' Off, which caught the attention of Miles Davis, In 1963, Hancock joined Davis' band. During his years with Davis, Hancock continued to record solo albums and scored Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow Up.

  Hancock left Davis in 1968 and recorded a funk album, Fat Albert Rotunda. Hancock was experimenting with electronics and synthesizers at the time and formed the jazz-funk group The Headhunters. The group's first single "Chameleon" became the biggest-selling jazz LP of the time.

  Through the late 70s and early 80s, Hancock would tour with his former colleagues from Davis' band as the V.S.O.P. quintent, but his electronic dabbling and cross-genre collaborations would continue, producing the 1983 chart-topping single "Rockit."

  Since the release of "Rockit," Hancock has continued to produce a hyrbrid of jazz, funk, pop and electronic music with such albums as Future2Future and the Grammy Award-winning River: The Joni Letters.

• Related Mahalo Pages

  Miles Davis | John Coltrane | Thelonious Monk | Charles Mingus | Charlie Parker | Duke Ellington | Medeski Martin and Wood | Chick Corea | Wayne Shorter | Weather Report (Band) | Freddie Hubbard | Jimmy Smith

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