Happy Birthday, Herbie Hancock, Born On This Day In 1940 , Sheet Music Library (PDF)

Happy birthday, Herbie Hancock, born on this day in 1940.

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Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock was born on April 12, 1940, in Chicago. He attended Grinnell College and Roosevelt University. He began playing piano at the age of seven, and at eleven, he performed a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for young performers. His interest in jazz was sparked by listening to records by Oscar Peterson and George Shearing. In 1962, he signed his first recording contract for Blue Note with Donald Byrd. Upon hearing him play, the label’s producers offered him a recording contract, and the pianist responded with the album “Takin’ Off,” which included his first major composition, “Watermelon Man.”

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For a time, he played independently with Eric Dolphy’s quintet (1962–1963), and in 1963 he joined Miles Davis’s quintet. He remained with the trumpeter until 1968 and became Davis’s main musical supporter. Alongside his training with Davis, Herbie Hancock recorded a series of magnificent albums for Blue Note, the most notable of which is “Maiden Voyage,” a true jazz piano masterpiece.

He combined various electronic techniques with acoustic piano music, creating the jazz-fusion style with his own band in the early 1970s. The resulting album, “Headhunters,” became the best-selling fusion album of all time until its release.

Hancock blended styles and resources such as pop, hard rock, synthesized disco, dubbing techniques, and mix editing. He had the idea of bringing together all the musicians who had been with Miles Davis and formed a band called VSOP, which met with notable critical and popular acclaim. During the 1980s, he discovered scratch music, based on an original rhythmic effect from rap, and with his new group, the Rockit Band, he explored the rhythms of contemporary urban music.

Their single “Rockit” reached number one on the charts and won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Recording. Hancock won an Academy Award (1987) for the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for the 1986 film “Round Midnight” by French director Bertrand Tavernier.