Considered today one of the key exponents of jazz and funk music, let’s discover the story of Harbie Hancock and her success.
Who is Harbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey Hancock, full name of Harbie Hancock (Chicago, April 12, 1940) is an American pianist, composer and actor.
Passionate about music from an early age he began studying piano at the age of 7 leaving everyone speechless for his extraordinary talent.
He developed this hobby throughout his adolescence and was offered in 1961 to join a group from New York to which Dondal Byrd belongs.
Harbie agrees and soon gets a contracted by the Blue Note label which allows him to record his first album.
The beginning of his musical career with jazz and funk
It then came out in 1962 “Takin ‘Off” Hancock’s first album which immediately achieved resounding success. The following year the great Miles Davis proposes him to record with his group and thus record “Seven Steps to Heaven”.
Towards the end of the decade he leaves the band and continues recording independently. He recorded “Fat Albert Rotunda” in 1968 and opened one with this project funky stage which continues in numerous different forms. To determine the actual transition to the genre is the series of projects for Warner Bros and the albums “Crossings”, “Sextant” and “Head Hunters”.
The great success and the electronic experimentation
The funk period continues until the eighties when start experimenting and approaches the first disk and then to the electronic music. He continues to work with well-known artists including early colleagues Tony Williams and Ron Carter. With the latter and Billy Cobham he then forms a power-jazz trio strongly loved by the public and with whom he also carries out an international tour.
With the end of the nineties and the arrival of the 2000s, he also began to collaborate with much loved artists of pop music including Christina Aguilera and John Mayer. He also takes part in the performance of a very successful song on the album dedicated to the Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Finally, he was awarded with the album “River: The Joni Letters” ai Grammy Awards.