“And I said: I want to learn how to improvise,” he remembers. Aged 14, following a diet of classical, rhythm and blues, and doo-wop groups, he discovered the joys of jazz at a school concert. Photograph: Steve MundingerĪ child prodigy, Hancock, 79, grew up in Chicago where his mother worked as a secretary and his father a government meat inspector. It’s not like I’m a Hollywood movie star.”Īn attentive, adoring audience of mostly teenage music students attended Herbie Hancock’s masterclass. “And I haven’t heard anybody yet who has come after him.” But as Hancock puts it, with quintessential humility and a warm laugh, “It’s jazz. “Herbie was the step after Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk,” Miles Davis wrote in his autobiography. This is a man who has won an Oscar (in 1987, for the film score of Round Midnight), 14 Grammys (too many albums to list), and in 1994 received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. You have to ask”), and when children are wheeled in for a photo op, he makes sure there is time to ask them questions and show them his callused piano hands. When a woman gives him a hug, he pauses to check it’s OK (“Hashtag MeToo. Dressed when we first meet in a suit and blue checked shirt, he is unfalteringly polite, with the gracious, gentlemanly air of your favourite grandpa. Afterwards the novice confides to me: “What a man! I wish someone had filmed it. As he leaves, he stops to fist-bomb a geeky 19-year-old, who audibly gasps. Watching him is an attentive, adoring audience of mostly teenage music students. Four years later we got married and last year we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary.In the intimate Friday class (really more of a concert) Hancock, along with the Australian musician James Morrison and Hancock Institute Fellows, plays everything from ragtime to his own most famous compositions, including 1962’s Watermelon Man. What I liked was that she wasn't just saying yes to me she was putting up a fight. We got talking to them and I had a debate with her about something or other. She was sitting at a table with some other girls and I was there with my friend Larry. She has a German background, studied in England and was living in New York when we met. She was working for the American Academy of Art. I met my wife, Gigi, when I was 24, at a bar in New York on Halloween. That's how my career started and two years later I was hired by Miles Davis. I moved to New York just before my 21st birthday. I wanted to be a jazz musician even though I had already done two years of engineering. Mom reluctantly said yes after a call from trumpeter Donald Byrd. I told them I loved the idea but they had to ask my mother. I got a weekend gig out of town and was noticed by a band who asked me to be their piano player. I had a summer job working at a post office in Chicago after I graduated from college. It was only once I hit my later teenage years that the switch clicked. Fortunately I could play the piano and the girls liked that. I noticed girls in elementary school but I didn't have a girlfriend. ![]() She was killed in a plane crash in 1985 at 41. Her songs were recorded by artists such as Booker T and the MGs, Dianne Reeves, and Earth, Wind and Fire. Jean taught herself how to play the guitar and wrote lyrics. We came from a poor family but when Mom got a job as a secretary at the University of Chicago, she was able to get my sister a discount to attend the highly regarded Lab Schools in Hyde Park. When she started school she already knew how to add, subtract and divide. When she was three years old, she would ask my brother, Wayman jnr, and me what we had learnt in school. It was wise on his part, but Mom also gave good advice. When I would ask Dad certain things, he would say, "Go ask your mother." He put her at the centre of the decision-making because it was like putting oil on a wheel to keep the family running smoothly. My dad thought Mum was highly strung but she was actually bipolar. She didn't push us to be anything we didn't want to be. Mom was always supportive of her three children – of whom I am the eldest – particularly when it came to us getting a good education.
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