Herbie Hancock--Possibilities

Starred review from July 21, 2014
Melodically weaving the notes of his personal life around his exploration of numerous music genres from classical and R&B to funk and hip-hop, renowned pianist Hancock elegantly composes a tuneful sound track of his life in music. While growing up on Chicago’s South Side in the 1940s, Hancock started playing piano when he was seven; four years later, he’d won a music contest and played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Hancock’s intense focus on the intricacies of music, and his steadfast drive to learn about all aspects of life, especially how things work, led him to take up jazz as a teenager and to study engineering briefly in college. Hancock takes us through the opus of his early days as a pianist with Donald Byrd, the composition of his first song, “Watermelon Man,” and signing with Blue Note to record his first album, Takin’ Off. Just 23, Hancock got a call from Miles Davis asking the young pianist to come play with him in what eventually grew into the Second Great Quintet. Five years later, Hancock left Davis to form his own band, the Herbie Hancock Sextet, launching a successful and widely varied solo career that included writing scores for movies like Round Midnight, Jo Jo Dancer, and Harlem Nights. Hancock’s discovery and embrace of Buddhism opened his heart and mind to the myriad possibilities in life and music, and he reveals eloquently in this candid memoir that he continues to approach life in an improvisational style in which each moment is special and everything is always new.

August 1, 2014
One of the most innovative and admired jazz musicians of his generation reminisces about his career. Born in 1940, Hancock grew up in South Side Chicago, the second son of Southerners who came North during the Depression. His parents were of modest means, but when he began playing a neighbor's piano, they bought a secondhand instrument for him. He quickly showed talent, winning a competition to play a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony at age 11. In high school, Hancock began to play jazz, copying records of the popular pianists of the day. He went to Grinnell College to study engineering; music was too precarious a trade. But after nearly flunking out, he switched to music. A couple of years later, he was gigging in Chicago. Trumpeter Donald Byrd took Hancock under his wing and brought him to New York as a member of his band. Opportunities followed: record sessions, steady work with other bands and a hit record. But the big break was a call from Miles Davis, whose quintet Hancock joined in 1963. This historic band, with Wayne Shorter on sax and Tony Williams on drums, stayed together for five years, and Hancock's stories of those years are the best in the book. Along the way, he married, traveled the world and began to play electric piano-the first step into a new musical world. After leaving Davis, he began to explore funk, fusion and even hip-hop. He began writing film music, eventually moving to Los Angeles. He also discovered Buddhism, which became a major source of inspiration. Major awards marked his later years, which on the whole highlight a tale of success and fulfillment. The only real low point is an involvement with crack cocaine, which he admits to for the first time in these pages. A warm, inspiring book by a man who seems to have little ego despite a career spent near the peak of his art. Recommended reading for jazz aficionados.

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September 15, 2014

This brilliant memoir looks at musician and composer Hancock, whose life and career spans some seven decades. It reveals the method behind this remarkable jazz performer, from his beginnings as a child prodigy to his work with the Miles Davis Quintet and his later career forming his own band and providing music for films such as Harlem Nights and 'Round Midnight. Hancock relates anecdotes about his musical influences, his happy marriage, and how Buddhism inspired his music. Most recently he has lectured at Harvard University on the ethics of jazz, served as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, and been honored by the Kennedy Center. This book's message is that people can turn any adversity or struggle into something of value. VERDICT Anyone interested in jazz would do well to read this outstanding account by a renowned keyboardist and composer, as it will appeal to all readers and is a testament to a man who faced in life what seemed impossible and made it possible. Also recommended is Bob Gluck's You'll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band (2012).--Claude Ury, San Francisco

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014
Herbie Hancock has been in the forefront of America's music for a half-century, from his experience as a sideman with Miles Davis to his own groups, which earned numerous Oscar and Grammy awards. He has remained true to his art and his (Buddhist) poise during turbulent times, and his description of his upbringing and encounters with often turbulent individuals (not least of them Davis) provides a unique slant on America's musical scene. This is, however, an odd jazz autobiography. Though gracious to his collaborators and other contemporaries, Hancock omits virtually any mention of influences on his work; this is a piano man's story with only very passing mention of Art Tatum or Bud Powell or Thelonious Monk. Though some of his music has been, in his words, far out, Hancock on the page is not. Like jazz, this memoir is at times cerebral but at times superficial. He relies on cool as an all-purpose adjective almost to the degree that Davis used the f-word (the one that starts with an m) as a noun in his own memoirs. Though interesting in parts, ultimately this just doesn't quite swing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)