![]() Later Byrd helped Hancock get a contract with the "Blue Note" record label where Hancock launched his recording career with "Takin' Off in 1962. A friend recommended Hancock - and the one night stand became a permanent job. Trumpeter Don Byrd needed a jazz pianist at the last minute to fill in for one who was delayed by a blizzard. By 1960 he was playing piano in local Chicago clubs when his big break came. While attending Grinnell, Hancock switched his major to music. "Everybody in my father's family thought she was crazy, too high falutin.' But my mother gave us hope." As his first and most important mentor, Mother Winnie was the moving force behind a gifted yet somewhat lackadaisical talent. Winnie then pushed her son to play in the high school orchestra and then to earn a practical degree in engineering at Grinnell College in Iowa. By age 11, Herbie performed the first movement of Mozart's Concerto in D minor in a young people's concert with the Chicago Symphony. The boy proved such an excellent student he often skipped grades prompting Mother Winnie, who poured all of her seething ambition onto her children, to buy a piano for $5.00 in a church basement sale for her bright seven year old boy, who would rather experiment with sounds than go outside to play. Herbie grew up on the South Side of Chicago, one of three children of homemaker Winnie Griffin and grocery clerk Waylon Hancock. One of the leading jazz pianists of his generation, Hancock skyrocketed to fame in 1962 with his debut album "Takin' Off," which included his signature hit song "Watermelon Man." A two-time Grammy winner, Hancock was soundtrack composer of the critically acclaimed Oscar-winning film "Round Midnight" in 1986. Photo: Marco Fedele ( ), license cc-by-2.0 BiographyĪmerican musician and composer.
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