Jazz great Herbie Hancock celebrates his 82nd birthday today. A winner of an Academy Award (1986, Best Original Score), 14 Grammy Awards, and the Kennedy Center Honors (2013), Hancock's skill not only as a pianist, but as a composer and arranger has made him one of the most influential jazz artists of his generation. He started his long career in the Miles Davis Quintet, where he had an influence on jazz's "post-bop" genre. Here is an early hit of his from 1962, "Watermelon Man," with the incomparable Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Dexter Gordon on tenor saxophone, Butch Warren on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums.
