Herbie Hancock was born in Chicago in 1940. He started playing classical piano at seven. He was considered a child prodigy and played a piece with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. He was always very interested in jazz and used to study jazz recordings. He started playing jazz in high school. Hancock was equally as passionate about electronic science as music and majored in music and electrical engineering in college.

Here he is performing Footprints with Wayne Shorter at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1991.