Herbie Hancock Trivia
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50 free Herbie Hancock trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Herbie Hancock trivia quiz covers the Chicago prodigy who played Mozart with a symphony orchestra at 11, joined Miles Davis's second great quintet at 23, and went on to reinvent himself in jazz-funk, electro and pop across six decades. The easy questions cover the landmarks: his hometown, his best-known compositions, the Head Hunters album, the breakdance anthem Rockit and the Album of the Year Grammy for River: The Joni Letters. The harder half is for the record collectors: the Blue Note debut, the film that gave him his first score, the Mwandishi era and its synthesizers, the vocoder hits in Britain, the VSOP reunions, the Oscar for Round Midnight, the Buddhist practice he took up in 1972, and the 1963 Shelby Cobra he has owned longer than anyone has owned any Cobra. Every answer was checked against Herbie Hancock's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our jazz and Miles Davis quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Herbie Hancock was born in 1940 in which US city?
Chicago
Chicago's back alleys gave him his first hit: he built "Watermelon Man" on the memory of a fruit seller's cry and wagon wheels clattering over the cobblestones.
Q 02At age 11, Hancock performed a piano concerto by which composer with a major American symphony orchestra?
Mozart
Mozart's D major concerto was the piece: he played its first movement at a young people's concert just four years after getting his first piano, and did not take up jazz until high school.
Q 03Before switching to music composition, Hancock began his studies at Grinnell College in which field?
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering was his first choice of major before music won out, and the grounding stuck: he became a pioneer of the electric piano, clavinet and synthesizer in jazz.
Q 04Hancock's 1962 debut album for Blue Note was titled what?
Takin' Off
Takin' Off nearly did not happen: the label wanted the publishing rights to his tunes in return for the session, and the 22-year-old got up to walk out before it gave way and let him keep them.
Q 05Which trumpeter's group gave Hancock his start before Miles Davis came calling?
Donald Byrd
Donald Byrd gave him his start and then gave him away: hearing that Miles Davis was about to phone, he told his pianist to say he wasn't working with anybody and take the job.
Q 06Which 17-year-old drummer joined Miles Davis's band alongside Hancock in 1963?
Tony Williams
Tony Williams had been hired at 16 by saxophonist Jackie McLean; the rhythms he and Hancock began trading behind the trumpeter's solos soon pushed Davis himself into freer playing.
Q 07Hancock's first film score, in 1966, was for which Michelangelo Antonioni film?
Blowup
Blowup's score had a second life on the dance floor: the bass riff of its cue "Bring Down the Birds" became the hook of Deee-Lite's 1990 hit "Groove Is in the Heart".
Q 08On what pretext did Miles Davis replace Hancock in 1968?
He returned late from a honeymoon in Brazil
He returned late from a honeymoon in Brazil, laid up there by food poisoning, and found his chair filled; he later called it a blessing in disguise, since it pushed him to lead a band of his own.
Q 09Hancock composed the soundtrack for a 1969 animated TV special about which Bill Cosby character?
Fat Albert
Fat Albert came out of Cosby's stand-up routines, and this NBC special led three years later to the series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids; Hancock reworked his funky score as the album Fat Albert Rotunda.
Q 10Hancock and his early-1970s sextet each took a name, his being Mwandishi, from which African language?
Swahili
Swahili gave every member of the sextet a new name; Hancock's, usually glossed as "composer" or "writer", stuck so well that the band's three albums are still known by it.
Q 11Hancock's 1973 crossover hit album, one of the best-selling jazz records ever, was titled what?
Head Hunters
Head Hunters came from a change of heart: tired of his sextet's far-out, spacey music, Hancock wanted something earthier and lighter, and it went on to sell more than a million copies.
Q 12Which member of Hancock's early-1970s sextet was the only one he kept for his 1973 funk band?
Bennie Maupin
Bennie Maupin alone made the jump from the spacey sextet to the new funk band and co-wrote its hit "Chameleon"; when Hancock later moved on, the group kept playing without its founder.
Q 13Hancock scored the first film in which vigilante franchise in 1974?
Death Wish
Q 21Which pair of guest stars appears on Hancock's 1998 album Gershwin's World?
Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell
Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell both sing on it: his "St. Louis Blues" won Hancock a Grammy for the arrangement, and her two songs came nine years before his album of her own music.
Q 22Hancock's jazz covers album The New Standard reworks a song by which grunge band?
Nirvana
Nirvana's Kurt Cobain shares the track list with Prince and the Beatles; the title states the aim, to find jazz's next standards among the rock, pop and soul songs of recent decades.
Q 23Which saxophonist recorded the 1997 duet album 1+1 with Hancock?
Wayne Shorter
Death Wish had Charles Bronson turn vigilante to Hancock's score; for the sequel the director handed the job to his neighbour, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page.
Q 14Hancock's late-1970s supergroup VSOP reunited the classic Davis quintet with which trumpeter in Miles's place?
Freddie Hubbard
Freddie Hubbard stepped in for Davis, who had stopped performing; the band came together for a single Hancock retrospective concert at the 1976 Newport Jazz Festival in New York, then went on touring for years.
Q 15Hancock's late-1970s hits 'I Thought It Was You' and 'You Bet Your Love' put his voice through what device?
A vocoder
A vocoder let the pianist sing lead on his own disco-era singles; the device began as 1930s telephone research and scrambled Allied leaders' calls in World War II before musicians took it up.
Q 16Hancock's 1983 hit "Rockit" carried which hip-hop technique into the pop mainstream?
Scratching
Scratching on the record came from Grand Mixer D.ST, the club DJ its producers brought into the studio; he then toured in Hancock's band with a turntable as his instrument.
Q 17Which bassist-producer worked with Hancock on 'Rockit' and his three 1980s electro albums?
Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell and his studio partner built the beat and the backing track in New York; Hancock added his keyboards afterwards at home in Los Angeles, and the record came out under his name.
Q 18Who directed the robot-filled 'Rockit' video that won five awards at the first MTV Video Music Awards?
Godley and Creme
Godley and Creme, once of the band 10cc, let twitching robot sculptures do the dancing and showed Hancock only on a television screen; the clip's five awards beat Michael Jackson's three that night.
Q 19Hancock won an Academy Award for the score of which 1986 film, in which he also acted?
Round Midnight
Round Midnight cast working jazz musicians as its jazzmen: saxophonist Dexter Gordon earned a Best Actor nomination in the lead, and Hancock played in the on-screen band while writing the score.
Q 20Hancock's 2007 tribute River: The Joni Letters won which top Grammy?
Album of the Year
Album of the Year had not gone to a jazz record in 43 years; River beat albums by Kanye West and Amy Winehouse, and the win sent it into the top five of the US chart.
Wayne Shorter, co-founder of the electric band Weather Report, met the champion of synthesizers on the barest terms: soprano saxophone and grand piano, with no rhythm section at all.
Q 24Which school of Japanese Buddhism, centred on chanting, has Hancock practised since 1972?
Nichiren
Nichiren Buddhism reached him through his bassist: after Buster Williams played a solo unlike anything he had managed before, Hancock demanded his secret, and the answer was chanting.
Q 25Hancock spent a 1963 royalty cheque for "Watermelon Man" on which sports car, which he kept for the next 60 years?
A Shelby Cobra
A Shelby Cobra, paid for out of a royalty cheque of some $6,000, was his everyday car for years before he learned what it was worth: about $2 million, by his 2016 estimate. By 2023 nobody had owned a Cobra for longer.
Q 26Which pop star sang "A Song for You" on Hancock's 2005 duets album Possibilities?
Christina Aguilera
Christina Aguilera's reading of Leon Russell's ballad earned the pair a Grammy nomination, and the two performed it live at the ceremony; her fellow guests on the album ran from John Mayer to Santana.
Q 27Besides 'Cantaloupe Island', 'Watermelon Man' and 'Chameleon', which jazz standard did Hancock write?
Maiden Voyage
Maiden Voyage began as his jingle for a Yardley cologne commercial, and the master tape still called it "TV Jingle" until it was renamed in time for the album.
Q 28Which Scottish band had Hancock play a synthesizer solo on its 1982 album?
Simple Minds
Simple Minds borrowed him for New Gold Dream a year before "Rockit" made him an MTV star; in 1985 he guested again for the Duran Duran offshoot Arcadia, on an album that also had Sting and Grace Jones.
Q 29Hancock's memoir Possibilities revealed a 1990s addiction to what?
Crack cocaine
Crack cocaine had been his secret for years when, late in 1999, his wife said she would not watch him die and handed him phone numbers for rehab; he wrote that beside the shame he felt relief.
Q 30In 2013 Hancock became a professor of jazz at which university?
UCLA
UCLA had just become home to the tuition-free jazz institute he chairs, which admits a single band of graduate students at a time; the professorship put him in a room with that one ensemble each month.