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Quick Facts
- NAME: Mickey Hart
- OCCUPATION: Drummer
- BIRTH DATE: September 11, 1943 (Age: 69)
- EDUCATION: Lawrence High School
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Brooklyn, New York
- Full Name: Michael Steven Hartman
- AKA: Mickey Hart
- ZODIAC SIGN: Virgo
Best Known For
For close to 30 years, drummer Mickey Hart paired with Bill Kreutzmann to form the rhythm section for the iconic rock 'n' roll band the Grateful Dead.
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Play NowMickey Hart. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 12:03, May 19, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/mickey-hart-20878707.
Mickey Hart. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/mickey-hart-20878707 [Accessed 19 May 2013].
"Mickey Hart." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 19 2013, 12:03 http://www.biography.com/people/mickey-hart-20878707.
"Mickey Hart," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/mickey-hart-20878707 [accessed May 19, 2013].
"Mickey Hart," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/mickey-hart-20878707 (accessed May 19, 2013).
Mickey Hart [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 19] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/mickey-hart-20878707.
Mickey Hart, http://www.biography.com/people/mickey-hart-20878707 (last visited May 19, 2013).
Mickey Hart. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/mickey-hart-20878707. Accessed May 19, 2013.
Synopsis
Mickey Hart was born September 11, 1943 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1967, he joined the Grateful Dead as its second drummer. In 1971, he left the band and released his first solo album, rejoining the group in 1975. In 1995, Jerry Garcia died and the group disbanded. Hart continued to do solo work, occasionally performing with his former bandmates. In recent years, he has played with the Mickey Hart Band.
Contents
Quotes
"There's nothing like music to relieve the soul and uplift it."
Early Life
On September 11, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York, Michael Steven Hartman, best known as Mickey Hart, was welcomed into the world by his mother, Leah. Mickey’s father, a drummer named Lenny, had left the picture by the time Mickey was born. Mickey was raised solely by his mother, also a drummer, but seemed to inherit musical talent from both of his parents.
When Hart was a teenager, he dropped out of Lawrence High School to join the U.S. Air Force's drum and bugle corps. While stationed in California, Mickey finally met his estranged father, but they soon lost touch. Hart was next stationed in Spain, where he studied judo and learned rhythmical breathing techniques that he would use to enhance his drumming throughout his musical career.
Musical Career
In 1965, after Hart was discharged from the Air Force, he went back to New York to look for work as a studio session drummer. Not long after, Hart received a letter from his father, inviting him to work in Lenny's drum shop. During his short stint working at his father's drum shop, Hart met Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann at a nightclub called the Matrix, and was asked to sit in with the band. In 1967, Hart joined the band as its second drummer. A rock band with two drummers was practically unheard of at the time. Hart and Kreutzmann's innovative two-drum performances with the Dead in the late 1960s and early 1970s earned the duo the nickname "Rhythm Devils."
In 1971, Hart left the Grateful Dead and released his first solo album, Rolling Thunder, the following year. Two years later, he teamed up with the Dead again, for a performance at Winterland in San Francisco. After recording on the Grateful Dead's album, Blues for Allah, in 1975, Hart decided to rejoin the band for good.
While drumming for the Grateful Dead, Hart continued to pursue his own musical projects. In 1976 the Diga Rhythm Band, an experimental world-beat fusion band that Hart had organized, released its first album, Diga.
From 1979 to 1980, Hart contributed to two albums for the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola's hit film, Apocalypse Now. In 1983, Hart started putting out global fusion albums under the title The World, including a reissue of a Diga Rhythm Band album he had produced earlier. He developed such a fascination with world music that he began recording all over the globe. In line with this interest, Hart teamed up with the Library of Congress to form the "Endangered Music Project," which preserves recordings of traditional music from all over the world. In 1989, however, Hart released an album inspired by events closer to home: Music to Be Born By was spurred by the rhythm of his unborn son's heartbeat.
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Grateful Dead
View groupWith the 1960s came the psychedelic movement, a time when taking hallucinogenic drugs and listening to experimental music peaked within the countercultures of America and Great Britain. Among the movement's most famous musicians were the Grateful Dead, which mixed genres such as psychadelia, blues, folk, country, rock 'n' roll and jazz to create their incredibly unique rock sound. Known for changing set lists for each show, and for sometimes playing for more than four hours in one set, the Dead created songs like "Sugar Magnolia," "Casey Jones" and "Scarlet Begonias." While the group toured with various musicians until it disbanded in the late 1990s, its main members included Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart.
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