Jan Hammer (born 17 April 1948) is a Czech-American musician, composer, and record producer. He first gained his most visible audience while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra during the early 1970s, as well as his film scores for television and film including "Miami Vice Theme" and "Crockett's Theme", from the 1980s television program Miami Vice. He has continued to work as both a musical performer and producer.
Hammer has collaborated with some of the era's most influential jazz and rock musicians such as John McLaughlin, Jeff Beck, Billy Cobham, Al Di Meola, Mick Jagger, Carlos Santana, Stanley Clarke, Tommy Bolin, Neal Schon, Steve Lukather, and Elvin Jones. He has composed and produced at least 14 original motion picture soundtracks, the music for 90 episodes of Miami Vice and 20 episodes of the television series Chancer.
His compositions have won him several Grammy Awards.
Links to Peel[]
Peel had played tracks from the Mahavishnu Orchestra'a early albums, when Jan Hammer was a member of the band. But the DJ first played material under Hammer's own name when his group, the Jan Hammer Group, released their debut album, Oh Yeah, in 1976. Further tracks from the group were played by Peel in the late 70's, especially their collaboration with Jeff Beck, whose song title, Blue Wind, was nominated by the DJ as one of his favourite tracks of 1977 and entered his own 1977 Festive Fifty. But JP doesn't seem to have paid much attention to Hammer's work after that. After Peel's death in 2004, it was later found that he had a copy of their debut album in his Record Collection: H - but it was the only Jan Hammer album he owned.
Festive Fifty Entries[]
- 1977 Festive Fifty (& Jeff Beck): Blue Wind #26
Shows Played[]
- 11 June 1976: Oh Yeah? (album - Oh Yeah?) Nemperor
- 30 June 1976: unknown
- 1977
- 16 May 1977 (with Jeff Beck): Scatterbrain (album - Live) Epic PE 34433
- 26 December 1977 (& Jeff Beck): Blue Wind (LP – Jeff Beck With The Jan Hammer Group Live) Epic FF #26
- 1979
- 18 September 1979 (& Jeff Beck): Blue Wind (LP - Live) Epic