Mickey Hart

Mickey Hart, born Michael Steven Hartman on September 11, 1943 in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York, grew up in the nearby suburb of Inwood under the guidance of his mother Leah, a drummer and seamstress, after his father Lenny Hart abandoned the family when Mickey was a toddler. From the age of ten he devoted himself to drumming, practicing on a pair of snake‑wood sticks left by his father and earning a place in the All‑State Band while attending Lawrence High School in Cedarhurst. A brief stint as a soda‑jerk at the Atlantic Beach jazz club exposed him to Tito Puente, and a discovery of Babatunde Olatunji sparked a lifelong fascination with African rhythms. In 1961 he enlisted in the United States Air Force, serving with the elite Airmen of Note and touring Europe, where he juggled big‑band duties with informal jam sessions alongside Gerry Mulligan and Count Basie. His military service also allowed him to teach combative measures such as judo, earning a black belt, and to co‑found the group Joe and the Jaguars before his 1965 discharge.

After returning to the United States, Hart’s reputation as a versatile percussionist led to his invitation to join the Grateful Dead in September 1967, where his polyrhythmic expertise helped shape the band’s “primal” sound of the late 1960s. Though he left briefly in 1971 following his father’s embezzlement scandal, he rejoined in 1974 and remained a core member until the group’s final concert in 1995, earning the nickname “the Rhythm Devils” alongside Bill Kreutzmann. Parallel to his work with the Dead, Hart pursued ethnomusicology, producing the groundbreaking Planet Drum album in 1991 – the first winner of the Grammy Award for Best World Music Album – and later projects such as Global Drum Project and RAMU. He has authored several books, served on the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center, and been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (1994). Married to Caryl Ohrbach Hart since 1990, he also shares a daughter, Reya, with her and a son, Taro, from his earlier marriage to Mary Holloway; he resides in Occidental, California and remains an active figure in world‑music collaborations and preservation initiatives.