While in the Air Force, he co-founded Joe and the Jaguars (alternatively billed as The Jaguars) with a fellow serviceman, guitarist Joe Bennett. Hart would later intimate in a 1972 interview that his Airmen of Note assignment served as a "cover" for his instructive duties. During a tour in Spain, he reportedly sat in with a variety of notable jazz musicians (including Gerry Mulligan and Count Basie) in addition to performing in various ensembles (spanning the gamut from small jazz combos to marching bands) and on recording sessions for local pop stars. įor three and a half years, he was stationed throughout Europe, where he also claimed to have taught "combative measures" (most notably judo, in which he had attained a black belt) to units of the Strategic Air Command and other units in Europe and Africa. He served as a drummer in The Airmen of Note, an elite big band unit in the United States Air Force Band modeled after Glenn Miller's celebrated Army Air Forces Band. Impressed by its musical pedigree, he enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1961. Hart dropped out of high school as a senior. Olatunji later taught and collaborated with Hart. A few months out of high school, he discovered the work of Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji, another formative influence. While employed as a soda jerk at El Patio, a jazz club in Atlantic Beach, New York, he was influenced by Tito Puente's regular appearances. Hart would later recall that many champion rudimental drummers attended his high school this inspired him to ascend to the first chair in the All State Band as a pupil of Arthur Jones, who served as a father figure to him and ensured that he was not suspended for neglecting his other classes. He attended Lawrence High School in Cedarhurst, New York. "From the age of ten," he recalled, "all I did was drum." Shortly thereafter, he discovered a practice pad and a pair of snakewood sticks that belonged to his father. Although Hart (who was hyperactive and not academically inclined) became interested in percussion as a grade school student, his interest intensified after seeing his father's picture in a newsreel documenting the 1939 World's Fair. His father Lenny Hart, a champion rudimental drummer, had abandoned his family when the younger Hart was a toddler. He was raised in suburban Inwood, New York by his mother, Leah, a drummer, gown maker and bookkeeper. Michael Steven Hartman was born in Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
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