Big Ben Hillman is a musician, composer and producer of funky retro-soul music from Boston, MA. He was born on April 8th, 1974 in Melrose, MA to parents George and Janice (nee Elliott) Hillman. He is bi-racial, his father being an African-American of Cape Verdean ancestry and his mother of mostly German and English ancestry.
Big Ben's life long love of music began at an early age. His mother, a church musician who played piano, organ and guitar and sang in the church choir would teach Ben to sing songs as early as three years old, and a massive collection of classic soul and rock records was always playing in the house. Ben would develop a fascination with artists like Stevie Wonder, The Beatles and jazz players like Duke Ellington and Herbie Hancock that would carry on with him through his young life and into his music career.
At the age of eight he got a set of drums, and at nine years old he got his first guitar. As a high school student he played percussion (mainly drums and timpani) in the school band, and he began to teach himself to play the keyboards as his desire to write and arrange his own music
grew stronger. Attending the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, Hillman
would study both percussion and keyboards while earning a Bachelor of Music degree in music
composition and theory.
Eventually Hillman would make a name for himself as a well known
keyboard player in Boston's hard-core funk scene, playing with some of the
biggest names in local music, such as The Boston Horns, saxophonist Sam
Kininger (of Soul Live) and hip hop artist D-Tension.
It was during this period
that Hillman also began hosting a popular radio program called “Soul Power
91.5” which could be heard Wednesday nights on WUML in Lowell, MA.
Over the course of his career, Hillman has shared the stage with
a host of diverse and well known musicians including hip hop stars Method Man
and Ghostface Killa from the Wu Tang Clan, De La Soul, Biz Markie, Digable
Planets and Mix Master Mike of The Beasty Boys. He has also been seen
performing with rock legends Les Claypool and Jimmy Buffet.
In 2000 Hillman formed a group called The Royal
Family. It was with at this time that he penned his most memorable tune thus
far, “It Must Have Been the Music” which had become a hit at dance clubs and
received airplay on both sides of the Atlantic, namely the US and UK.
The original line up of The Royal Family split in 2004, and it was at this time that Hillman reunited with Michigan Blacksnake (who were now simply going by the name Blacksnake) to record an album entitled Mind Over Matter. It was also during this time that Ben would link up with long time friend D-Tension to record on his now classic hip hop album Contacts and Contracts II, co-writing and co-producing the single "Ley 'Em Down" featuring Krumb Snatcha.
In 2006 Hillman relocated to the Philadelphia area and formed a new band. That same year he would record and release yet another successful single entitled
"I'm Sorry" which was accompanied by an award winning music video. Taking his band out on the road, he made frequent live appearances at clubs in
Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Washington DC, Toronto, the
Caribbean.
In 2012 Hillman was called to play a residency at a blues club in Shanghai, China with former Michigan Blacksnake front man Greg Luttrell. Later that year he would return to Boston, and it was then that he began writing new material which would eventually end up on the album The Friday Night Consortium. The all-new full length solo album was Hillman's first, and it was released on September 18th, 2015. It would feature the singles "Friday Night" and "Beautiful Stranger," a duet with Boston-based songstress Lydia Harrell. The album was the first to be released on his newly formed Big Ben Artworks, Inc. label.
