Earl Hines

Earl Hines

Earl Hines performs for Private Charles Carpenter, songwriter and manager of the Hines orchestra, at Camp Lee during World War II
Background information
Born December 28, 1903(1903-12-28)
Duquesne, Pennsylvania
Died April 23, 1983(1983-04-23) (aged 79)
Oakland, California
Genres Swing, Big band, solo piano
Occupations Musician
Instruments Piano

Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha"[1] Hines, (December 28, 1903[2] – April 22, 1983) was an American jazz pianist. Hines was one of the most influential figures in the development of modern jazz piano and, according to one major source, is "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".[3]

Contents

Biography

Early life

Earl Hines was born in Duquesne, Pennsylvania 12 miles from Pittsburgh city center. His father[4] played cornet and was leader of Pittsburgh's Eureka Brass Band,[5] his stepmother a church organist.[6] Hines intended to follow his father on cornet but "blowing" hurt him behind the ears - while the piano didn't.[7][8][9] The young Hines took classical piano lessons[10] - at eleven he was playing organ in his local Baptist church[11] - but he also had a "good ear and a good memory"[12] and could re-play songs and numbers he heard in theaters and park 'concerts':[13][14] "I'd be playing songs from these shows months before the song copies came out. That astonished a lot of people and they'd ask where I heard these numbers and I'd tell them at the theatre where my parents had taken me." Later Hines was to say that he was playing piano around Pittsburgh "before the word 'jazz' was even invented".[15][16]

Early career

At the age of 17, and with his father's approval, Hines moved away from home to take a job playing piano with Lois Deppe & his 'Symphonian Serenaders' in the "Liederhaus", a Pittsburgh nightclub.[17] He got 2 meals a day[18] and $15 a week.[19][20] Deppe was a well-known baritone who sang both classical and popular numbers. Deppe used the young Hines as his accompanist for both and took Hines on his concert-trips to New York. Hines' first recordings were accompanying Deppe — four sides recorded with Gennett Records in 1923.[21] Only two of these were issued, and only one, a Hines composition, "Congaine", "a keen snappy foxtrot",[22] featured any solo work by Hines. Hines entered the studio again with Deppe a month later to record spirituals and popular songs.[23]

In 1925, after much family debate,[24] Hines moved to Chicago, Illinois, then the world's "jazz" capital, home (at the time) to Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. He started in The Elite no 2 Club[25] but soon joined Carroll Dickerson's band with whom he also toured on the Pantages Theatre Circuit to Los Angeles and back.[26]

Then, in the poolroom at Chicago's Musicians' Union on State & 39th, Earl Hines met Louis Armstrong.[27][28] Hines was 21, Armstrong 24. They played together at the Union piano.[29] Armstrong was astounded by Hines's avant-garde "trumpet-style" piano-playing, often using dazzlingly fast octaves so that on none-too-perfect upright pianos (and with no amplification) "they could hear me out front" - as indeed they could.[30][31] Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia says:

... [Hines'] most dramatic departure from what other pianists were then playing was his approach to the underlying pulse: he would charge against the metre of the piece being played, accent off-beats, introduce sudden stops and brief silences. In other hands this might sound clumsy or all over the place but Hines could keep his bearings with uncanny resilience.[32]

Armstrong and Hines became good friends,[33] shared a car,[34] and Armstrong joined Hines in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Sunset Cafe.[35] In 1927, this became Louis Armstrong's band under the musical direction of Hines.[36] Later that year, Armstrong revamped his Okeh Records recording-only band, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, and replaced his wife Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano with Hines. Armstrong and Hines then recorded what are often regarded as some of the most important jazz records ever made, most famously their 1928 trumpet and piano duet "Weatherbird".[37]

... with Earl Hines arriving on piano, Armstrong was already approaching the stature of a concerto soloist, a role he would play more or less throughout the next decade, which makes these final small-group sessions something like a reluctant farewell to jazz's first golden age. Since Hines is also magnificent on these discs (and their insouciant exuberance is a marvel on the duet showstopper "Weather Bird") the results seem like eavesdropping on great men speaking almost quietly among themselves. There is nothing in jazz finer or more moving than the playing on "West End Blues", "Tight Like This", "Beau Koo Jack" & "Muggles".[38]

The Sunset Cafe closed in 1927.[39] Hines, Armstrong and their drummer, Zutty Singleton, agreed they would be, “'The Unholy Three', stick together and not play for anyone unless the three of us were hired”[40] but, trying to establish their own Warwick Hall Club[41] as 'Louis Armstrong and his Stompers' [with Hines as musical director and the premises rented in Hines' name] they ran into difficulties. Hines went briefly to New York to return to find that in his absence Armstrong and Singleton had re-joined their now-rival Carroll Dickerson’s band at the new The Savoy Ballroom[42] – a fact which left Hines “warm”.[43] Hines joined clarinetist Jimmy Noone at The Apex, an after-hours speakeasy, playing from midnight – 6am 7 nights a week. Hines recorded with Noone,[44] again with Armstrong[45] and late in 1928[46] recorded his first piano solos, 8 for QRS Records in New York then 7 for Okeh Records in Chicago, all except two his own compositions.[47] He moved in with Kathryn Perry[48] with whom he had recorded 'Sadie Green The Vamp of New Orleans' but Hines had also begun rehearsing his own big-band. At 24 his big break was about to come.

Chicago years

On 28 December 1928 (so on his 25th birthday and 6 weeks before The Saint Valentine's Day massacre) the flashily-dressed and always-immaculate Hines opened at Chicago's Grand Terrace Cafe leading his own big-band, the pinnacle of jazz ambition at the time. "All America was dancing", Hines said[49] - and for the next 12 years and through the worst of the Great Depression and Prohibition Earl Hines was "The Orchestra" in The Grand Terrace. The Hines Orchestra [or 'Organization' as Hines preferred it - it had up to 28 musicians] did three shows a night in The Grand Terrace, four shows every Saturday and sometimes did Sundays. "Earl Hines and The Grand Terrace were to Chicago what Duke Ellington and The Cotton Club were to New York - but fierier."[50] The Grand Terrace was controlled by Al Capone - so Hines became Capone's "Mr Piano Man"[51] with the Grand Terrace upright piano soon replaced by a white $3,000 Bechstein grand.[52]

From The Grand Terrace, Hines and his band broadcast on "open mikes" over many years, sometimes seven nights a week, coast-to-coast across America — Chicago being well placed to deal with the U.S. live-broadcasting time-zone problem.[53] Earl Hines' became the most broadcast band in America.[54][55] Among his listeners were a young Nat 'King' Cole [56] and Jay McShann in Kansas City who said his "...real education came from Earl Hines. When 'Fatha' went off the air, I went to bed”.[57] But Hines' most notable 'student' was Art Tatum from Toledo, Ohio, 6 years younger than Hines and now often regarded as the greatest pianist jazz has so far produced.[58]

Hines always liked to promote and, often surprisingly quietly, to accompany singers most notably, in the Grand Terrace days, Billy Eckstine:

"... on tour, Hines and his star singer Billy Eckstine were treated like the rock stars of later years, being mobbed by the huge crowds that turned out to hear them."[59]

Each summer, Hines toured his whole band for three months, including through the South. "When we traveled by train through the South, they would send a porter back to our car to let us know when the dining room was cleared, and then we would all go in together. We couldn't eat when we wanted to. We had to eat when they were ready for us."[60][61]

Occasionally, Hines allowed other pianists to play as 'relief' piano player which better allowed Hines to conduct his whole 'Organization'. Jess Stacy[62] was one, Nat "King" Cole[63] and Teddy Wilson were others (though Cliff Smalls was his favorite[64]). It was with Hines in The Grand Terrace that Charlie Parker got his first professional job until he was fired for his "time-keeping" — by which Hines meant Parker's inability to show up on time despite Parker resorting to sleeping under The Grand Terrace stage in his attempts to do so.[65]

The Grand Terrace closed suddenly in December 1940 with the manager, Ed Fox, 'not to be found'.[66] Hines, always famously good to work for,[67] took his band on the road.[68] Some of his band members were drafted to fight in World War ll[69] but Hines toured his band coast to coast across America taking time out to front the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1944 while Duke was ill.[70] (Thirty years later, Hines's 20 solo "transformative versions" of his Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington recorded in the 1970s were described by Ben Ratliff in the New York Times as "as good an example of the jazz process as anything out there".[71])

It was during this time (and especially during the 1942–44 musicians' strike recording ban[72]) that members of the Hines' band's late-night jam-sessions laid the seeds for the upcoming 'revolution' in jazz, Bebop. Duke Ellington was later to say that, "the seeds of bop were in Earl Hines's piano style"[73] while Charlie Parker's biographer was to write, "The Earl Hines Orchestra of 1942 had been infiltrated by the jazz revolutionaries. Each section had its cell of insurgents. The band’s sonority bristled with flatted fifths, off triplets and other material of the new sound scheme. Fellow bandleaders of a more conservative bent warned Hines that he had recruited much too well and was sitting on a powder keg."[74] Composer Gunther Schuller said, "In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted fifth chords and all the modern harmonies and substitutions and Dizzy Gillespie runs in the trumpet section work. Two years later I read that that was 'bop' and the beginning of modern jazz ... but the band never made recordings".[75][76][77]

In 1946 Hines received serious head injuries in a car crash near Houston which affected his eyesight[78] but he continued to lead his big-band for 2 more years.[79] In 1947 he bought the El Grotto nightclub[80] in Chicago - the showgirls were called The Grottoettes - but it soon foundered, Hines losing $30,000.[81] In reality the big-band era was over - Hines had had his for 20 years.

Rediscovery

In early 1948, Hines joined up again with Armstrong in the "Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars" 'small-band' (rather, Hines now came to feel, as a sideman[82]) and stayed, not entirely happily, thru' 1951. Next, back as leader again, Hines took his own small combos around the States[83] and Europe but, at the start of the jazz-lean 1960s and old enough now to retire and take up bowling,[84] Hines settled "home" in Oakland, California with his wife and two young daughters, Janear and Tosca,[85] opened a tobacconist's and came close to giving up the profession.[86]

Then, in 1964, thanks to Stanley Dance, Earl Hines' determined friend and unofficial manager, Hines was "suddenly rediscovered" following a series of 'recitals' at The Little Theatre in New York that Dance had cajoled him into. They were the first piano 'recitals' Hines - always thinking of himself as "just a band pianist"[87] - had ever given. These 'recitals' caused a sensation. "What is there left to hear after you've heard Earl Hines?", asked the New York Times.[88] Hines then won the 1966 "International Critics Poll" for Down Beat Magazine's "Hall of Fame". Down Beat also elected him the world's "No 1 Jazz Pianist" in 1966 (and were to do so again five further times). Jazz Journal awarded his LP's of the year first and second in their overall poll and first, second and third in their piano category.[89] Jazz voted him "Jazzman of the Year", voted him their no. 1 and no. 2 in their piano recordings category and he was on Johnny Carson's and Mike Douglas' TV shows.

From then until he died twenty years later Hines recorded endlessly both solo and with jazz notables like Cat Anderson, Harold Ashby, Barney Bigard, Lawrence Brown, Dave Brubeck (they recorded duets in 1975), Jaki Byard (duets in 1972), Benny Carter, Buck Clayton, Cozy Cole, Wallace Davenport, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Vic Dickenson, Roy Eldridge, Duke Ellington (duets in 1966), Ella Fitzgerald, Panama Francis, Bud Freeman, Stan Getz,[90] Dizzie Gillespie, Paul Gonsalves, Stephane Grappelli, Sonny Greer, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, Peanuts Hucko, Helen Humes, Budd Johnson, Jonah Jones, Max Kaminsky, Gene Krupa, Ellis Larkins, Marian McPartland (duets in 1970), Gerry Mulligan, Ray Nance, Oscar Peterson (duets in 1968), Russell Procope, Pee Wee Russell, Jimmy Rushing, Stuff Smith, Rex Stewart, Maxine Sullivan, Buddy Tate, Jack Teagarden, Clark Terry, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Venuti, Earle Warren, Ben Webster, Teddy Wilson (duets in 1965 & 1970), Jimmy Witherspoon, Jimmy Woode and Lester Young. Possibly more surprising were Alvin Batiste, Art Blakey, Teresa Brewer, Richard Davis, Elvin Jones, Etta Jones, The Inkspots, Peggy Lee, Helen Merrill, Charles Mingus, Vi Redd, Betty Roché, Caterina Valente, Dinah Washington—and "Ditty Wah Ditty" with Ry Cooder.
But his most acclaimed recordings of this period were his solo performances, "a whole orchestra by himself".[91] Whitney Balliett wrote of his solo recordings and performances of this time:

... Hines will be sixty-seven this year and his style has become involuted, rococo, and subtle to the point of elusiveness. It unfolds in orchestral layers and it demands intense listening. Despite the sheer mass of notes he now uses, his playing is never fatty. Hines may go along like this in a medium tempo blues. He will play the first two choruses softly and out of tempo, unreeling placid chords that safely hold the kernel of the melody. By the third chorus, he will have slid into a steady but implied beat and raised his volume. Then, using steady tenths in his left hand, he will stamp out a whole chorus of right-hand chords in between beats. He will vault into the upper register in the next chorus and wind through irregularly placed notes, while his left hand plays descending, on-the-beat, chords that pass through a forest of harmonic changes. (There are so many push-me, pull-you contrasts going on in such a chorus that it is impossible to grasp it one time through.) In the next chorus—bang!—up goes the volume again and Hines breaks into a crazy-legged double-time-and-a-half run that may make several sweeps up and down the keyboard and that are punctuated by offbeat single notes in the left hand. Then he will throw in several fast descending two-fingered glissandos, go abruptly into an arrhythmic swirl of chords and short, broken, runs and, as abruptly as he began it all, ease into an interlude of relaxed chords and poling single notes. But these choruses, which may be followed by eight or ten more before Hines has finished what he has to say, are irresistible in other ways. Each is a complete creation in itself, and yet each is lashed tightly to the next. Hines' sudden changes in dynamics, tempo, and texture are dramatic but not melodramatic; the ham lurking in the middle distance never gets any closer. And Hines is a perfervid pianist; he gives the impression that he has shut himself up completely within his instrument, that he is issuing chords and runs and glisses not merely through its keyboard and hammers and strings but directly from its soul.[92]

Solo tributes to Louis Armstrong, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and Cole Porter were all put on record in the 1970s, sometimes on the 1904 12-legged Steinway (unique and famously ornate) given to him in 1969 by Scott Newhall, managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1974, so now in his seventies, Hines recorded sixteen LPs. "A spate of solo recording meant that, in his old age, Hines was being comprehensively documented at last, and he rose to the challenge with consistent inspirational force".[93] Between his 1964 "come-back" and up to when he died, Hines recorded over 100 LPs all over the world.[94] Within the industry, he became legendary for going into a studio and coming out an hour-and-a-half later with a famously-unplanned 'solo' LP behind him[95] including discussion and coffee time - and ideally a brandy or two. Retakes were almost unheard of except when Hines wanted to try a tune again in some, often completely, "other way".[96]

Pianist Lennie Tristano said of these recordings, "Earl Hines is the ONLY one of us capable of creating real jazz and real swing when playing all alone." To Horace Silver, "He has a completely unique style. No one can get that sound, no other pianist". Erroll Garner said, "When you talk about greatness, you talk about Art Tatum and Earl Hines". To Count Basie, Hines was "The greatest piano player in the world".[97][98]

From 1964 on Hines often toured Europe (especially France), toured South America in 1968 and added Asia, Australia, Japan and, in 1966, the Soviet Union to his list of State Department-funded destinations. (During his 6-week[99] Soviet Union tour, the 10,000-seat Kiev Sports Palace was sold out. As a result, the Kremlin canceled his Moscow and Leningrad concerts ("Reds Change Hines Tour"[100]) as being "too culturally dangerous".[101])

Final years

Arguably still playing as well as he ever had,[102] Hines displayed individualistic quirks (including grunts a la' Glenn Gould ) in these performances. Now, he sometimes sang as he played, especially his own "They Didn't Believe I Could Do It—Neither Did I".[103][104] In 1975, Hines made an hour-long "solo" film for British TV[105] out-of-hours in Blues Alley, a Washington nightclub: the "New York Herald Tribune" described it as "The greatest jazz film ever made". In that film Hines said, '"The way I like to play is that ... I'm an explorer, if I might use that expression, I'm looking for something all the time ... almost like I'm trying to talk".[106][107]

He played solo in The White House (twice)[108] and played solo for The Pope - and played (and sang) his last show in San Francisco a few days before he died in Oakland, quite likely somewhat older than he had always maintained. As he had wished, his Steinway had a very much "All Star" Christie's auction for the benefit of gifted low-income music students, still bearing its silver plaque: "presented by jazz lovers from all over the world. this piano is the only one of its kind in the world and expresses the great genius of a man who has never played a melancholy note in his lifetime on a planet that has often succumbed to despair".[109][110]

On his tombstone[111] is the inscription: "piano man".

Selected discography

Up until 1948 - and therefore including Big Band era:
[It would seem that Hines' first-ever recording was on 3 Oct 1923 @ Richmond, Indiana when he was 19: 'Falling' with "Deppe's Serenaders": Tom Lord: 'The Jazz Discography']

[Big bands were particularly affected by the 1942-1944 American Federation of Musicians recording ban which also curtailed the recording of early bebop]

After 1948 - and therefore after Big Band era:

[It would seem that Hines' last-ever recording was on 29 December 1981 @ São Paulo, Brazil, when he was 78: 'One o'clock Jump' with Eric Schneider and the 150 Band on 'Fatha's Birthday': Tom Lord: 'The Jazz Discography']

On anthologies:

Notes

  1. ^ Controversy persists over the origins of the name ‘Fatha’. The most common account is that a radio announcer[some say Ted Pearson], possibly after Hines had accused him of being drunk, announced, slurringly, ”Here comes ‘Fatha’ Hines thru the deep forest with his children”, ‘Deep Forest’ being the band’s signature tune (Cooke, R., Jazz Encyclopedia, ISBN 9780141026466). Others have suggested it was because Hines had, "… given birth to a style - more than a style, a virtual language - of jazz piano”. Epstein, D. M., Nat King Cole, Chapter 1. 1999, Farrar Straus & Giroux, ISBN 0374219125
  2. ^ From the 120 page interview with Hines in The World of Earl Hines by Stanley Dance (p. 7), Hines quotes his year of birth as 1905. Most sources agree 1903 is correct.
  3. ^ "PBS: Ken Burns Jazz". PBS.org quoting The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Oxford University Press. http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_hines_earl.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-24. 
  4. ^ Hines' father was a foreman in the coal-docks. His mother had died when he was three but Hines was always very appreciative of his upbringing in a 12-room house with his father, his stepmother [“who did a great job”], his grandparents, two cousins, two uncles and an aunt. There was a smallholding at the back with two cows, pigs, chickens. “We needed to buy very little so far as food was concerned, because we raised nearly everything that we ate.” Dance, p 7.
  5. ^ Whitney Balliett, 72 Portraits in Jazz p.100
  6. ^ Dance, p. 9. Hines said he,"had a problem reaching the pedals"
  7. ^ Dance, p. 20.
  8. ^ Palmer, The New York Times, Aug 28 1981.
  9. ^ See interviews with Hines in 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1 hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975: director Charlie Nairn: referenced below
  10. ^ From 'classical' teacher Mr Von Holz: 'Selected piano solos 1928': Jeffrey Taylor p. xvii
  11. ^ Dance, p. 14
  12. ^ Dance, p.10
  13. ^ Dance, p. 10: this was of course before the days of radio or recordings
  14. ^ Dance, p 14: Hines said, "I began to realize these numbers had soul in them and then I tried to get as much feeling out of them as I possibly could"
  15. ^ See 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975: director Charlie Nairn: referenced below. For whether or not Hines was precisely correct about this see Wikipedia 'Jazz(word)': 'Jazz came to mean jazz music in Chicago around 1915. The music was played in New Orleans prior to that time but was not called jazz.'
  16. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uutLxx0fwwQ
  17. ^ The billboard read, "Jazz as it Should be Played". http://jazzburgher.ning.com/: Dr. Nelson Harrison: 'Legacy of the Historic Crawford Grill #2 - Part 1' internet only
  18. ^ Dance, p18: "I remember that I really went for their apple dumplings"
  19. ^ Dance, p. 133.
  20. ^ Balliett p.101
  21. ^ Dance, p. 293.
  22. ^ Starr Phonography Company ad. 10 November 1923
  23. ^ Inc. 'Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child' and 'For the Last Time Call me Sweetheart'
  24. ^ “Eubie Blake used to come through town once in a while and the first time I met him he told me, ‘Son, you have no business here. You got to leave Pittsburgh’. He came through again while we were at the Grape Arbor and when he saw me he said, ‘You still here? I’m going to take this cane’ – he always carried a cane and wore a raccoon coat and a brown derby – ‘and wear it out all over your head if you’re not gone when I come back’. I was”. Whitney Balliett 72 Portraits in Jazz p.101/2
  25. ^ “Teddy Weatherford, the pianist, was it in Chicago then and soon people began telling him, ‘There’s a tall skinny kid from Pittsburgh plays piano. You’d better hear him’. Teddy and I became friends and we’d go around together and both play and people began to notice me”. Whitney Balliett 72 Portraits in Jazz p.102
  26. ^ The Sunset billboard said, "The Sunset Cafe. Chicago's Brightest Pleasure Spot. DINE - Colored Revue Extraordinary! - DANCE": photo @ Dance, p 45
  27. ^ See 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975.
  28. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uutLxx0fwwQ
  29. ^ Dance, p 45. Also, "According to Hines, he was sitting there playing 'The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else' when Armstrong walked in and began to play along": Collier, p.158
  30. ^ Balliett p 101
  31. ^ Berliner p.444
  32. ^ Richard Cook Jazz Encyclopedia, London: Penguin, p.287
  33. ^ "He was called 'Satchelmouth' and I was called 'Gatemouth'": Dance, p. 52. Epstein says,"Earl's teeth were like the white keys of a piano. They called him Gatemouth because his mouth was like the pearly gates and he was always smiling. He smiled because he loved to play piano and he was almost always playing. Sometimes he smiled so hard the muscles in his face would freeze and the smile would stick on his face for an hour or so after the show was over. One of his sidemen would have to massage the smile off his face".
  34. ^ "The Covered-Wagon". It cost $90. Dance, p 53
  35. ^ The billboard said. "The Sunset Cafe - Chicago's Brightest Pleasure Spot: "Dine! - Colored Revue Extraordinary - Dance!" - photo @ Dance, p. 45
  36. ^ Dance, p. 47.
  37. ^ The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD: Seventh Edition, pp 46
  38. ^ "None of us knew we were making history", said Hines, who was sitting at a corner table in Fat Tuesday's with a substantial cigar clamped securely between his teeth. He was talking about West End Blues, Basin Street Blues and the other recordings he made with Louis Armstrong in the late 1920's, recordings that are now recognized as enduring jazz masterpieces. "To us, every one of those sessions was just one more recording and if people liked it, that was fortunate for us. I didn't know those recordings were any good, to tell you the truth". New York Times Aug 28 1981 Robert Palmer: 'Fatha Hines: Stomping and chomping on at 75'
  39. ^ At various time Hines played much of Chicago's "Bright-Light" district: The Elite Club, The Regal Theatre, The Apex Club, The Platinum Lounge, The Vendome Theatre, The Grand Terrace, The New Grand Terrace, The Sunset Café, The Savoy Ballroom, Warwick Hall: see key to map of Chicago South Side jazz c.1915-1930 @ University of Chicago Jazz Archive [The Leon Lewis map]
  40. ^ Dance p. 54
  41. ^ The Chicago Defender advert read, “Dance Every Wednesday and Saturday night and Sunday Afternoon. Staring Wed Dec 14 1927”: Chicago Defender 12 Oct 1927
  42. ^ "The Savoy Ballroom opened for business on Thanksgiving Eve, 23 November 1927. With more than a half-acre of dancing space, the Savoy had a capacity of over four thousand persons. The ballroom's name recalled the enormously popular and highly regarded dance palace of the same name in New York's Harlem, which had opened a little more than a year earlier. In its review of the Savoy, the Defender, Chicago's leading black newspaper, extolled the modern features of the new ballroom: "Never before have Chicagoans seen anything quite as lavish as the Savoy ballroom. Famous artists have transformed the building into a veritable paradise, each section more beautiful than the other. The feeling of luxury and comfort one gets upon entering is quite ideal and homelike, and the desire to stay and dance and look on is generated with each moment of your visit. Every modern convenience is provided. In addition to a house physician and a professional nurse for illness or accident, there is an ideal lounging room for ladies and gentlemen, luxuriously furnished, a boudoir room for milady's makeup convenience, an ultra modern checking room which accommodates 6,000 hats and coats individually hung so that if one comes in with his or her coat crushed or wrinkled it is in better condition when leaving." Such modern amenities not only lent an "atmosphere of refinement" to the ballroom that reflected the class pretensions of upwardly mobile black Chicagoans, but also decreased the likelihood that the Savoy would draw fire from those advocating the closure of disorderly dance establishments. An adjacent 1,000-space parking lot also likely appealed to more prosperous black Chicagoans. The music never stopped at the Savoy. From 1927 until 1940, two bands were engaged every night to permit continuous dancing. When one band took a break, another was on hand to play on. During these years, the Savoy was open seven days a week, with matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. Although most of the Savoy's patrons were black, growing numbers of white Chicagoans visited the Savoy to hear and dance to the great jazz bands of the day". Jazz Age Chicago - Urban Leisure from 1893-1945: Internet only
  43. ^ When Armstrong and Singleton later asked him to join them with Dickerson at The Savoy Ballroom Hines said, “No, you guys left me in the rain and broke the little corporation we had”: Dance p. 55
  44. ^ Hines made 14 sides with Noone inc. his own "My Monday Date". Hugues Panassie wrote on the Decca rerelease sleevenote, "Good as they are, the subsequent Noone records, made without Earl, never had the brilliance and the impetus Hines gave the 'Apex Club' series. Earl was just starting then to be the influence on most pianists and these Noon records were among those his disciples kept listening to and studying ..."
  45. ^ Hines and Armstrong recorded 38 still-existing sides in 1927 and, mainly, 1928. Armstrong left for New York in December 1928
  46. ^ In 1928 alone Hines recorded over 40 still-existing sides
  47. ^ Of the NY recordings Jeffrey Taylor writes, “One senses that … Hines was allowed to play precisely what & how he chose, his creativity limited only by the 3-minute recording length of the 78rpm discs": Taylor Selected piano solos: 1928-1941, Volume 56 p. 4. 42 years later Hines was to re-record all 15 for ‘Earl Hines: Quintessential Recording Session' on Chiaruscuro CR101 [The NY sides] and 'Earl Hines: Quintessential Continued' CR120 [The Chicago sides]. ”As he drank a cup of coffee, [Hines] listened attentively to records of himself playing 41 years earlier, amused to hear them again. Six he had long since forgotten. He lit his pipe. He was ready to begin. The new interpretations are definitive, each made in one take, effervescent, full or rhythmic life and liberty, unpredictable in their vertiginous twists and turns. They are true improvisations and he could not – nor would he ever attempt to – play them quite this way again”: Dance on sleeve note to CR101
  48. ^ Hines said of her, "She'd been at The Sunset too, in a dance act. She was a very charming, pretty girl. She had a good voice and played the violin. I had been divorced and she became my common-law wife. We lived in a big apartment and her parents stayed with us": Dance, p 65. Perry recorded several times with Hines including, in 1935, ‘Body & Soul’ on “Female Blues Singers" Document 5516 . They stayed together till 1940 when Hines 'divorced' her to marry Ann Jones Reed but this was soon 'indefinitely postponed': Dance, p. 298. Hines then married Janie Moses in 1947 and they had two daughters, Janear (born 1950) and Tosca.
  49. ^ See extensive interview with Hines about this period in Earl "Fatha" Hines, 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC for ATV, England, 1975: see References
  50. ^ Dance, sleeve note to "Earl Hines - South Side Swing 1934/5"
  51. ^ See extensive interview with Hines about this period in Earl "Fatha" Hines, 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC for ATV, England, 1975, referenced below. In that film Hines said, “Al came in there one night and called the whole band and show together and said, ‘We want to let you know our position. We want you to be like the 3 monkeys, You hear nothing, you see nothing and you say nothing' - and that's what we did”. According to drummer Jo Jones, born in Chicago, "So far as I know, Earl had to play with a knife at his throat and a gun at his back the whole time he was in Chicago": The Rough Guide to Jazz, p.363
  52. ^ Dance, p.61
  53. ^ "Radio was a far stronger force than records in the '30s, stronger even than television today so far as music was concerned": Dance, p. 2
  54. ^ Dance, p.63
  55. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uutLxx0fwwQ
  56. ^ Epstein, Cole's biographer writes, "Every kid pianist in the Midwest copied Earl Hines. Little Nat Cole learned to play jazz piano by listening to Gatemouth[Hines] on the radio. And when the radio blew a tube the boy would sneak out of his apartment on Prairie Avenue, run several blocks through the dark, and stand outside the Grand Terrace nightclub, under the elevated train, and listen to Earl's piano live from there. It inspired him to precocious mastery of jazz." Chapter 1.
  57. ^ www.jaymcshann.com About Jay McShann
  58. ^ According to pianist Teddy Wilson and saxophonist Eddie Barefield, "Art Tatum's favorite jazz piano player was Earl Hines. He [Tatum] used to buy all of Earl's records and would improvise on them. He'd play the record but he'd improvise over what Earl was doing ..... course, when you heard Art play you didn't hear nothing of anybody but Art. But he got his ideas from Earl's style of playing - but Earl never knew that". From "Too Marvelous for Words": The Life and Genius of Art Tatum: James Lester: Oxford University Press 1994: p 57/58 ISB 0-19-508365-2
  59. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazz/profiles/earl_hines.shtml
  60. ^ James Baldwin on Earl Hines: New York Times Oct 16 1977
  61. ^ Hines also gave vocalist Herb Jeffries his big break during the Chicago World's Fair - Century of Progress Exposition in 1933. Jeffries sang with the Hines' Orchestra on their national live broadcasts from the Grand Terrace as well as on recordings – including ’Just to be in Caroline’ 1934. During his trips to the South singing with the Hines band, Jeffries first encountered discrimination. "I saw there were hundreds of tin-roofed theaters, segregated for blacks only," he says. "They played white cowboy pictures because there were no black cowboys in the movies." Jeffries vowed to correct this inequity via "race films" - movies acted by and produced for African Americans: [LA Times/David Davis 3 April 2003].
  62. ^ Allen, Steve. "The Return of Jess Stacy." unknown newspaper, undated. Southeast Missouri State University Special Collections and Archives, The Jess Stacy Collection
  63. ^ 'To know Nat Cole you must first know Earl Hines, his artistic father. Every kid pianist in the Midwest copied Earl Hines. Little Nat Cole learned to play jazz piano by listening to ‘Gatemouth’ [Earl Hines] on the radio. And when the radio blew a tube the boy would sneak out of his apartment on Prairie Avenue, run several blocks through the dark, and stand outside the Grand Terrace nightclub, under the elevated train, and listen to Earl's piano live from there. It inspired him to precocious mastery of jazz': Epstein, D. M., Nat King Cole, 1999, Farrar Straus & Giroux, ISBN 0374219125, Chapter One.
  64. ^ Dance, p 261-272 inc.photos
  65. ^ Bird Lives! The High Life And Hard Times Of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker: Ross Russell p150 [for much about this and Parker's time with Hines see p 149 on]
  66. ^ Dance, p. 298
  67. ^ See for instance Ray Nance, "Earl was wonderful to work for ...": The World of Duke Ellington p 136 and Willie Cook, "Earl used psychology. He had everybody loving that band": The World of Duke Ellington p 179
  68. ^ For their astonishing coast-coast schedule over the next 8 years see Dance, p.299-234
  69. ^ 6 of the Hines' band were drafted in 1943 - Hines had to cancel part of his Southern tour and started to take on female musicians including 4 on violin and a female bassist, guitar player and harpist. Dance, p 301
  70. ^ In Harlem's Golden Gate Ballroom - big enough for 5,000 dancers - on 22 March 1944 and thru' the following week in Newark NJ
  71. ^ Ratliff, p. 202
  72. ^ See Wikipedia '1942–44 musicians' strike'
  73. ^ Dance, p. 90. Dance says, "Ellington had a way of saying serious things about music casually but ... then I realized [Ellington] had in mind the revolution Hines effected in the function of the jazz pianist's left hand".
  74. ^ Ross Russell: Bird Lives! The High Life And Hard Times Of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker: p146
  75. ^ Gunther Schuller 14 Nov 1972. Dance, p 290
  76. ^ Dizzy Gillespie, in the Hines band at the time said, "People talk about the Hines band being 'the incubator of bop' and the leading exponents of that music ended up in the Hines band. But people also have the erroneous impression that the music was new. It was not. The music evolved from what went before. It was the same basic music. The difference was in how you got from here to here to here ... naturally each age has got its own shit": Dance, p.260
  77. ^ Hines' recordings 1929-1950: Besides the already mentioned QRS and OKeh piano solos, Hines' band was signed by Victor in February 1929 through the end of the year, recording 16 sides, most of which were issued on 78. After a recording break, he signed with Brunswick in June 1932 through March 1934, where he recorded 25 sides. Hines then signed with Decca in late 1934 and through early 1935, recording 16 sides. Hines didn't record again until signing with Vocalion in early 1937, where he recorded 18 sides though March 1938. From July 1939 on, Hines recorded extensively for Victor's Bluebird label through 1942 and up to the 3-year US recording ban which silenced so important a part of the Hines' band history and its pivotal role in the emergence of Be-bop. After WWII Hines recorded for Signature, Apollo, ARA, Jazz Selection, Sunrise, and MGM through 1950.
  78. ^ Dance, p 302
  79. ^ "Earl Hines biography." allmusic.com
  80. ^ Dance, p304
  81. ^ "... and I thought I knew how to run a club! While I was doing that, Joe Louis lost $35,000 at the Rhumboogie"" Dance, p99
  82. ^ Armstrong said of the difficulties, mainly over billing, "Hines and his ego, ego, ego ...." Collier, p.313. Armstrong, meanwhile became the first jazz musician ever to appear on the cover of Time Magazine on February 21, 1949.
  83. ^ In 1954 he toured his then 7-piece band nationwide with the Harlem Globetrotters[in fact from Chicago]
  84. ^ Stanley Dance: liner notes to "Earl Hines at Home": Delmark DD 212
  85. ^ Both Hines' daughters were to die before him: Tosca of a heroin overdose [see Pomona CA coroner's report of 11/27/76] and Janear on 3/2/81 [@ Kaiser Hospital San Francisco]. His wife, 'Janie Hines' [Emeria], divorced him on June 14, 1979]
  86. ^ Time was perhaps running out for Hines' generation. Louis Armstrong had had a heart attack in 1959 and, according to his own biographer, perhaps "should have retired to ponder his scrapbook": Collier, James Lincoln (1983). Hines, on the other hand, was to keep on going and developing into old age in a way rare among jazz musicians.
  87. ^ Hines had the very rare distinction of being asked to choose his favorite records on Britain's BBC Radio's "Desert Island Discs" twice (in 1957 and 1980). Almost all the records he chose were "band" records, often with singers: Jackie Gleason, Nat Cole, Count Basie, Lena Horne, Les Elgart, Don Redman, Jack Hylton, Fred Waring, Bill Farrell, Tommy Dorsey, Quincy Jones, Dinah Washington, Connie Russell, Bob Manning, Ben Webster, Duke Ellington
  88. ^ John S. Wilson NYT March 14, 1964
  89. ^ "Spontaneous Improvisations" and "The Grand Terrace Band" and "Spontaneous Improvisations", "The Real Earl Hines" and "Fatha.""
  90. ^ Hines played on a New Orleans-Cuba cruise with Getz, Gillespie & Ry Cooder in 1977 and performed there with Cuban musicians in the early days of the USA & Cuba 'thaw'
  91. ^ In the words of commentator Donald Clarke, "Hines, Earl", MusicWeb Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
  92. ^ Whitney Balliett: Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954-2000 p.361
  93. ^ The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 7th edition p 781
  94. ^ Tom Lord: Jazz Discography @ www.lordisco.com/tjd/
  95. ^ See, for instance, producer Hank O'Neal's sleeve notes to 'Earl Hines in New Orleans' 1977 [solo]: Chiaroscuro CR(D) 200
  96. ^ Dance, p. 5. A typical example of this is the 3 alternative and dramatically different versions of 'Rose Room' that Hines recorded over less than half-an-hour in Paris in 1965 [all 3 on 'Earl Hines 'Fatha's Hands]
  97. ^ Stanley Dance: liner notes to "Earl Hines at Home": Delmark DD 212. As well as The World of Earl Hines, Dance also wrote The World of Count Basie (Da Capo Press, 1985) ISBN 0-306-80245-7
  98. ^ The Tri City Herald April 24, 1983 said, 'In a recent Interview Hines told a reporter, “Usually they give people credit when they’re dead. I got my flowers while I was living”'.
  99. ^ - and 35 concerts: Dance, p. 306
  100. ^ Washington Post July 26, 1966
  101. ^ Time Magazine, Aug 16 1966
  102. ^ Charles Fox writing in The Essential Jazz Records, Vol 1 p 487 said of 'Tour de Force' recorded solo in 1972, "The pianist was still at his dazzling best when he made this LP at the age of 69. This is Hines in excelsis, sounding as good as at any time in his long career". Writing about Hines' 3 July 1974 Concert at The Royal Festival Hall in London, Derek Jewell wrote in Britain's Sunday Times, "The packed house must have regarded his opening unaccompanied solo as one of the greatest jazz experiences of their lives": Hines was then 70 years old.
  103. ^ Played and sung by Hines in 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975
  104. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uutLxx0fwwQ
  105. ^ See 'References' below
  106. ^ 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975: referenced below
  107. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uutLxx0fwwQ
  108. ^ For President Giscard d'Estaing of France and also for Duke Ellington's White House 70th birthday party: Dance, p 4. 'The World of Duke Ellington' says of Ellington's 70th there, "... Earl Hines brought the concert to its peak in three thrilling choruses of Perdido. Such excited, shouted, approval as greeted this performance can seldom have been heard in the White House before": The World of Duke Ellington p 288
  109. ^ UC Berkeley News José Rodríguez 8 Dec 2009: also Robert Doerschuck p28
  110. ^ In 1979 Hines also became Regents' Lecturer at UC Berkeley and had a special interest in furthering music education, particularly that of African American students. When he died, "He stipulated that a portion of his estate be dedicated to such purposes. In addition to supporting the education of young pianists in the classical and jazz traditions, Hines monetary gift — in excess of $257,900 — will also allow the program to fund guest artists who spend several weeks teaching and mentoring students at UC Berkeley during the summer. Up until now, guest artists were often asked to donate part of their time, due to lack of funds. "Oftentimes, kids have dreams with no means to realize them, but this program is designed to encourage them to touch their dreams and make them real," said Daisy Newman, executive director of the Young Musicians Program. ‘The Earl "Fatha" Hines Young Musicians Development Fund’ will benefit students in the campus's Young Musicians Program, which provides year-round, individualized instruction to musically gifted low-income students in grades four to 12 at no cost to their families. The program was founded in 1968 by professor emeritus of music Michael Senturia with 20 students and three volunteer teachers, and has since grown into one of the leading music education programs in the nation with up to 90 students and 50 teachers. The program has spawned such luminaries as saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Benny Green, and drummer Will Kennedy. The Earl "Fatha" Hines Collection — the other component of Earl Hines' overall gift — helps document the rise of Hines as one of jazz's early masters, and his continuing importance in jazz history in the 1940s as the leader of the first modern jazz big band, which included Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughn and Billy Eckstine. "These materials not only document the career of a jazz pioneer, but they also illuminate decades of musical life in the Bay Area," said John Shepard, head librarian at the music library. A major strength of the Hines collection is the group of "charts" — the instrumentalists' performance parts — used by Hines' big band and smaller ensemble, said Shepard. Among the charts are numerous arrangements by luminaries such as Tadd Dameron and Budd Johnson, as well as memorabilia, correspondence, biographical materials and some interesting regalia, such as Hines' stage costumes and collection of fancy cufflinks. "This is an unusual kind of gift from an artist to a university," added Wilson, who said the only other comparable collections are at the Library of Congress, the Yale University Library, the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago and the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. The Hines collection "helps to support research in the field of African American music, defined broadly as the wide range of extraordinary music genres that developed in African American culture," Wilson added": as reported in The Precinct Reporter'
  111. ^ tombstone, Evergreen Cemetery, Oakland, Alameda County, California at findagrave.com USA: also says "He Enriched the World with his Music". For slight controversy over Hines' date of birth see article.

References

External links