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Earl Hines

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Earl Kenneth Hines

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Earl Hines
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(born Dec. 28, 1903, Duquesne, Pa., U.S.died April 22, 1983, Oakland, Calif.) U.S. pianist and bandleader who had a profound influence on the development of jazz piano. Known as Fatha Hines, he was a pianist of amazing technical command and tireless energy. Breaking with the stride tradition (in which regular two-beat left-hand rhythms accompany the melody in the right hand), he emulated the single-note instruments (e.g., trumpet) in creating melodic variations of the melody with the right hand. Hines led a successful Chicago-based big band from 1928 to 1948. He was influenced by Louis Armstrong, and the two performed together frequently throughout their careers; their recorded encounters from the late 1920s, particularly Weather Bird, are jazz classics.

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Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia:

Earl (Kenneth) Hines

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(b Duquesne, pa, 28 Dec 1905; d Oakland, 22 April 1983). American jazz pianist and bandleader. He moved to Chicago in 1923, joining several bands, in 1927 becoming director of Carroll Dickerson's under Louis Armstrong's leadership. In 1929 he founded his own, which he led until 1948, when he joined Armstrong's All Stars, working as a soloist and in small groups after 1951. He devised a ‘trumpet style’ of linear right-hand solo and ensemble playing, and dissolved the conventional left-hand patterns into a less regular pulse, allowing greater freedom in improvisation.


Gale Contemporary Black Biography:

Earl Hines

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jazz musician; pianist

Personal Information

Born Earl Kenneth Hines on December 28, 1905, in Duquesne, PA; died on April 22, 1983, in Oakland, CA; son of Joseph (a foreman and musician) and Mary (an organist) Hines.

Career

Joined Lois Deppe, 1922, and participated in his first recording session, 1923; moved to Chicago, 1924; joined Zutty Singleton and Louis Armstrong at the Sunset Café, mid-1920s; joined Jimmy Noone's band, 1927; recorded with Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives, 1928; led band at the Grand Terrace in Chicago, 1928-40; led independent band, 1941-48; joined the Louis Armstrong's All Stars, 1948-51; toured with small combo, early 1950s; served as resident musician at Club Hangover in San Francisco, 1950s and early 1960s; re-discovered at Little Theatre concerts in New York City, 1964; toured with State Department, 1966; recorded a series of well-received albums during 1970s, including West Side Story (1974) and The Father of Modern Jazz Piano (1977).

Life's Work

Earl "Fatha" Hines seemed like a forgotten pianist from an earlier era when he made his entrance at the Little Theatre in New York City in the winter of 1964. "The manner in which the public deals with its most gifted artists is, to understate it, erratic," noted Leonard Feather in The Pleasures of Jazz. Until that appearance, Hines's importance to jazz had largely been relegated to his revolutionary solo work from 1928, and to his seminal recordings with Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives the same year. The 59-year-old pianist, however, had no intention of re-treading old ground. Instead, he performed a challenging solo concert at the Little Theatre for a small crowd of about 30 people. "He had never before attempted a full-length solo recital," wrote Whitney Balliett in American Musicians. Balliett added that it was "a feat that few jazz pianists, of whatever bent, have carried off."

Hines opened his recital by telling the audience that he would proceed as though he was playing casually for a few friends in his living room. "Not only was his celebrated style intact," noted Balliett, "but it had taken on a subtlety and unpredictability that continually pleased and startled the audience." When the evening was over, Hines had reminded critics of his historical contributions in the jazz arena and had again emerged as a major stylist on the contemporary jazz scene. "The New York critics were amazed by Hines's continuing creativity and vitality," wrote Scott Yanow in All Music Guide to Jazz, "and he had a major comeback that lasted through the rest of his career."

Earl Kenneth Hines was born into a musical family in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, an outlying suburb of Pittsburgh, on December 28, 1905. His father worked as a foreman at the local coal docks and played cornet with the Eureka Brass Band, a group that performed at picnics and dances. His mother, a housewife, played organ and gave him his first piano lessons. Hines's sister, Nancy, also played organ, and his brother, Boots, played piano; his aunt sang light opera and his uncle played a variety of brass instruments. At age nine Hines started taking piano lessons from Emma Young, a teacher in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, but he soon outgrew his teacher. He then studied classical technique under Von Holz, a teacher who introduced him to exercise books, and began to dream of becoming a concert pianist.

Converted to Jazz

In his teens Hines moved to Pittsburgh, where he attended Schenley High School and continued to study music. His musical direction changed abruptly when family members took Hines to the Liederhouse, a club featuring jazz, and he fell in love with the rhythm-filled music. "Pittsburgh was a wide-open town," he told Balliett, "and there wasn't such a ban then on children going into clubs." After discovering the burgeoning jazz scene on Wylie Street, he abandoned his plans to play classical music and immersed himself in jazz. At age 15 he formed a group with a violinist and drummer, and soon the trio was performing at high school functions, nightclubs, and church socials. Because Hines worked many late-night engagements, he decided to leave school when he was 16.

In 1922 Hines went to work with singer/band leader Lois B. Deppe at the Liederhouse, where he earned $15 a week. The band made forays into West Virginia, Ohio, and New York City, and in 1923 the young pianist traveled to Richmond, Indiana, where he attended his first recording session. In 1924 Hines led his own band for a short time and then, following the advice of pianist Eubie Blake, he moved to Chicago. In Chicago he met a cadre of first-class musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Benny Goodman, who were beginning to re-write the rules of jazz. In 1927 he joined with Armstrong and Zutty Singleton, and the trio performed a regular gig at the Café Sunset, an establishment that catered to gangsters and other high-dollar rollers. When the club temporarily closed in 1927, the band broke up and Hines joined clarinetist Jimmy Noone's band at the Apex Club. Armstrong, however, would soon call again, and together the old friends would make jazz history.

Established Modern Jazz Piano

In 1928 Hines rejoined Armstrong for a series of legendary recordings, and the young pianist was transformed from a local talent with potential into a jazz innovator to be emulated. Hines played with drummer Singleton, banjoist Mancy Cara, trombonist Fred Robinson, and clarinetist Jimmy Strong, and the group broke new ground, opening up a range of new musical possibilities for jazz players. Hines, critics noted, was Armstrong's match, and the two traded solos and ideas, taking one another to new heights. "No one had ever played the piano like that," noted Balliett. "He fashioned complex, irregular single-note patterns in the right hand, octave chords with brief tremolos that suggested a vibrato, stark single notes, and big flatted chords." The same year, Hines recorded as a soloist. Terry Teachout wrote in Commentary, "Simultaneously with the Armstrong Hot Fives, Earl Hines recorded a series of piano solos in which his electrifying playing is given still freer rein."

On December 28, 1928, Hines's birthday, he began leading his own big band at the Grand Terrace Ballroom, a luxurious Chicago nightspot partly owned by Al Capone. "The Grand Terrace was the Cotton Club of Chicago," Hines told Balliett, "and we were a show band as much as a dance band and a jazz band." Hines and his orchestra worked seven days a week, performing three shows a night on weekdays and four shows on Saturdays. A national broadcast popularized the band outside Chicago, and the group spent two to three months of each year touring. The band also became one of the first African-American groups to travel widely in the South during the 1930s.

Hines earned his nickname during this period. After he had given a radio announcer a "fatherly" lecture about his immoderate drinking, the announcer began introducing the pianist as "Father" Hines. The Grand Terrace band recorded frequently, and throughout the 1930s scored a number of hits, including "G.T. Stomp," "Harlem Laments," and "You Can Depend on Me." Hines remained at the Grand Terrace for 11 years and then, believing he was underpaid, left with his band in 1940.

Re-emerged as Jazz Great

Hines held his band together for the next eight years, and they continued to perform such popular hits as "Jelly Jelly," "Boogie-Woogie on the St. Louis Blues," and "Stormy Monday Blues." In 1944 he received Esquire Magazine's Silver Award. In 1946 Hines suffered an injury in an automobile accident that caused him to curtail his touring; by 1948, due to a decline in the popularity of big bands, he broke up the 24-member group. Later in 1948 Hines reverted to sideman status and rejoined his old friend Armstrong. Louis Armstrong's All Stars toured Europe in 1948-49, and attended the 1948 jazz festival at Nice, France. In 1951 Hines left Armstrong to work in a number of smaller settings.

In September of 1955, Hines settled into a regular job at the Hangover Club in San Francisco, one of the last bastions for more traditional forms of jazz. Although he toured annually, traveling to Canada, England, and the European continent, the Hangover Club was his mainstay during the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1963 Hines opened his own club in Oakland, but the venture was short-lived. In 1964 he abandoned his low profile by playing a successful series of dates at the Little Theatre in New York, and the pianist was once more in great demand. In 1966 Hines joined the State Department's jazz combo and traveled to Russia as a goodwill ambassador. During the 1970s he continued to tour the United States and the world with his quartet, and recorded prolifically during this period, turning out classics like Tour De Force and Quintessential Continued with natural ease. And as this success continued, wrote Yanow, "Hines seemed to still be getting more daring in his playing."

Although Hines disliked his nickname, critics have pointed out that it is an appropriate one: he is indeed the father of modern jazz piano. Before him, noted Balliett, "Most jazz pianists were either blues performers ... or stride pianists. ... Hines filled the space between these approaches with an almost hornlike style." Today jazz aficionados accept the piano as a mainstay of jazz, thanks to Hines's seminal work with Armstrong and his work as a soloist in 1928. Unlike some early jazz performers, he continued to embrace new music over his 50-year career, and his personal style continued to grow in complexity. "Even at that late stage of his career," wrote Yanow, "Hines constantly took chances and came up with surprising and consistently fresh ideas." Despite heart problems and arthritis, Hines performed until a week before his death in Oakland, California, on April 22, 1983.

Awards

Esquire Silver Award, 1944; inducted into Jazz Hall of Fame, 1965.

Works

Selected discography

  • (With Louis Armstrong) The Louis Armstrong Collection, Vol. 4: Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines, Columbia, 1928.
  • Earl Hines, Raretone, 1929.
  • Deep Forest, Hep, 1932.
  • Piano Men, Bluebird, 1939.
  • Another Monday Date, Prestige, 1955.
  • Legendary Little Theatre Concert, Muse, 1964.
  • Tour de Force, Black Lion, 1972.
  • Quintessential Continued, Chiaroscuro, 1973.
  • Live at the New School, Chiaroscuro, 1973.
  • Earl Hines Plays Cole Porter, New World, 1974.
  • The Father of Modern Jazz Piano, M.F. Productions, 1977.

Further Reading

Books

  • Balliett, Whitney, American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz, Oxford University, 1986, pp. 80, 83, 85, 94.
  • Erlewine, Michael, editor, All Music Guide to Jazz, Miller Freeman, 1998, pp. 541, 542.
  • Feather, Leonard, The Pleasures of Jazz, Horizon, 1976, p. 74.
Periodicals
  • Commentary Magazine, November 1999.
On-line
  • "Earl Hines," All Music Guide, www.allmusic.com (March 15, 2003).
  • "Earl Hines," Biography Resource Center, www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC (May 5, 2003).

— Ronnie D. Lankford Jr

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Earl "Fatha" Hines

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Hines, Earl "Fatha" (Earl Kenneth Hines) (fä'THə), 1903-83, American jazz pianist, b. Duquesne, Pa. The son of musicians, he played jazz piano in big bands as a young man and in 1927 joined Louis Armstrong's quintet in Chicago. Under Armstrong's influence, he originated the "trumpet style" of piano playing, in which he produced hornlike solo lines on octaves with his right hand and the harmony with his left. From 1928 to 1947 he led his own band and in the 1950s and 60s toured throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan.
Gale Musician Profiles:

Earl “Fatha” Hines

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Pianist, bandleader

With his muscled arms and compact, powerful hands, Earl Hines embraced nearly every era of jazz pianism. Credited by many with transforming the idiom with his "trumpet style" keyboard approach, Hines served as a beacon for such followers as Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, Erroll Garner, Nat Cole, Bud Powell, Stan Kenton, and Oscar Peterson. While he led the band at Chicago’s Grand Terrace Cafe his career paralleled that of Duke Ellington in New York’s Cotton Club; his swinging ensemble pre-dated Benny Goodman’s "King of Swing" orchestra of 1935.

Hines enjoys almost unanimous regard among fellow pianists and critics as one of the geniuses on his instrument. His professionalism and ability to communicate with an audience were unparalleled. His range of expertise as a pianist reached from solo piano to small combos to vocal accompaniment to string-augmented big band. And though Hines always maintained that he considered himself to be a band pianist rather than a soloist, some of the solo work recorded near the end of his 60-year career is astonishing in its impact.

Born near Pittsburgh in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, in 1905, Earl Kenneth Hines heard good music very early. His father, a foreman at the local coal dock, played cornet; his stepmother, who entered his life when he was only three, was an organist; a live-in uncle was master of several brass instruments. After a brief fling with the cornet, Earl took to the piano and applied himself, both with school training and excellent private lessons, toward the goal of becoming a concert pianist. At this time, in addition to great pianistic dexterity, he developed a facility as a reader of music that served him throughout his career.

Developed a Personal Style
When he moved to Pittsburgh to attend high school while living with an aunt who sang light opera, Hines was exposed to a broader world of music and introduced to such luminaries as composers/band leaders Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle. That new, broader world included jazz. The sounds and rhythms of 1919 Pittsburgh’s Wylie Street night spots were irresistible to the 14-year-old Earl Hines.

Soon he formed his own trio and continued to soak up the sounds of the more experienced players as he performed at parties and socials. Lois Deppe, a popular baritone and band leader on Wylie Street, took note of Hines’s keyboard agility and reading ability and hired him in 1921. His brilliance quickly drew the attention of admiring Leader House club patrons as well as local musicians.

During that two-year stay with Deppe, Hines was rapidly developing a personal style. He gave credit to several local pianists for influencing him, but Hines maintained that his major influence was trumpeter Joe Smith. The pianist’s repertoire broadened as his performances ranged from the showy, jazz-oriented tunes in the club to light classics and church recitals, usually accompanying Deppe. Visiting musicians soon made it a point to check out the young phenomenon. With the Deppe band he branched out to Ohio, West Virginia, and New York City. As the band grew in size as well as popularity, Hines developed his famous right hand octave doubling technique—the trumpet style—as a way to cut through the sound of the other instruments with his unamplified piano. In October of 1923, not yet 18, Hines cut his first records, including one original composition, with Deppe at the Gennett studio in Richmond, Indiana.

In 1924 Hines left Deppe to form another band of his own, one that included the multi-talented Benny Carter on saxophone. Then, heeding the admonition of Blake to leave Pittsburgh and showcase his talents elsewhere, Hines moved to Chicago, landing in the midst of such players as King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Benny Goodman, Frank Teschemacher, and, especially, Louis Armstrong.

The handsome, personable pianist quickly developed a following, while continuing his on-the-job training in a variety of settings. Hines and Armstrong formed a musical bond and, with drummer Zutty Singleton, began playing together at the Sunset Cafe, which quickly became the "in" place on Chicago’s South Side for musicians as well as for gangsters and other big-spending customers. As Hines told biographer Stanley Dance of his association with Armstrong, "When we were playing together it was like a continuous jam session. I’d steal ideas from him and he’d steal them from me. He’d bend over after a solo and say … "Thank you, man.’" The temporary 1927 closing of the club led to a breakup of the Hines/Armstrong/Singleton combo and Hines soon joined clarinetist Jimmie Noone’s band at the nearby Apex Club.

Recording Career Burgeoned
In the last eight months of 1928 Hines made records with Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra and with Louis Armstrong, some with Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven, that are among the most celebrated in jazz recording. The fully-developed piano style of Hines, not yet 23, shines through on all these sides; amazingly, his playing here still sounds fresh. One gem, "Weather Bird," showcases simply Hines and Armstrong in a remarkable duet on which they stretch the rhythmic and harmonic borders in ways that had not previously been recorded.

In his The Swing Era, Gunther Schuller writes that Hines’s recordings of this time "reveal a manual ambidexterity and agility of mind that was unprecedented in jazz piano. … Any idea that came into his head was instantly transferable to his obedient fingers." Schuller and other writers point out that Hines often appeared to be staging a challenge, a competition, between his right and left hand as to which one could produce the greater surprises while still sounding integrated. This characteristic remained with Hines throughout his career, as did his penchant for "broken" rhythms in which he avoided a strict four-beats-to-the-bar in favor of multiple variations in meter.

At the end of 1928, on his twenty-third birthday, Hines began a new phase of his career as he took over as bandleader at the Grand Terrace, one of Chicago’s most beautiful and popular night clubs. Here, under the protective eye of Al Capone, Hines held forth for eleven years, interrupted by increasingly long annual forays on the road as the band’s popularity fanned outward. In his liner notes for Earl Hines—South Side Swing, biographer Dance wrote that "from 1934 onwards, the Hines band enjoyed more radio air time than any other in the U.S." This air time helped Hines attract and develop many gifted players and arrangers, both at the Grand Terrace and later. Among the musicians whose careers he aided were Budd Johnson, Gene Ramey, Trummy Young, Cecil Irwin, Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. At one point his band featured perhaps the two finest pure voices ever to sing jazz, Sarah Vaughan and Johnny Hartman.

As a leader Hines expected good performance and appearance from his sidemen and, despite his great personal popularity, he was generous in assigning solos and arranging tasks to others. Though a gifted composer as well ("Rosetta," "Stormy Monday Blues," and "You Can Depend On Me," among others), the leader gave his many arrangers wide berth. Their varying styles precluded the development of a recognizable band sound, save for the driving rhythm propelled by Hines.

It is to this lack of identity that some trace the fact that the Hines band was eclipsed by those of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman in the polls. And while he recorded some substantial hits—"Piano Man," 1939; "Boogie Woogie on the St. Louis Blues," 1940; "Jelly, Jelly," 1940; "Stormy Monday Blues," 1942, the latter two with Eckstine vocals—true popularity proved elusive. Hines tired of bandlead-ing, with its general postwar decline, and returned to an old friend in 1948.

Hines remained with the Louis Armstrong All Stars—featuring trombonist Jack Teagarden, clarinetist Barney Bigard, bassist Arvell Shaw, and drummer Sid Catlett—until 1951 when, wearying of the same routines night after night, the pianist left and formed a new small group. Touring with this combo until 1955, Hines then settled down at the Club Hangover in San Francisco for five years and bought a home in nearby Oakland. Another extended club date, interlarded with brief trips to other cities, constituted a quiet, part-time musical existence until 1964, when Hines was invited to play three solo concerts at the Little Theatre in New York. These concerts created great excitement and sparked a re-discovery of the keyboard master.

Of these concerts Whitney Balliett wrote in his American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz, "Not only was his celebrated style intact, but it had taken on a subtlety and unpredictability that continually pleased and startled the audience. … Between numbers, that smile-one of the renowned lamps of show business—made his face look transparent. It was exemplary showmanship—not wrappings and tinsel but the gift itself, freely offered."

Major Contributions Recognized
What followed were the rebirth of Hines’s recording career and a series of world tours in concert, usually with reedman Budd Johnson and drummer Oliver Jackson. In 1966 Hines visited the Soviet Union for the U.S. State Department and in 1969 and 1976 performed at the White House. Between 1970 and 1973 Hines recorded ten LPs for Chiaroscuro, beginning with new interpretations of his arresting eight sides for QRS records in 1928, and including 1973’s brilliant live solo concert at New York’s New School for Social Research.

This concert displays all of the mighty Hines pianistic elements: startling technique in both hands; inventiveness that permits new approaches to familiar material; unerring time, often broken with displaced accents and implied or real double-time; indefatigable right-hand tremolos; the trumpet style; security; humor; surprise and joy. In The Great Jazz Pianists, Len Lyons explains, "Like the circus clown who plays at tripping and falling (but deftly lands on his feet every time), Hines would ‘lose’ both rhythm and chord changes within a song only to bring them together at the end of the phrase or chorus.

It is these elements that Hines combined while winding down a60-year playing career. Hines’s earliest records reveal an audacity still evident, while those made 40 years later remain models of complete, modern piano work. Despite the encroachment of arthritis and heart problems, he was still in command of these elements while playing until within a week of his death in Oakland on April 22, 1983.

Though Hines never appreciated the "Fatha" nickname hung on him by a radio announcer at the Grand Terrace, he indeed may be considered a father to all jazz pianists who have followed. Schuller considers him "one of the two supreme pianists of our time." Of Hines’s playing, writer/arranger/pianist Billy Strayhorn told Metronome: "Technically, it is unorthodox; harmonically, it is intriguing; and actually, it is almost impossible to imitate in its entirety. His devotees are legion, his influence tremendous and his artistry incomparable."

Selected discography
Stride Right: Johnny Hodges, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Verve, 1966."Fatha": The New Earl Hines Trio, Columbia, 1973.Earl Hines/Live at the New School, Chiaroscuro Records, 1977.Giants of Jazz: Earl Hines, Time-Life Records, 1980.(With others) The Complete Master Jazz Piano Series, Mosaic, 1993.Here Comes Earl "Fatha" Hines/Spontaneous Explorations, (reissue), Red Baron, 1994.Earl Hines: South Side Swing, 1934-1935.Jimmie Noone & Earl Hines "At the Apex Club," Vol. 1, 1928, Decca Records.The Louis Armstrong Story, Vol. 3, Columbia.

Sources
Books
Balliett, Whitney, American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz, Oxford University Press, 1986.
Chilton, John, Who’s Who of Jazz, Time-Life, 1978.
Dance, Stanley, The World of Earl Hines, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977.
Feather, Leonard, The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz, Bonanza Books, 1965.
Lyons, Len, The Great Jazz Pianists, Da Capo, 1983.
Lyons, Len, and Perlo, Don, Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters, Quill/William Morrow, 1989.
Schuller, Gunther, The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945, Oxford University Press, 1989.

Periodicals
Detroit Free Press, April 24, 1983.
Down Beat, January 1993.
Metronome, c. 1943.
Pulse!, March 1994.
Additional information for this profile was obtained from the monograph Giants of Jazz: Earl Hines, by Stanley Dance, Time-Life Records, 1980, and from the liner notes to Earl Hines/Live At the New School, by Hank O’Neal, and Earl Hines: South Side Swing, 1934-1935, by Stanley Dance.
AMG AllMusic Guide: Pop Artists:

Earl Hines

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  • Genres: Jazz

Biography

Once called "the first modern jazz pianist," Earl Hines differed from the stride pianists of the 1920s by breaking up the stride rhythms with unusual accents from his left hand. While his right hand often played octaves so as to ring clearly over ensembles, Hines had the trickiest left hand in the business, often suspending time recklessly but without ever losing the beat. One of the all-time great pianists, Hines was a major influence on Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy, Joe Sullivan, Nat King Cole, and even to an extent on Art Tatum. He was also an underrated composer responsible for "Rosetta," "My Monday Date," and "You Can Depend on Me," among others.

Earl Hines played trumpet briefly as a youth before switching to piano. His first major job was accompanying vocalist Lois Deppe, and he made his first recordings with Deppe and his orchestra in 1922. The following year, Hines moved to Chicago where he worked with Sammy Stewart and Erskine Tate's Vendome Theatre Orchestra. He started teaming up with Louis Armstrong in 1926, and the two masterful musicians consistently inspired each other. Hines worked briefly in Armstrong's big band (formerly headed by Carroll Dickerson), and they unsuccessfully tried to manage their own club. 1928 was one of Hines' most significant years. He recorded his first ten piano solos, including versions of "A Monday Date," "Blues in Thirds," and "57 Varieties." Hines worked much of the year with Jimmy Noone's Apex Club Orchestra, and their recordings are also considered classic. Hines cut brilliant (and futuristic) sides with Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, resulting in such timeless gems as "West End Blues," "Fireworks," "Basin Street Blues," and their remarkable trumpet-piano duet "Weather Bird." And on his birthday on December 28, Hines debuted with his big band at Chicago's Grand Terrace.

A brilliant ensemble player as well as soloist, Earl Hines would lead big bands for the next 20 years. Among the key players in his band through the 1930s would be trumpeter/vocalist Walter Fuller, Ray Nance on trumpet and violin (prior to joining Duke Ellington), trombonist Trummy Young, tenor saxophonist Budd Johnson, Omer Simeon and Darnell Howard on reeds, and arranger Jimmy Mundy. In 1940, Billy Eckstine became the band's popular singer, and in 1943 (unfortunately during the musicians' recording strike), Hines welcomed such modernists as Charlie Parker (on tenor), trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and singer Sarah Vaughan in what was the first bebop orchestra. By the time the strike ended, Eckstine, Parker, Gillespie, and Vaughan were gone, but tenor Wardell Gray was still around to star with the group during 1945-1946.

In 1948, the economic situation forced Hines to break up his orchestra. He joined the Louis Armstrong All-Stars, but three years of playing second fiddle to his old friend were difficult to take. After leaving Armstrong in 1951, Hines moved to Los Angeles and later San Francisco, heading a Dixieland band. Although his style was much more modern, Hines kept the group working throughout the 1950s, at times featuring Muggsy Spanier, Jimmy Archey, and Darnell Howard. Hines did record on a few occasions, but was largely forgotten in the jazz world by the early '60s. Then, in 1964, jazz writer Stanley Dance arranged for him to play three concerts at New York's Little Theater, both solo and in a quartet with Budd Johnson. The New York critics were amazed by Hines' continuing creativity and vitality, and he had a major comeback that lasted through the rest of his career. Hines traveled the world with his quartet, recorded dozens of albums, and remained famous and renowned up until his death at the age of 79. Most of the many recordings from his career are currently available on CD. ~ Scott Yanow, Rovi
Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Earl Hines

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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 (1903-12-28)December 28, 1903
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][16] Hines was 21, Armstrong 24. They played together at the Union piano.[28] Armstrong was astounded by Hines's avant-garde "trumpet-style" piano-playing.

Armstrong and Hines became good friends,[29] shared a car,[30] and Armstrong joined Hines in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Sunset Cafe.[31] In 1927, this became Louis Armstrong's band under the musical direction of Hines.[32] 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".[33]

... 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".[34]

The Sunset Cafe closed in 1927.[35] 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”[36] but, trying to establish their own Warwick Hall Club[37] 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[38] – a fact which left Hines “warm”.[39] Hines joined clarinetist Jimmy Noone at The Apex, an after-hours speakeasy, playing from midnight – 6am 7 nights a week. Hines recorded with Noone,[40] again with Armstrong[41] and late in 1928[42] 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.[43] He moved in with Kathryn Perry[44] 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 always-immaculate[45] 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[46] 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."[47]

The Grand Terrace was controlled by Al Capone - so Hines became Capone's "Mr Piano Man"[48] with the Grand Terrace upright piano soon replaced by a white $3,000 Bechstein grand.[49] Talking about those days Hines later said:

... Al [Capone] came in there one night and called the whole band and show together and said, “Now we want to let you know our position. We just want you people just to attend to your own business. We’ll give you all the Protection in the world but we want you to be like the 3 monkeys: you hear nothing and you see nothing and you say nothing”. And that’s what we did. I used to hear many of the things that they were going to do but I never did tell anyone. Sometimes the Police used to come in ... looking for a fall guy and say, “Earl what were they talking about?” ... but I said, “I don’t know - no, you’re not going to pin that on me”, because they had a habit of putting the pictures of different people that would bring information in the newspaper and the next day you would find them out there in the lake somewhere swimming around with some chains attached to their feet if you know what I mean .. [16]

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.[50] Earl Hines' became the most broadcast band in America.[51][16] Among his listeners were a young Nat 'King' Cole [52] 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”.[53] 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.[54]

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.[55]

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."[56][57]

George Dixon and Walter Fuller were leading trumpeters in the band. The Hines band also included noteworthy reed players: Omer Simeon, Jimmy Mundy. Mundy, with Hines from 1932 to 1936, also did arranging work for Hines before he left for Benny Goodman's orchestra. Darnell Howard played clarinet, alto saxophone and violin from 1931 to 1937. In 1937 Budd Johnson joined the band in clarinet and saxophone roles. Ray Nance performed on trumpet and violin, 1937 to 1939, before moving on to the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Occasionally, Hines allowed other pianists to play as 'relief' piano player which better allowed Hines to conduct his whole 'Organization'. Jess Stacy[58] was one, Nat "King" Cole[59] and Teddy Wilson were others (though Cliff Smalls was his favorite[60]).

The Birth of Bebop

It was with Hines in The Grand Terrace that soon-to-be Bebop saxophone giant 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.[61]

However, the Grand Terrace closed suddenly in December 1940 with the manager, Ed Fox, 'not to be found'.[62] Hines, always famously good to work for,[63][64] took his band on the road.[65]

Johnson (along with Billy Eckstine) has been credited with helping to bring modern players into the Hines band in the transition between swing and bebop. Modernists included Benny Harris, trumpet, on and off from 1941 to 1945, Cliff Smalls, trombone and second piano, 1942 to 1946 and Wardell Gray, tenor saxophone, 1943 to 1946. Johnson left the band by the end of 1941, to return occasionally in 1947.


Some of his band members were drafted to fight in World War II. Six members 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 four on violin and a female bassist, guitar player and harpist. [66] Yet, Hines toured his band coast to coast across America. He took time out from his band to front the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1944 while Duke was ill.[67])


It was during this time (and especially during the 1942–44 musicians' strike recording ban[68]) 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"[69] while Charlie Parker's biographer wrote:

... 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.[70]

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.[71][72][73]

Dizzy Gillespie wrote of that band:

... We had a beautiful, beautiful band with Earl Hines. He’s a master and you learn a lot from him, self-discipline and organization. Earl Hines was the pianist in his band and I mean he played some piano. We used to make him play longer solos. We’d say, “Play another one, Gates”. And he’d go again. They’d say, “Lay out, lay out, lay out …” and we wouldn’t come in. Earl had to play again. He’d look up and keep playing and grinning. You couldn’t flush him … no matter what you did. We wouldn’t come in when we were supposed to and make him play another chorus. He’d be sweating, man, but he’s so cool, he's the epitome of perfection. Earl Hines is the master of composure. He is class personified. I don’t know a classier musician or a classier person in any field than Earl Hines”[74]

In 1946 Hines received serious head injuries in a car crash near Houston which affected his eyesight[75] but he continued to lead his big band for 2 more years.[76] In 1947 he bought the El Grotto nightclub[77] in Chicago - the showgirls were called The Grottoettes - but it soon foundered, Hines losing $30,000.[78] In reality the big-band era was over - Hines had had his for 20 years.

Rediscovery

From left: Jack Teagarden, Sandy DeSantis, Velma Middleton, Fraser MacPherson, Cozy Cole, Arvell Shaw, Earl Hines, Barney Bigard. At the Palomar Supper Club, Vancouver, B.C., March 17, 1951.

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[79]) and stayed, not entirely happily, through 1951. Next, back as leader again, Hines took his own small combos around the States[80] and Europe but, at the start of the jazz-lean 1960s and old enough now to retire and take up bowling,[81] Hines settled "home" in Oakland, California with his wife and two young daughters, Janear and Tosca,[82] opened a tobacconist's and came close to giving up the profession.[83]

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"[84] - 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.[85] 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.[86] 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,[87] Dizzy 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, Tony Bennett, 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".[88] 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.[89]

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".[90] Between his 1964 "come-back" and up to when he died, Hines recorded over 100 LPs all over the world.[91] 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[92] 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".[93]

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".[94][95]

From 1964 onwards Hines often toured Europe, especially France. He toured South America in 1968 and then added Asia, Australia, Japan and, in 1966, the Soviet Union to his list of State Department-funded destinations. During his 6 week and 35 concert[96] Soviet Union tour, the 10,000-seat Kiev Sports Palace was sold out. As a result, the Kremlin cancelled his Moscow and Leningrad concerts[97] as being "too culturally dangerous".[98]

Final years

Arguably still playing as well as he ever had,[99] Hines displayed individualistic quirks (including grunts a la' Glenn Gould) in these performances. He now sometimes sang as he played, especially his own "They Didn't Believe I Could Do It—Neither Did I".[16] In 1975, Hines was the subject of an hour-long documentary film for British ATV television channel, out-of-hours at the Blues Alley nightclub in Washington, DC. 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".[16] He played solo in The White House (twice)[100] 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".[101][102]

On his tombstone[103] is the inscription: "piano man".

Style

From his time with Armstrong onwards, Hines's was a pioneer in developing the "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.[104][105] 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.[106]

Of his own style he commented, in 1973:

The way I like to play, is that I.. I'm an explorer.. I'm lookin for something all the time.. and oft times I get lost.. and most times people that are around me an awful lot know, when they see me smiling, they know that I'm lost and I'm trying to get back! But it makes it much more interesting because then, you do things that surprise yourself.. After you hear the recording - it makes you a little bit happy too, and you say "ooh, I didn't know I could do that!" - which you don't.[16]

Selected discography

[It would seem that Hines' first-ever recording was on 3 October 1923.][107] Records commercially available as new, as of March, 2012 are shown in bold.

The 1930s, classic jazz and the swing era:

  • Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines: inc.'Weatherbird','Muggles','Tight Like This','West End Blues' : Columbia 1928: reissued many times inc. as The Smithsonian Collection MLP 2012
  • Jimmie Noone & Earl Hines: "At the Apex Club": Decca 1928: reissued
  • Earl Hines Solo: 14 of his own compositions: QRS & OKeh: 1928/9: reissued many times[see below]
  • Earl Hines Collection: Piano Solos 1928-40: OKeh/Brunswick/Bluebird: Collectors Classics
  • That's a Plenty, Quadromania series 1928-1947 Membran 4 CDs 2006, an easily available collection
  • Deep Forest, ca. 1932-1933: HEP
  • Swingin' Down, 1932-1934: HEP
  • Harlem Lament, 1933-1934, 1937-1938: Columbia
  • Earl Hines - South Side Swing 1934-1935: Decca

Swing to bebop transition years, 1939-1945:
[Big bands were particularly affected by the 1942-1944 American Federation of Musicians recording ban which also curtailed the recording of early bebop]

  • The Indispensable Earl Hines: Vols 1, 2, 1939-1940, Jazz Tribune/BMG
  • The Indispensable Earl Hines: Vols 3, 4, 1939-1942, 1945, Jazz Tribune/BMG
  • Earl Hines & The Duke's Men: [with Ellington side-men] 1944: reissued Delmark 1994
  • Piano man: Earl Hines, his piano and his orchestra: 1939-1942, RCA Bluebird
  • The Indispensable Earl Hines: Vols. 5, 6, 1944, 1964, 1966, Jazz Tribune/BMG
  • Earl Fatha Hines and His Orchestra: 1945-1951, Limelight 15 766
  • Classics, 1947-1949 (includes Eddie South) Classics Records

After 1948 - and therefore after Big Band era:

  • Louis Armstrong All Stars: Live in Zurich 18 October 1949: Montreux Jazz Label
  • Louis Armstrong & The All Stars: Decca 1950 & 1951: reissued
  • Earl Hines: Paris One Night Stand: Verve/Emarcy France 1957
  • The Real Earl Hines: [1st 'Rediscovery' concert @ Little Theatre NY 1964] Focus & Collectibles Jazz Classics: reissued
  • Earl Hines: The Legendary Little Theatre Concert [2nd 'Rediscovery' concert]: Muse 1964
  • Earl Hines: Blues in Thirds: solo: Black Lion 1965
  • Earl Hines: '65 Solo - The Definitive Black & Blue Sessions: Black & Blue 1965
  • Earl Hines: Fatha's Hands - Americans Swinging in Paris EMI 1965
  • Earl Hines: Hine's Tune: [live in France with Ben Webster, Don Byas, Roy Eldridge, Stuff Smith, Jimmy Woode & Kenny Clarke]: Wotre Music/Esoldun 1965: reissued
  • Once Upon a Time [with Ellington side-men]: Verve 1966
  • Jazz from a Swinging Era [with All-Star group in Paris]: Fontana 1967
  • Earl Hines: At Home: solo: [on his own Steinway]: Delmark 1969
  • Earl Hines: My Tribute to Louis: solo: Audiophile 1971 [recorded 2 weeks after Armstrong's death]
  • Earl Hines plays Duke Ellington: vols 1 & 2: solo: New World 1971-1975
  • Earl Hines: Hines plays Hines: The Australian Sessions: solo: Swaggie 1972
  • Earl Hines: Tour de Force & Tour de Force Encore: solo: Black Lion 1972
  • Earl Hines: Live at the New School: solo: Chiarascuro 1973
  • Earl Hines: A Monday Date: reissues of Hines' 15 1928/1929 QRS & OKEH solo recordings: Milestone 1973
  • Earl Hines: The Quintessential Recording Session: solo: Chiaroscuro 1973 [remakes of his 8 1928 solo QRS piano recordings]
  • Earl Hines: The Quintessential Continued: solo: Chiaroscuro 1973 [remakes of his 7 1928/9 solo OKEH piano recordings]
  • Earl Hines/Stephane Grappelli duets, The Giants: Black Lion Records 1974
  • Earl Hines/Joe Venuti duets: Hot Sonatas: Chiaroscuro 1975
  • Earl 'Fatha' Hines: The Father of Modern Jazz Piano [5 LPs boxed]: 3 LPs solo [on Schiedmeyer grand] and 2 LPs with Budd Johnson, Bill Pemberton, Oliver Jackson: MF Productions 1977
  • Earl Hines: In New Orleans: solo: Chiarascuro 1977
  • An Evening With Earl Hines: with Tiny Grimes, Hank Young, Bert Dahlander and Marva Josie: Vogue VDJ-534, 1977
  • Earl 'Fatha' Hines plays Hits he Missed: [inc Monk, Zawinul, Silver]: Direct to Disc M & K RealTime 1978

[It would seem that Hines' last-ever recording was on 29 December 1981.][108]

On anthologies:

  • The Complete Master Jazz Piano Series: 13 Hines solo numbers: MD4 140 [with Jay McShann, Teddy Wilson, Cliff Smalls etc.] 1969-1972

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 978-0-14-102646-6). 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 0-374-21912-5
  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. ^ a b c d e f g Earl "Fatha" Hines, one hour television documentary, produced and directed by Charlie Nairn, filmed in "Blues Alley" Jazz Club, Washington DC, for ATV, United Kingdom, 1975.
  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. ^ 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
  29. ^ "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".
  30. ^ "The Covered-Wagon". It cost $90. Dance, p 53
  31. ^ The billboard said. "The Sunset Cafe - Chicago's Brightest Pleasure Spot: "Dine! - Colored Revue Extraordinary - Dance!" - photo @ Dance, p. 45
  32. ^ Dance, p. 47.
  33. ^ The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD: Seventh Edition, pp 46
  34. ^ "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'
  35. ^ 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]
  36. ^ Dance p. 54
  37. ^ The Chicago Defender advert read, “Dance Every Wednesday and Saturday night and Sunday Afternoon. Staring Wed Dec 14 1927”: Chicago Defender 12 Oct 1927
  38. ^ "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
  39. ^ 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
  40. ^ 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 ..."
  41. ^ Hines and Armstrong recorded 38 still-existing sides in 1927 and, mainly, 1928. Armstrong left for New York in December 1928
  42. ^ In 1928 alone Hines recorded over 40 still-existing sides
  43. ^ 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
  44. ^ 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.
  45. ^ "You may have holes in your shoes, but don't let people out front know it. Shine the tops." See Hines quote @ http://www.musicwithease.com/earl-hines-quotes.html
  46. ^ 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
  47. ^ Dance, sleeve note to "Earl Hines - South Side Swing 1934/5"
  48. ^ 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
  49. ^ Dance, p.61
  50. ^ "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
  51. ^ Dance, p.63
  52. ^ 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.
  53. ^ www.jaymcshann.com About Jay McShann
  54. ^ 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
  55. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazz/profiles/earl_hines.shtml
  56. ^ James Baldwin on Earl Hines: New York Times Oct 16 1977
  57. ^ 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].
  58. ^ Allen, Steve. "The Return of Jess Stacy." unknown newspaper, undated. Southeast Missouri State University Special Collections and Archives, The Jess Stacy Collection
  59. ^ '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 0-374-21912-5, Chapter One.
  60. ^ Dance, p 261-272 inc.photos
  61. ^ 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]
  62. ^ Dance, p. 298
  63. ^ 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
  64. ^ In a 1949 Downbeat interview with Charlie Parker it said, "[With Hines, Charlie Parker] started out getting more money than he had ever seen before - $105 a week. With [Jay] McShann he had gotten $55 to $60": Downbeat: 'The Great Jazz Interviews' p.35
  65. ^ For their astonishing coast-coast schedule over the next 8 years see Dance, p.299-234
  66. ^ Dance, p 301
  67. ^ In Harlem's Golden Gate Ballroom - big enough for 5,000 dancers - on 22 March 1944 and thru' the following week in Newark NJ. (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". Ratliff, p. 202
  68. ^ See Wikipedia '1942–44 musicians' strike'
  69. ^ 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".
  70. ^ Ross Russell: Bird Lives! The High Life And Hard Times Of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker: p146
  71. ^ Gunther Schuller 14 Nov 1972. Dance, p 290
  72. ^ 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
  73. ^ 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.
  74. ^ Dizzy Gillespie & Al Fraser p 175/176
  75. ^ Dance, p 302
  76. ^ "Earl Hines biography." allmusic.com
  77. ^ Dance, p304
  78. ^ "... 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
  79. ^ 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.
  80. ^ In 1954 he toured his then 7-piece band nationwide with the Harlem Globetrotters[in fact from Chicago]
  81. ^ Stanley Dance: liner notes to "Earl Hines at Home": Delmark DD 212
  82. ^ 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]
  83. ^ 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.
  84. ^ 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
  85. ^ John S. Wilson NYT March 14, 1964
  86. ^ "Spontaneous Improvisations" and "The Grand Terrace Band" and "Spontaneous Improvisations", "The Real Earl Hines" and "Fatha.""
  87. ^ 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'
  88. ^ In the words of commentator Donald Clarke, "Hines, Earl", MusicWeb Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
  89. ^ Whitney Balliett: Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954-2000 p.361
  90. ^ The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 7th edition p 781
  91. ^ Tom Lord: Jazz Discography @ www.lordisco.com/tjd/
  92. ^ See, for instance, producer Hank O'Neal's sleeve notes to 'Earl Hines in New Orleans' 1977 [solo]: Chiaroscuro CR(D) 200
  93. ^ 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]
  94. ^ 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
  95. ^ 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”'.
  96. ^ Dance, p. 306
  97. ^ "Reds Change Hines Tour", Washington Post, July 26, 1966
  98. ^ Time Magazine, August 16 1966
  99. ^ 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.
  100. ^ 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
  101. ^ UC Berkeley News José Rodríguez 8 Dec 2009: also Robert Doerschuck p28
  102. ^ 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'
  103. ^ 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.
  104. ^ Balliett p 101
  105. ^ Berliner p.444
  106. ^ Richard Cook Jazz Encyclopedia, London: Penguin, p.287
  107. ^ At Richmond, Indiana, when Hines was aged 19: Falling with Deppe's Serenaders (source: Tom Lord, The Jazz Discography)
  108. ^ At São Paulo, Brazil, when Hines was aged 78: One O'clock Jump with Eric Schneider and the 150 Band on "Fatha's Birthday" (source: Tom Lord, The Jazz Discography)

References

  • Balliett, Whitney (1986/1996). "American Musicians ll: 72 Portraits in Jazz". Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford. ISBN 0-19-512116-3
  • Balliett, Whitney (2000). "Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000". Granta Books, London. ISBN 1-86207-465-8
  • Berliner, Paul F. (1994). "Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation". University of Chicago Press. Chocago & London ISBN 0-226-04381-9
  • Clarke, Donald (1989, 2005). Hines, Earl. MusicWeb Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Retrieved August 1, 2006.
  • Collier, James Lincoln (1983). Louis Armstrong: An American Genius. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-503727-8 (pbk)
  • Cook, Richard (2005). Jazz Encyclopedia - Hines entry. Pengiun Books, London. ISBN 978-0-14-102646-6.
  • Dance, Stanley (1970). The World of Duke Ellington. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81015-8
  • Dance, Stanley (1983). The World of Earl Hines. [Includes a 120-page interview with Hines plus many photos]. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80182-5
  • Dempsey, Peter (2001). Earl Hines. Naxos Jazz Legends. Retrieved July 23, 2006.
  • Doerschuck, Robert (2001) 88 - The Giants of Jazz Piano. Backbeat Books, San Francisco. ISBN 0-87930-656-4
  • Downbeat (2009). The Great Jazz Interviews: ed Frank Alkyer & Ed Enright. Hal Leonard Books. ISBN 978-1-4234-6384-9
  • Epstein, Daniel Mark (1999). Nat 'King' Cole. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. New York. ISBN 0-374-21912-5
  • Feather, Leonard (1960). Encyclopedia of Jazz, The. Horizon Press. ISBN 0-8180-1203-X
  • Gillespie, Dizzy & Al Fraser (2009). "To Be, or Not . . . to Bop". University of Minnesota Press ISBN 0816665478/ISBN 978-0816665471
  • Harrison, Max: Fox, Charles & Thacker, Eric (1984). "The Essential Jazz Records Vol 1". Da Capo Press ISBN 0-306-80326-7
  • Earl Hines. World Book encyclopedia. Retrieved July 23, 2006.
  • Earl "Fatha" Hines. The Red Hot Jazz Archive. Retrieved July 23, 2006.
  • Lester, James (1994). Too Marvelous for Words: The Life & Genius of Art Tatum. Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford. ISBN 0-19-508365-2
  • Nairn, Charlie (1975). Earl "Fatha" HInes: 1hr 'solo' documentary made in "Blues Alley" Jazz Club, Washington DC, for ATV, England, 1975: produced/directed by Charlie Nairn: original 16mm film plus 'out-takes' of additional tunes from that film archived in British Film Institute Library @ bfi.org.uk: also @ http://www.itvstudios.com: DVD copies with Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library [who hold the The Earl Hines Collection/Archive], University of California, Berkeley: also University of Chicago, Hogan Jazz Archive Tulane University New Orleans and Louis Armstrong House Museum Libraries: see also www.jazzonfilm.com/documentaries. Also @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uutLxx0fwwQ
  • Palmer, Robert (1981). "Pop Jazz; Fatha Hines Stom[p]ing and Chomping on at 75", The New York Times, August 28, 1981. Retrieved from The New York Times July 30, 2006 ISBN 0-8050-7068-0
  • The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. Cook, Richard & Morton, Brian (2004). Seventh Edition. London & New York. ISBN 0-14-101416-4
  • Ratliff, Ben (2002). "The New York Times Essential Library: Jazz". Times Books. New York. ISBN 0-8050-7068-0
  • The Rough Guide to Jazz (2004). 3rd edition. Earl Hines, p. 262-263. Rough Guides. ISBN 1-84353-256-5
  • Russell, Ross (1996). "Bird Lives! The High Life And Hard Times Of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker". Charterhouse/Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-80679-7
  • Schuller, Gunther (1991). The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945, pp 263–292. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507140-9
  • Simon, George T. (1974). The Big Bands. Macmillan.
  • Taylor, Jeffrey (2005) Earl "Fatha" Hines: Selected Piano Solos, 1928-41. Volume 15 in Music of the United States of America. Madison, Wisconsin: American Musicological Society/A-R Editions, 2005 . ISBN 0-89579-580-9
  • Taylor, Jeffrey (2002). “Earl Hines and ‘Rosetta.’” Current Musicology: Special Issue, A Commemorative Festschrift in Honor of Mark Tucker. 71-73 (Spring 2001-Spring 2002).
  • Taylor, Jeffrey (2002). "Life With Fatha." I.S.A.M. Newsletter 30 (Fall 2000).
  • Taylor, Jeffrey (1998). "Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, and 'Weather Bird.'" The Musical Quarterly 82 (Spring 1998).

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Blues and Things (1967 Album by Jimmy Rushing)
Earl Hines in New Orleans (1977 Album by Earl Hines)
Masters of Jazz, Vol. 2 (1974 Album by Earl Hines)

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