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 "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 out from the Pittsburgh city centre. 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 - 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 faultless ear for popular tunes and he was able to remember and re-play songs and numbers he heard in theaters and park 'concerts'.[12][13] Later Hines was to say that he was playing piano around Pittsburgh "before the word 'jazz' was even invented".[14]

Early career

At the age of 17, and with his father's approval, Hines moved away from home to take a job playing with Lois Deppe & his 'Symphonian Serenaders'[15] in the "Liederhaus", a Pittsburgh nightclub.[16] He got 2 meals a day[17] and $15 a week.[18][19] 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 with this band — four sides recorded with Gennett Records in 1923,[20] shortly after recording was invented.[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, recording spirituals and popular songs.

In 1925, after much debate,[23] 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[24] but soon joined Carroll Dickerson's band including touring on the Pantages Theatre Circuit to Los Angeles.[25]

Then, in the poolroom at Chicago's Musicians' Union on State & 39th, Earl Hines met Louis Armstrong.[26] It was 1925, Hines was 21, Armstrong 24. They played together at the Union piano.[27] 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.[28][29][30] The Penguin 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.[31]

Armstrong and Hines became good friends,[32] shared a car,[33] and Armstrong joined Hines in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Sunset Cafe.[34] In 1927, this became Louis Armstrong's band under the musical direction of Hines.[35] 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,[36] most famously their 1928 trumpet and piano duet "Weatherbird". From The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD:[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, as 'Louis Armstrong and his Stompers' [with Hines as musical director], trying to establish their own Warwick Hall Club[41] rented in Hines' name they ran into difficulties. Hines went briefly to New York to return to find 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.[44] Hines recorded with Noone,[45][46] again with Armstrong[47] and late in 1928[48] recorded his first piano solos, 8 for QRS in New York then 7 for OKEH in Chicago, all except two his own compositions.[49] He moved in with Kathryn Perry[50] and also began rehearsing his own big band. At 24 his big break was about to come.

Chicago years

In December 1928 (and on his 25th birthday) the always-immaculate Hines began leading his own 'big band', the pinnacle of jazz ambition at the time. "All America was dancing"[51] - and for the next 12 years and thru the worst of The Great Depression Earl Hines was "The Orchestra" in The Grand Terrace Cafe in Chicago.[52] "Earl Hines and The Grand Terrace were to Chicago what Duke Ellington and The Cotton Club were to New York - but fierier."[53] The Grand Terrace was controlled by Al Capone - so Hines became Capone's "Mr Piano Man".[54] In the Grand Terrace, the Hines Orchestra [or 'Organization' as Hines preferred it - it had up to 28 musicians] did three shows a night, four shows every Saturday and sometimes did Sundays.

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.[55] Hines became the most broadcast band in America.[56][57] Among his listeners, was a young Jay McShann in Kansas City who said his "...real education came from Earl Hines. When 'Fatha' went off the air, I went to bed”.[58] But Hines' most notable 'student' was Art Tatum from Toledo, Ohio, 6 years younger than Hines and now regarded by some as the greatest pianist jazz has so far produced.[59]

All his career, Hines liked to promote and 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.[60]

Each summer, the whole band toured 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."[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 (Hines has even been described as Cole's "artistic father")[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.

The origins of the names "Fatha" and "Gatemouth" are discussed by Daniel Mark Epstein in his book Nat King Cole. 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.

Musicians were already beginning to call Earl Hines "Fatha" at age thirty-two because he had given birth to a style--more than a style, a virtual language--of jazz piano.[63]

 ”

The Grand Terrace closed in December 1940 and Hines took his band on the road.[65] Some of his band members were drafted to fight in World War ll[66] 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. (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".[67])

It was during this time (and especially during the 1942–1945 recording ban) 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".[68]

In 1946 Hines received serious head injuries in a car crash near Houston which effected his eye sight[69] but he continued to lead his big band for 2 more years.[70] In 1947 he bought the El Grotto nightclub[71] in Chicago but it soon foundered, Hines losing $30,000.[72] 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.

At the start of 1948, Hines rejoined Armstrong (rather, he now came to feel, as a "sideman") in Armstrong's "small band", The All Stars (most of whom had been famous big-band leaders), and stayed, not entirely happily, through 1951. Next, as leader again, he took his own small combos around the States[73] and Europe but, at the start of the jazz-lean 1960s and old enough now to retire and take up bowling,[74] Hines settled "home" in Oakland, California, opened a tobacconist's, and came close to giving up the profession.

Then, in 1964, thanks to Stanley Dance, his 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"[75] - 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.[76] 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.[77] 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,[78] Dizzie Gillespie, Paul Gonsalves, Stephane Grappelli, Sonny Greer, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, Helen Humes, Budd Johnson, Jonah Jones, 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, Teresa Brewer, Richard Davis, Elvin Jones, Etta Jones, The Inkspots, Peggy Lee, Helen Merrill, Charles Mingus, Vi Redd, 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".[79] 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.[80]

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".[81] Between his 1964 "come-back" and up to when he died, Hines recorded approximately 90 LPs all over the world. 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[82] 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".[83]

Pianist Lennie Tristano said, "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".[84][85]

In 1968 Hines toured South America, often toured Europe (especially France) and then added Asia, Australia, Japan and the Soviet Union to his list of State Department–funded destinations. (During his 6-week[86] 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"[87]) as being "too culturally dangerous".[88])

Final years

Arguably still playing as well as he ever had,[89] Hines displayed, too, endearing quirks (not to say grunts of which Glenn Gould would have surely been proud) in these performances. Sometimes he sang as he played, especially his own "They Didn't Believe I Could Do It—Neither Did I".[90] In 1975, Hines made an hour-long "solo" film for British TV[91] 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".[92]

He played solo in The White House (twice)[93] and played solo for The Pope—and played (and sang) his last show in San Francisco[94] 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".

On his tombstone[95] is the simple inscription: "piano man".

Selected discography

Up until 1948 - and therefore including Big Band era:

[Big bands were particularly effected by the 1942-1944 Musicians Union Recording ban which also curtailed the recording of early bebop]

After 1948 - and therefore after Big Band era:

On anthologies:

See also


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. 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: original 16mm film plus additional tunes 'out-takes' from that film archived in British Film Institute Library @ bfi.org.uk: see also www.jazzonfilm.com/documentaries
  10. ↑ From 'classical' teacher Mr Von Holz: 'Selected piano solos 1928': Jeffrey Taylor p. xvii
  11. ↑ Dance, p. 14
  12. ↑ Dance, p. 10: this was of course before the days of radio or recordings
  13. ↑ 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"
  14. ↑ See 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975. 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.'
  15. ↑ Deppe also used Hines in the Serenaders moonlight cruises on The East St Louis Riverboat [known as "The Palace of the RIvers"]
  16. ↑ The billboard read, "Jazz as it Should be Played". Pittsburgh Jazz Network: Dr. Nelson Harrison: 'Legacy of the Historic Crawford Grill #2 - Part 1' internet only
  17. ↑ Dance, p18: "I remember that I really went for their apple dumplings"
  18. ↑ Dance, p. 133.
  19. ↑ Balliett p.101
  20. ↑ Dance, p. 293.
  21. ↑ see Sound recording and reproduction
  22. ↑ Starr Phonography Company ad. 10 November 1923
  23. ↑ “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
  24. ↑ “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
  25. ↑ The Sunset billboard said, "The Sunset Cafe. Chicago's Brightest Pleasure Spot. DINE - Colored Revue Extraordinary! - DANCE": photo @ Dance, p 45
  26. ↑ See 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975.
  27. ↑ Dance, p 45
  28. ↑ Balliett p 101
  29. ↑ Berliner p.444
  30. ↑ See interview with Hines about this period in Earl "Fatha" Hines, 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975
  31. ↑ Cook, Hines entry p. 287
  32. ↑ "He was called 'Satchelmouth' and I was called 'Gatemouth'": Dance, p. 52
  33. ↑ "The Covered-Wagon". It cost $90. Dance, p 53
  34. ↑ The billboard said. "The Sunset Cafe - Chicago's Brightest Pleasure Spot: "Dine! - Colored Revue Extraordinary - Dance!" - photo @ Dance, p. 45
  35. ↑ Dance, p. 47.
  36. ↑ 37 sides in all
  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, 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. ↑ In 1930 The Apex was raided and closed down for selling alcohol during Prohibition.
  45. ↑ 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 ..."
  46. ↑ Hines was filmed listening to their "Four or Five Times"[recorded in May 1928] in 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1 hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975
  47. ↑ Hines and Armstrong recorded 38 still-existing sides in 1927 and, mainly, 1928. Armstrong left for New York in December 1928
  48. ↑ In 1928 alone Hines recorded over 40 still-existing sides
  49. ↑ 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
  50. ↑ 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 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
  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
  52. ↑ The Grand Terrace Cafe was the new and up-market Sunset Cafe on the same Chicago site
  53. ↑ Dance, sleevenote to "Earl Hines - South Side Swing 1934/5"
  54. ↑ See extensive interview with Hines about this period in Earl "Fatha" Hines, 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC for ATV, England, 1975: 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
  55. ↑ "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
  56. ↑ See 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975
  57. ↑ The Earl Hines Orchestra recorded for Victor in 1929, for Brunswick from 1932–1934 [four of the 1934 Brunswick sides were held back and issued as Vocalion's in late 1936], for Decca from 1934–1935, for Vocalion from 1937–1938 and for Bluebird from 1939 until the industry-wide recording ban of 1942-1945. A number of the Brunswick recordings were very advanced, sophisticated jazz. Hines relayed also on other band member for his arrangers including Cecil Irwin, Jimmy Mundy, Louis Taylor, Lawrence Dixon and Quinn Wilson, as well outside arrangers like Henry Woodip.
  58. ↑ www.jaymcshann.com About Jay McShann
  59. ↑ 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
  60. ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazz/profiles/earl_hines.shtml
  61. ↑ James Baldwin on Earl Hines: New York Times Oct 16 1977
  62. ↑ Allen, Steve. "The Return of Jess Stacy." unknown newspaper, undated. Southeast Missouri State University Special Collections and Archives, The Jess Stacy Collection
  63. ↑ 63.0 63.1 Epstein, D. M., Nat King Cole, 1999, Farrar Straus & Giroux, ISBN 0374219125, Chapter One.
  64. ↑ Dance, p 261-272 inc.photos
  65. ↑ Dance, p.299
  66. ↑ 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
  67. ↑ Ratliff, p. 202
  68. ↑ 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".
  69. ↑ Dance, p 302
  70. ↑ "Earl Hines biography." allmusic.com
  71. ↑ Dance, p304
  72. ↑ "... 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
  73. ↑ In 1954 he toured his then 7-piece band nationwide with the Harlem Globetrotters[in fact from Chicago]
  74. ↑ Stanley Dance: liner notes to "Earl Hines at Home": Delmark DD 212
  75. ↑ 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
  76. ↑ John S. Wilson NYT March 14, 1964
  77. ↑ "Spontaneous Improvisations" and "The Grand Terrace Band" and "Spontaneous Improvisations", "The Real Earl Hines" and "Fatha.""
  78. ↑ 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'
  79. ↑ In the words of commentator Donald Clarke, "Hines, Earl", MusicWeb Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
  80. ↑ Whitney Balliett: Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954-2000 p.361
  81. ↑ The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 7th edition p 781
  82. ↑ See, for instance, producer Hank O'Neal's sleeve notes to 'Earl Hines in New Orleans' 1977 [solo]: Chiaroscuro CR(D) 200
  83. ↑ Dance, p. 5
  84. ↑ 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
  85. ↑ 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”'.
  86. ↑ - and 35 concerts: Dance, p. 306
  87. ↑ Washington Post July 26, 1966
  88. ↑ Time Magazine, Aug 16 1966
  89. ↑ 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".
  90. ↑ Played and sung by Hines in 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975
  91. ↑ See 'References' below
  92. ↑ 'Earl "Fatha" Hines', 1hr 'solo' TV documentary made in Washington DC by ATV, England, 1975
  93. ↑ For President Giscard d'Estaing of France and also for Duke Ellington's White House 70th birthday party: Dance, p 4
  94. ↑ At Kimball's there
  95. ↑ [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=6274813&PIpi=4070061 tombstone, Evergreen Cemetery, Oakland, Alameda County, California at findagrave.com USA]: also says "He Enriched the World with his Music" For controversy over Hines' date of birth see article.

References

External links