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Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as '''Earl "Fatha" Hines''', ( 28 December , 1903 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. Duquesne, Pennsylvania – 22 April , 1983 in Oakland, California ) was one of the most important Pianists in the history of Jazz . EARLY LIFE Earl Hines was born in the Pittsburgh suburb of Duquesne, Pennsylvania . His father was a Cornet ist and leader of Pittsburgh's Eureka Brass BandWhitney Balliett, ''72 Portraits in Jazz'' p.100, his stepmother a Church Organist .Dance, p. 9. Hines at first intended to follow his father's example and play cornet but "blowing" hurt him behind the ears — while the piano didn't.Dance, p. 20.Palmer, ''The New York Times'', Aug 28 1981. He took classical piano lessons but also developed an ear for popular show tunes and was able to remember and play songs he heard in theaters.Dance, p. 10. Hines claimed that he was playing piano around Pittsburgh "before the word 'jazz' was even invented". EARLY CAREER At the age of 17, Hines moved away from home to take a job playing with Lois Deppe & His Serenaders in the "Liederhaus", a Pittsburgh nightclub, for 2 meals a day and $15 a week.Dance, p. 133.Balliett p.101. Deppe was a well-known baritone who had boasted a concert career. Hines' first recordings were with this band — four sides recorded with Gennett Records in 1923.Dance, p. 293. Only two of these were issued, and only one, a Hines composition, "Congaine", "a keen snappy foxtrot"Starr Phonography Company ad. 10 November 1923, featured any solo work by Hines. Hines entered the studio again with Deppe a month later, recording spirituals and popular songs. In 1925 he moved to Chicago, Illinois , then the world's "jazz" capital, home (at the time) to Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver . He played piano with Carroll Dickerson 's band (including a nationwide tour on the Pantages circuit) and made his first acquaintance with Louis Armstrong . Armstrong and Hines became good friends and got jobs playing together in Dickerson's band at the Sunset Cafe. In 1927 this became Louis Armstrong's band under the direction of Hines.Dance, p. 47. Armstrong had already been 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" - and indeed they couldBalliett p 101Berliner p.444. That year Armstrong revamped his Okeh Records recording 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''. From ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD'': ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD: Seventh Edition'', pp 46
Hines's solo recordings from that year, ''57 Varieties'' (referring to Pittsburgh's H. J. Heinz Company 's slogan) and his own composition ''My Monday Date'' (an inside joke between Hines, Armstrong, and Armstrong's wife) provided titles reused much later in Hines's career.Dance, pp. 52-53. After the Sunset Club closed, Armstrong and drummer Zutty Singleton ended up at the Savoy Theatre while Hines was in New York, and when he returned to Chicago, Hines ended up in Jimmie Noone 's band at the Apex Club .Dance, p. 55. CHICAGO YEARS In was his favorite) and it was here with Hines 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. It was during the 1940s (especially during the 1942-1945 recording ban) that members of the Hines' band's late-night jam-sessions laid the seeds for the upcoming Bebop revolution. Hines led his Big Band until 1947 , taking time out to front the Duke Ellington orchestra in 1944 while Duke was ill...but the big-band era was over. (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) REDISCOVERY At the start of , 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 - had ever given. The "recitals" caused a sensation. "What is there left to hear after you've heard Earl Hines?", asked the New York Times.John S. Wilson NYT March 14 1964 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''"Spontaneous Improvisations" and "The Grand Terrace Band" and "Spontaneous Improvisations", "The Real Earl Hines" and "Fatha."". ''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 , Jaki Byard (they recorded duets in 1972), Benny Carter , Buck Clayton , Cozy Cole , Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis , Vic Dickenson , Roy Eldridge , Duke Ellington (duets in 1966), Ella Fitzgerald , Panama Francis , Bud Freeman , Dizzie Gillespie , Paul Gonsalves , Stephane Grappelli , Sonny Greer , Lionel Hampton , Coleman Hawkins , Johnny Hodges , Budd Johnson , Jonah Jones , Gene Krupa , Ellis Larkins , Marian McPartland (duets in 1970), 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 , Elvin Jones , Etta Jones , The Inkspots , Peggy Lee , Helen Merrill , Charles Mingus , Vi Redd , Dinah Washington —and "''Ditty Wah Ditty''" and "''The Pearls''" with Ry Cooder . But his most acclaimed recordings of this period were his dazzling and endlessly inventive solo performances, which could show him at his very best, "a whole orchestra by himself".In the words of commentator Donald Clarke, "Hines, Earl", ''MusicWeb Encyclopedia of Popular Music.'' 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.Whitney Balliett: ''Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954-2000'' p.361 Solo tributes to , Australia , Japan and the Soviet Union to his list of State Department–funded destinations. (During his 6-week Soviet Union tour, the 10,000-seater Kiev Sports Palace was sold out. As a result, the Kremlin cancelled his Moscow and Leningrad concerts ("Reds Change Hines Tour"Washington Post July 26 1966) as being "too culturally dangerous".)Time Magazine, Aug 16 1966 Arguably playing better now than he ever had, 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 Never Believed I Could Do It—Neither Did I". In 1975 he made an hour-long "solo" film for British TV out-of-hours in a Washington nightclub: the "New York Herald Tribune" described it as "The greatest jazz film ever made". He played solo in The White House and played solo for the Pope—and played (and sang) his last show 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". And on his tombstone? The inscription: "piano man". DISCOGRAPHY
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