Hank Jones

American jazz pianist and composer

• Born: July 31, 1918
• Birthplace: Vicksburg, Mississippi
• Died: May 16, 2010
• Place of death: New York, New York

With a career spanning the history of modern jazz, Jones emerged from the bebop style to perfect his inventive sparse left-hand chord voicings beneath gently swinging, often bluesy and rhapsodic right-hand melodies.

Member of The Great Jazz Trio

The Life

Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1918, Henry Jones moved with his family to Pontiac, Michigan, where by his early teens he had established himself as a professional pianist working with groups in the Detroit and Flint area. After leaving Detroit, Jones worked first in Cleveland, Ohio, and then Buffalo, New York, where he met Art Tatum, a major influence on Jones’s playing style. His move to New York City in 1944 was in part initiated by Lucky Thomson, who, after working with the young Jones, secured him a job in Oran Thaddeus “Hot Lips” Page’s band. Jones’s move to New York also ushered in his long recording career, when he became a regular rhythm-section member for the Savoy Records label by the late 1940’s. By 1947 Jones had worked and recorded with some of New York City’s finest jazz musicians, including Howard McGhee, Billy Eckstine, Charlie Parker, and Coleman Hawkins. In 1947 he began a five-year musical collaboration with Ella Fitzgerald, serving as her pianist and garnering a reputation as a refined, accomplished, and reliable accompanist.

From 1953 to 1959, Jones returned to freelance work in New York City, supplementing club work with tours (Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic, Benny Goodman) and recording dates (including his own trio, Hawkins, Lester Young, and Cannonball Adderley). In 1956 Jones recorded the solo album Have You Met Hank Jones? for Savoy Records. In 1958 Jones recorded Somethin’ Else with Adderley and Miles Davis, considered by many one of the most influential jazz albums of the 1950’s.

In 1959 Jones was hired as a staff musician for CBS, an engagement that provided the pianist opportunities to work in a variety of musical contexts. Jones remained on the CBS staff for fifteen years, performing for such popular television programs as The Ed Sullivan Show and The Jackie Gleason Show. While employed at CBS, Jones maintained an active performing and recording schedule, working intermittently with bands such as Goodman’s and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, and recording with Oliver Nelson, Kenny Burrell, Johnny Hartman, Clark Terry, Sonny Stitt, and others.

Soon after CBS relinquished music production activities in 1974, Jones formed the Great Jazz Trio with Ron Carter and Tony Williams. The group first recorded at the Village Vanguard studios in 1975, releasing the album Hanky Panky featuring Grady Tate in place of Williams. The trio recorded its next ten albums from 1975 to 1978 with the original personnel, adding saxophonists Sadao Watanabe and Jackie McLean on two of the sessions. The Great Jazz Trio regularly performed and recorded throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s while undergoing two major personnel changes: Jimmy Cobb and Eddie Gomez replaced Carter and Williams in 1982, and Billy Hart and Mads Vinding replaced Cobb and Gomez in 1988 (drummer Al Foster is featured on two 1980 albums with Gomez on bass). Since the 1990’s, the Great Jazz Trio has recorded and performed with a number of players, young and old, including Jones’s brother Elvin, Roy Haynes, Richard Davis, George Mraz, and Jack DeJohnette. Apart from his work with the Great Jazz Trio, Jones has performed and recorded in a variety of duet formats with musicians such as John Lewis, Charlie Haden, George Shearing, Tommy Flanagan, Abbey Lincoln, and Joe Lovano.

The Music

Jones’s musicianship is often characterized as refined, versatile, and comprehensive. His proficiency in classical music, ragtime, stride, blues, and gospel is complemented by an equally notable command of the more technical aspects of music: sight-reading, transposition, arranging, and accompanying. The all-inclusive nature of Jones’s musical character was further developed through his work with Fitzgerald and later with the CBS Orchestra, where he was regularly called upon for a wide variety of musical tasks, including accompanying and composing or improvising background and incidental music for the studio’s programs and commercials. In addition to his practical experience in the world of television and radio, Jones was instrumental in shaping the sound of modern jazz piano after Bud Powell. His uniquely assimilative approach to piano emanates from five major spheres of musical influence: spirituals, hymns, and jubilee gospel music of the urban Baptist church; the stride-piano styles of Fats Waller and Earl Hines; the sophisticated and refined piano styles of Teddy Wilson, Tatum, and Nat King Cole; the ensemble piano playing of Duke Ellington and Count Basie; and the harmonically inventive and complex language of bebop. This final source exerted a tremendous influence on Jones’s musical vocabulary. Jones’s professed indebtedness to the complex harmonic language of bebop is also evident in his solo and duet playing, where he often employs chromatic chord substitutions and sophisticated voicings in renditions of pop standards. Above all, Jones emerged as one of the most dependable and sought-after studio jazz pianists of the 1950’s and 1960’s. He performed on hundreds of commercial studio recordings, not including the hundreds of hours of live television and radio broadcasts that featured his playing.

Early Recordings. Jones’s early recordings are typified by a straightforward bebop approach to comping, improvisation, and accompanying vocalists. As noted in his playing with Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic accompanying Fitzgerald, Jones maintains a conventional accompaniment style, providing a tasteful harmonic and rhythmic backdrop for the singer and soloists. With Jones’s early small-group recordings as a leader and sideman, however, his playing reveals a sophisticated sense of harmonic variety coupled with an inventive melodic voice. His playing on the Verve sessions with Charlie Parker (1949-1952) features a solid command of the bebop musical vocabulary; Jones tends to avoid the persistent use of left-hand chords below the right-hand improvisation as favored by bop pianists such Powell and Horace Silver. This sparse left-hand texture directs listeners to the gracefully melodic and swinging character of Jones’s tactile right-hand lines.

Somethin’ Else. Jones’s collaborative relationship with Adderley began in 1955 with the pianist joining Adderley on Presenting Cannonball, the alto saxophonist’s debut album on the Savoy label. In 1958 Adderley assembled Jones, bassist Sam Jones, drummer Art Blakey, and trumpeter Davis for a Blue Note recording session released as the album Somethin’ Else. In several interviews, Jones recalled how Davis, though not the official leader of the studio date, assumed leadership of the session, determining arrangements and promoting a relaxed and comfortable studio environment. Jones’s soloing on Somethin’ Else features his trademark unaccompanied right-hand style, while left-hand chords rarely interrupt the flowing treble improvisation. One noteworthy contrast to Jones’s right-hand-style soloing is the sophisticated, at times polytonal block-chord solo on the album’s title track. Also notable in the session are Jones’s and bassist Sam Jones’s unison grooves that serve as introductions and interludes to tunes such as “Autumn Leaves” and “Love for Sale.” Jones’s extensive solo at the coda of “Autumn Leaves” features a unique blend of tonal and modal musical language, weaving solo lines with harmonic lines above a relatively static vamp. These moments of groove-oriented improvisation foreshadow one of the hallmarks of the mature hard-bop jazz style of the 1960’s.

Somethin’ Else also features Jones as composer, with his “Allison’s Uncle” closing the album’s B-side. The group’s forward-looking approach to improvisation, arrangement, and musical language established Somethin’ Else as a landmark recording in the post-bop jazz era.

The Great Jazz Trio. Although Jones maintained an active recording schedule while working at CBS, critics often cite his recordings with the Great Jazz Trio of the 1970’s and 1980’s as his return to the jazz world. With the veteran crews of Williams or Foster on drums and Carter or Gomez on bass, the Great Jazz Trio amassed a series of commercial recordings that present Jones in what some regard as his top musical form. The sessions recorded at the Village Vanguard (1977, 1980) notably feature Jones and his band in moments of creative spontaneity tempered with a mature sense of inventiveness and logic. In recent decades the Great Jazz Trio recorded such historic albums as Flowers for Lady Day, Autumn Leaves, and Collaboration, which featured Richard Davis on bass and Jones’s brother Elvin on drums. Flowers for Lady Day represents the first recorded collaboration between the two Jones brothers since 1963. The final album was released just months before Elvin’s death in 2004.

Duets. The series of duet sessions are some of the pianist’s most intimate and colorful recordings of his career. Playing without drums and sometimes bass affords Jones a chance to display his brilliant stride technique, something more or less absent in his trio and small-group recordings. As Jones admits, the duet recordings allow the pianist to collaborate with some of his closest musical friends, including fellow Detroiter and bebopper Flanagan and tenor saxophonist Lovano. The duet sessions have also permitted Jones the opportunity to branch out from his usual jazz repertory, touchingly illustrated in Steal Away with bassist Haden, where the pianist masterfully reads through a handpicked set of spirituals and hymns.

Musical Legacy

While some argue that Jones’s steady work with big bands and CBS obscured his gifts for jazz playing in modern contexts until the 1970’s, his career never suffered from a lack of productivity, employment, or admiration and respect from other musicians. When asked if he had any regrets about remaining somewhat of a conventional and commercially oriented pianist during the 1960’s, when revolutionary changes were taking place in jazz (some of them in fact emanating from his brother Elvin’s adventurous drumming with John Coltrane), Jones responded, “Whatever style I play is the suitable style for me. Just being different for the sake of being different is not necessarily a good thing…if it’s viable, then do it.” Jones is noted for having one of the most prolific and successful commercial and recording careers in jazz history, and the refined sense of groove and lyricism that has permeated his playing since the early 1950’s has left an unmistakable stamp on a younger generation of pianists, most notably Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, and Mulgrew Miller. Jones’s music has received three Grammy nominations, two for Best Solo Jazz Performance (Bop Redux and I Remember You), and one for Best Group Jazz Instrumental Performance (Love for Sale). In addition, Jones was awarded the Jazz Masters Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1989. In 2003 the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers inducted Jones into the Jazz Wall of Fame, and the New School University granted Jones the Beacons of Jazz award in 2005.

Principal Recordings

albums (solo): Urbanity, 1947; Hank Jones Piano, 1950; Bluebird, 1955; Hank Jones Quartet/Quintet, 1955; The Trio, 1955; Hank Jones Quartet, 1956; Have You Met Hank Jones?, 1956; Relaxin’ at Camarillo, 1956; Trio with Guests, 1956 (with Wendell Marshall and Kenny Clarke); Hank Jones Swings Gigi, 1958; The Talented Touch, 1958; Songs from Porgy and Bess, 1960; Arrival Time, 1962; Here’s Love, 1963; This Is Ragtime Now, 1964; Happenings, 1966 (with Oliver Nelson); Hanky Panky, 1975; Arigato, 1976; Satin Doll, 1976; Bop Redux, 1977; I Remember You, 1977; Just for Fun, 1977; Portions, 1977; Rockin’ in Rhythm, 1977 (with Ray Brown and Jimmie Smith); Tiptoe Tapdance, 1977; The Trio, 1977 (with Milt Hinton and Bobby Rosengarden); Ain’t Misbehavin’, 1978; A Foggy Day, 1978; Bluesette, 1978; Groovin’ High, 1978; Jones-Brown-Smith, 1978 (with Brown and Smith); Have You Met This Jones?, 1979; Hank Jones-Red Mitchell Duo, 1987 (with Red Mitchell); Lazy Afternoon, 1989; The Oracle, 1989 (with Dave Holland and Billy Higgins); The Essence, 1990; Hank Jones Trio, 1991; Hank Jones Trio with Mads Vinding and Al Foster, 1991; A Handful of Keys: The Music of Thomas “Fats” Waller, 1992; Upon Reflection: The Music of Thad Jones, 1994; Hank Jones Meets Cheick Tidiane Seck and theMandinkas, 1995; Sarala, 1995; Steal Away, 1995; Master Class, 1997; Darji’s Groove, 1998; Compassion, 2002; The New York Rhythm Section, 2004; For My Father, 2005; Hank and Frank, 2006 (with Frank Wess); West of 5th, 2006 (with Christian McBride and Jimmie Cobb); Piano Solo, 2008.

albums (with the Great Jazz Trio): Love for Sale, 1976; The Great Jazz Trio Direct from L.A., 1977; Kindness, Joy, Love, and Happiness, 1977; The Great Tokyo Meeting, 1978; Milestones, 1978; Chapter Two, 1980; Moreover, 1980; The Threesome, 1982; The Club New Yorker, 1983; N.Y. Sophisticate: A Tribute to Duke Ellington, 1983; Monk’s Moods, 1984; Standard Collection, 1986; Flowers for Lady Day, 1991; Village Vanguard Again, 2000; My Funny Valentine, 2001; Direct from L.A., 2002; KJLH, 2002; Autumn Leaves, 2003; Someday My Prince Will Come, 2004; Collaboration, 2005; Speak Low, 2005; S’Wonderful, 2005; I’m Old Fashioned, 2006 (with Sadao Watanabe); Objects Appear Closer, 2007.

Bibliography

Dobbins, Bill. “Jones, Hank.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, edited by Barry Kernfeld. London: Macmillan, 2002. A concise introduction to Jones’s life and career with a short list of sources about Jones written in foreign languages.

Giddings, Gary. “Autumn in New York: Hank Jones’s Late-Flowering Mastery.” The New Yorker (June 4, 2007). Giddings reflects on Jones’s lengthy career after an engagement at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York City.

Jones, Hank, and Joe Lovano. “Family Legacy (Interview with Hank Jones).” Down Beat 72 (2005): 36-40. In an interview with friend and collaborator Lovano, Jones shares his memories and his thoughts about his late brothers, Thad and Elvin.

Lees, Gene. “One of the Jones Boys.” In Waiting for Dizzy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Lees added his 1991 interview with Jones and wife Teddy in upstate New York with anecdotes from Jones’s illustrious career.

Rosenthal, David H. “The Lyricists: Detroit Pianists.” In Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music, 1955-1965. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. In a monograph about hard bop, the author discusses Jones within the context of Detroit, the home of three of the most lyrical jazz pianists of the 1950’s and 1960’s: Flanagan, Barry Harris, and Jones.

Waltzer, Ben. “The Quiet Man with Voluble Fingers.” The New York Times (June 24, 2001). Writing in preparation for Jones’s 2001 appearance with Lovano at the JVC Jazz Festival in New York City, Waltzer assembles a series of the pianist’s recollections alongside those of Jones’s many admirers, including Flanagan and Miller.