Earl Hines

Jazz musician

• Born: December 28, 1903
• Birthplace: Duquesne, Pennsylvania
• Died: April 22, 1983
• Place of death: Oakland, California

Hines has been called the first modern jazz pianist—hence the moniker “Fatha”—and is perhaps best known for his “trumpet-style” approach to the piano. His innovative use of rhythms and accents set him apart from other pianists of his time. Hines’s work set jazz piano playing on a new course that had profound implications for later developments in the genre.

Early Life

Earl Kenneth Hines was born on December 28, 1903, in the Pittsburgh suburb of Duquesne, Pennsylvania. His father, a foreman at the local coal dock, played cornet; his stepmother, who entered his life when he was three, was an organist. After a brief stint with the cornet, Hines took to the piano and applied himself, with both formal school training and private lessons, hoping to become a concert pianist. At this time, in addition to possessing a great technical facility, he developed an uncanny ability to read music that served him throughout his career.

In 1917, Hines moved to Pittsburgh to live with an aunt and attend high school. There, he was exposed to a broader world of music that included jazz. He first played professionally in 1918, accompanying the singer Lois Deppe, with whom he later made his first recordings.

Hines moved to Chicago, which was then becoming the center of the jazz world, in 1923. He played with Carroll Dickerson’s orchestra at the Entertainer’s Club in 1925, ventured on an extensive tour to the West Coast and Canada in the following year, and ultimately returned to Chicago to perform at the Sunset Club. During this last engagement, Hines met a musician who would have a profound impact on his musical conception: Louis Armstrong.

Life’s Work

In 1927, Hines became director of Dickerson’s group with Armstrong as the prominent soloist. The following year was incredibly productive for Hines. He recorded his first ten piano solos, including versions of “A Monday Date,”“Blues in Thirds,” and “Fifty-seven Varieties.” Hines worked much of the year with clarinetist Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra and joined Armstrong on the Hot Five and Hot Seven recording sessions, playing on the classics “West End Blues,” “Fireworks,” and “Basin Street Blues.” Perhaps one of their most original collaborations was the trumpet and piano duet “Weather Bird” for the Okeh recording company.

On his twenty-fifth birthday, Hines debuted his own band at the Grand Terrace in Chicago, where he remained for ten years. His band garnered greater exposure through nationwide tours and, starting in 1934, radio broadcasts.

Until 1947, Hines continued to lead big bands that highlighted such important figures as Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie and experimented with the harmonic lexicon and melodic language of bebop. These collaborative efforts demonstrated Hines’s openness to change and interest in the evolution of music, much of which could be attributed to him.

From 1948 to 1951, Hines returned to his hot jazz roots and capitalized on the burgeoning Dixieland revival by joining Armstrong’s All Stars. Pivotal engagements included performances on The Ed Sullivan Show, where Hines accompanied Armstrong on “Where the Blues Were Born in New Orleans” and “A Song Was Born.”

By the early 1960’s, jazz’s popularity had waned. Hines settled in Oakland, California, opened a tobacco shop, and entertained the idea of leaving professional music. However, in 1964, he was rediscovered following a series of concerts in were chosen; consequently, he was named to DownBeat magazine’s Hall of Fame in 1965.

Hines led his own small band into the 1980’s and continued to perform regularly in the United States and abroad until the weekend before his death on April 22, 1983.

Significance

Hines was one of the primary innovative forces in jazz piano. His approach, although firmly grounded in a rich tradition of American music, employed an uncanny ability to revise and reinterpret an existing musical language. He expanded upon the syncopated accents found in ragtime, added a brilliant improvisatory dexterity, and developed what became known as a “trumpet style.” This style, in which Hines improvised right-hand passages in octaves and phrased those melodic lines in a fashion similar to that of brass players, is one of his greatest musical contributions to the syntax of jazz piano.

Bibliography

Dance, Stanley. The World of Earl Hines. New York: Da Capo Press, 1983. Perhaps the most in-depth work on the music and life of Hines.

Doerschuk, Robert L. “Earl Hines.” In Eighty-eight: The Giants of Jazz Piano. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2001. Detailed profile and musical analysis that incorporates the author’s interview with Hines in 1982.

Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. This book is the definitive source on the earliest developments in jazz; it also includes in-depth musical analysis.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. This follow-up to Schuller’s text on early jazz is a tour de force that traces the evolution of jazz; musical analysis and examinations of jazz pianists are included.

Taylor, Jeffrey. “Earl Hines’s Piano Style in the 1920’s: A Historical and Analytical Perspective.” Black Music Research Journal 12, no.1 (Spring, 1992): 57-77. Taylor provides an exquisite analysis of Hines’s early developments and contributions to jazz.

Teachout, Terry. Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. This biography by noted jazz critic Teachout contains a wealth of information and anecdotes about Armstrong and Hines’s long creative relationship.