The Rifftides staff could think of no more appropriate way to observe the holiday than with Earl “Fathah” Hines (1903-1983). Here he is at the Berlin Piano Jazz Workshop in 1965 with Niels Henning Ørsted-Pedersen on bass and an unidentified drummer who looks like Alan Dawson. The piece is Eubie Blake’s “Memories of You,” one of Hines’ favorites for decades.
At the Berlin workshop, Hines was the leadoff man in a blues-in-C relay, followed by Teddy Wilson, John Lewis, Lennie Tristano, Bill Evans and Jaki Byard—a stylistic progression of pianists who owed him plenty.
Happy Fatha’s Day.
Yes, that’s definitely Alan Dawson on drums. He also appears on a Bill Evans DVD which has a few other numbers from this concert, featuring a quartet with Evans, Dawson, NHOP and Lee Konitz.
What wonders the Internet offers, and you and your colleagues who blog jazz are amongst the wonders, Items like this, which must take hours to trawl for, keep us old silver-jazz-heads swinging on. Thank you on behalf of thousands I’m sure, and do keep it up.
Thanks for posting this, Doug. It’s funny to hear Germany’s “jazz pope” Joachim-Ernst Berendt quoting from his own book all the time.
I got the LP with the entire concert. What struck me always was the phrase “they called him the Chopin of jazz piano” … “They” was J.-E. Berendt himself who had baptized Bill Evans “the Chopin of jazz piano” in his famous “The Jazz Book”.
Mr. Berendt was one of the very first serious German jazz journalists and broadcasters. We Germans owe him a lot. His later works are too esoteric for my taste. He had his greatest years during the 1950’s and 1960’s when he wrote about, and broadcasted jazz on radio, and TV.
Most of his productions were ahead of their times. I learned a lot from him; and when I wrote my only liners to Dizzy’s Reunion Big Band CD he generously lent me the original LP with his own liners.
Memories of You is just spectacular. Isn’t it a shame to see how seldom Hines is listed in the pantheon of the great pianists?
Yep, Jack, you’re so right! The reasons for that neglect could be his quite illustrious multi-talented musician’s personality:
He was a stylist who revolutionized the art of jazz piano, of jazz in general. He was a great big band leader, and he was a (funny) singer too. He was always modern, on the other hand was he sometimes even smooth, but not elegant (like a Teddy Wilson), not too pleasant to the ears (like a Bill Evans), inconvenient, and unconventional (just like Cecil Taylor whom Mr. Berendt has forgotten (?) to invite to the concert then, by the way); and he didn’t like it at all to be called “Fatha” (sorry, Doug!), although he actually *was* the father of the modern jazz piano.
There were probably too many different Earl Hines’s. And it’s always tough for most critics (and for most fans as well) to get such a huge musical universe of an Earl Hines squeezed in their categories.