John Hicks; jazz pianist (Guardian)
Hyfler/Rosner
Perceptive jazz pianist whose rhythmic drive enlivened bands
from swing to avant garde
Peter Vacher
Friday May 12, 2006
The Guardian
Everyone who observed the performances of the jazz pianist
John Hicks, who has died suddenly aged 64, remarked on his
keyboard dash and rhythmic drive. The Guardian jazz critic
John Fordham referred to his "alacrity of thought and
execution" and the singer Betty Carter, for whom Hicks
worked for several years, was unequivocal in her assessment.
"Nobody sounds like John Hicks," she stated, adding, "the
energy is always there."
It was this combination of irresistible creativity and
responsiveness that Hicks brought to innumerable recording
sessions, encompassing swing, hard bop and the avant garde,
and made him a first-call choice for many of the most
important American modern jazz groups. He always managed to
sound like no one but himself, though audiences at Ronnie
Scott's London club and elsewhere could see that he was
equally at ease in the turbulent surroundings of the Charles
Mingus Big Band or complementing the small group heroics of
saxophone innovators Bobby Watson and David Murray.
Hicks was born in Atlanta, Georgia, where both his parents
took their degrees, and felt himself to be typical of the
African-American middle class. "I was brought up as a decent
human being, where you had aspirations and there were
expectations," he told me, laughing at the family's
reactions to his career as a jazz pianist. "Not exactly what
they had in mind," he said. His father, the Rev John Hicks
Sr, moved the family from city to city as he took up posts
of increasing importance in the Methodist church, eventually
ending up in New York. His son stayed true to that religious
grounding, playing in public for the last time at his late
father's church, St Mark's United Methodist on 118th Street,
the Sunday before he died.
After the family moved to Los Angeles, Hicks's mother
started him on the piano at the age of seven. This segued
into organ lessons - useful for the church - and
participation in youth choirs. Likewise, his father made
sure that his son met Duke Ellington and heard the great
swing orchestras of Count Basie and Jimmie Lunceford.
According to Hicks, his father's interest in music served as
a release from the intensity of his involvement with the
civil rights movement.
Having also dabbled with the violin and, briefly, the
trombone, Hicks's interest in the piano was cemented when
the family moved to St Louis when he was 14 - his father
became the first black to be elected to the city's school
board. His fellow high school students included a whole raft
of players who later became prominent in advanced modern
jazz, including the trumpeter Lester Bowie (obituary,
November 11 1999).
Still involved in choral music, Hicks also began to hang out
with some of St Louis' older musicians - he later credited
pianist John Chapman as an inspiration. When the titanic
saxophone duo of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Johnny Griffin
came to town minus a pianist, he was thrown in at the deep
end, and coped; he also honed his blues skills, travelling
the south on summer jobs with Little Milton and Albert King,
sometimes playing four gigs in 18 hours. After completing a
course at Lincoln University in Chester county,
Pennsylvania, and briefly attending the Berklee School of
Music, in Boston, he returned to St Louis, before moving to
New York at trumpeter Clark Terry's instigation in 1963.
Within hours of arriving in town, Hicks was hired by the
blues singer Big Maybelle, which led to jobs with
saxophonist Joe Farrell and a road tour with the ex-Basie
stars, trombonist Al Grey and tenorist Billy Mitchell. Then
pianist Cedar Walton recommended Hicks to Art Blakey. "You
had one time to play with the music, then Art would
ceremoniously collect the music and lock it up in his drum
case," he recalled.
Hicks stayed with Blakey for two years, returning again in
1973 and appearing at Ronnie Scott's. In between he worked
with Betty Carter - "It was like playing with a horn
player," he said - and Woody Herman, for whom he also
arranged.
Thereafter he freelanced, performing with some of the more
challenging players on the contemporary jazz scene,
including Pharoah Sanders, Arthur Blythe and Murray. He was
an occasional member of the Mingus big band, fronted a trio
as well as a highly regarded big band of his own and formed
ensembles featuring his musical partner, flautist Elise
Wood, to play his own intelligently constructed
compositions. He also began a series of recordings devoted
to the music of Billy Strayhorn, Erroll Garner, Mary Lou
Williams and Earl Hines, which helped to cement his
reputation as a valuable and distinctive soloist.
At the time of his death, Hicks had a full book of
engagements, including an upcoming tour of Poland with
trumpeter Eddie Henderson. As lively in conversation as he
was animated at the keyboard, his early death robs jazz of
one of its most compelling performers.
He was divorced from his first wife, Olympia, in the early
1990s; their son and daughter survive him, as do his second
wife, Elise Wood, whom he married in 2001.
· John Josephus Hicks Jr, jazz pianist and composer, born
December 21 1941; died May 10 2006