Herbie Nichols

Among jazz’s most tragically overlooked geniuses, Herbie Nichols was an extremely initial piano stylist along with a author of tremendous creativity and eclecticism. He wasn’t known broadly plenty of to exert very much impact in either division, but his music ultimately drawn a rabid cult pursuing, though nearly the wide publicity it deserved. Nichols was created January 3, 1919, in NY and started playing piano at age group nine, later on their studies at C.C.N.Con. After providing in World Battle II, Nichols used a variety of groups and is at on the floor floor from the bebop picture. However, to settle the bills he afterwards centered on Dixieland ensembles; his have music — a mixture of Dixieland, golf swing, Western world Indian folk, Monk-like angularity, Western european traditional harmonies via Satie and Bartók, and unorthodox buildings — was way too unclassifiable and complicated to make very much feeling to jazz viewers of that time period. Mary Lou Williams was the first ever to record a Nichols structure — “Stennell,” retitled “Opus Z,” in 1951; however apart from the tune he had written for Billie Vacation, “Female Sings the Blues,” non-e of Nichols’ function got enough focus on really capture on. He agreed upon with Blue Take note and documented three excellent piano trio albums from 1955-1956, adding a different one for Bethlehem in past due 1957. Nichols languished in obscurity after those periods, though; sadly, simply when he was starting to find a pursuing among many of the brand new thing’s daring, up-and-coming superstars, he was stricken with leukemia and passed away on Apr 12, 1963. Within the years that adopted, Nichols became a popular composer in avant-garde circles, with tributes to his sorely neglected legacy via performers like Misha Mengelberg and Roswell Rudd. He also influenced a repertory group, known as the Herbie Nichols Task, & most of his recordings had been reissued on Compact disc.