Earl Hines

Earl Kenneth Hines, also known as Earl "Fatha" Hines (December 28, 1903 – April 22, 1983), was an American jazz pianist and bandleader.

He was one of the most influential figures in the development of jazz piano and, according to one source, "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".

The trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (a member of Hines's big band, along with Charlie Parker) wrote,

The piano is the basis of modern harmony.

This little guy came out of Chicago, Earl Hines.

He changed the style of the piano.

You can find the roots of Bud Powell, Herbie Hancock, all the guys who came after that.

If it hadn't been for Earl Hines blazing the path for the next generation to come, it's no telling where or how they would be playing now.

There were individual variations but the style of … the modern piano came from Earl Hines.

The pianist Lennie Tristano said, "Earl Hines is the only one of us capable of creating real jazz and real swing when playing all alone."

Horace Silver said, "He has a completely unique style. No one can get that sound, no other pianist".

Erroll Garner said, "When you talk about greatness, you talk about Art Tatum and Earl Hines".

Count Basie said that Hines was "the greatest piano player in the world".

Earl Hines was born in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, 12 miles from the center of Pittsburgh, in 1903.

His father, Joseph Hines, played cornet and was the leader of the Eureka Brass Band in Pittsburgh, and his stepmother was a church organist.

Hines intended to follow his father on cornet, but "blowing" hurt him behind the ears, whereas the piano did not.

The young Hines took lessons in playing classical piano.

By the age of eleven he was playing the organ in his Baptist church.

He had a "good ear and a good memory" and could replay songs after hearing them in theaters and park concerts: "I'd be playing songs from these shows months before the song copies came out. That astonished a lot of people and they'd ask where I heard these numbers and I'd tell them at the theatre where my parents had taken me."

Later, Hines said that he was playing piano around Pittsburgh "before the word 'jazz' was even invented".

With his father's approval, Hines left home at the age of 17 to take a job playing piano with Lois Deppe and His Symphonian Serenaders in the Liederhaus, a Pittsburgh nightclub.

He got his board, two meals a day, and $15 a week.

Deppe, a well-known baritone concert artist who sang both classical and popular songs, also used the young Hines as his concert accompanist and took him on his concert trips to New York.

In 1921, Hines and Deppe became the first African Americans to perform on radio.

Hines's first recordings were accompanying Deppe – four sides recorded for Gennett Records in 1923, still in the very early days of sound recording.

Only two of these were issued, one of which was a Hines composition, "Congaine", "a keen snappy foxtrot", which also featured a solo by Hines.

He entered the studio again with Deppe a month later to record spirituals and popular songs, including "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and "For the Last Time Call Me Sweetheart".

He also accompanied Ethel Waters, describing his strategy as playing "under what the artist is doing" by listening "to the changes she made."

In 1925, after much family debate, Hines moved to Chicago, Illinois, then the world's jazz capital, the home of Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver.

Hines started in Elite No. 2 Club but soon joined Carroll Dickerson's band, with whom he also toured on the Pantages Theatre Circuit to Los Angeles and back.

Hines met Louis Armstrong in the poolroom of the Black Musicians' Union, local 208, on State and 39th in Chicago.

Hines was 21, Armstrong 24.

They played the union's piano together.

Armstrong was astounded by Hines's avant-garde "trumpet-style" piano playing, often using dazzlingly fast octaves so that on none-too-perfect upright pianos (and with no amplification) "they could hear me out front".

Richard Cook wrote in Jazz Encyclopedia that

"[Hines's] most dramatic departure from what other pianists were then playing was his approach to the underlying pulse: he would charge against the metre of the piece being played, accent off-beats, introduce sudden stops and brief silences. In other hands this might sound clumsy or all over the place but Hines could keep his bearings with uncanny resilience."

Armstrong and Hines became good friends and shared a car.

Armstrong joined Hines in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Sunset Cafe.

In 1927, this became Armstrong's band under the musical direction of Hines.

Later that year, Armstrong revamped his Okeh Records recording-only band, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, and hired Hines as the pianist, replacing his wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong, on the instrument.