A jazz giant, Earl Hines, dies of heart attack

Press, 27 April 1983, Page 22

A jazz giant, Earl Hines, dies of heart attack

NZPA Oakland, California A jazz giant, Earl “Fatha” Hines, who influenced generations of musi-

cians with his innovative “trumpet style” of piano playing, has died, aged 77.

Hines died of an apparent heart attack, said his lawyer, Mr Murray Petersen.

The musician’s career, which spanned six decades and helped establish such well-known musicians as Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughn, Charlie Parker, and Billy Eckstine, continued right up to an engagement at a San Francisco club. Born on December 28, 1905, in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, Hines was the son of a dock worker who played the trumpet and led the Eureka Brass Band, and his mother was an organist who gave him his first piano lessons.

Hines originally planned to be a concert pianist, but

changed course the first time he heard jazz, developing an inventive style featuring strong octaves and “trumpet style” notes played with the right hand.

“Earl could go on for 90 years and never be out of date,” Count Basie once said of Hines. “You get bruised running up against a cat like that.”

“When you talk about greatness, you talk about Art Tatum and Earl Hines,” Errol Garner has been quoted as saying. In the late 19205, Hines made a series of recordings with Louis Armstrong that some critics consider among the masterpieces of jazz. In the 1930 s and 40s, he led his own big band, which included both Gillespie and Parker, at Chicago’s Grand Terrace ballroom.

When the band broke up, Hines joined Armstrong in 1948, leaving him in 1951 to form his own group to play in the Hangover Club, in San Francisco.

Hines was one of the first bandleaders to have a regular radio broadcast, the show that gave him his nickname. As the orchestra played the broadcast’s theme, “Deep Forest,” an announcer would introduce the show: “Here comes Father Hines leading his children through the deep forest, Fatha Hines, Fatha Hines.”

In spite of the decline in the popularity of the big band sound in the 19505, Hines remained active as a bandleader. He enjoyed a return to popularity in the 19605. In 1965, “Down Beat Magazine” elected him to its Hall of Fame, and in 1966, the publication’s International Jazz Critics’ Poll ranked him the No. 1 jazz pianist. Hines also toured Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union, and Australia, and played at the White House. His songs include “Rosetta,” “My Monday Date,” “Piano Man,” and “57 Varieties.”