Herbie Nichols
b. 3 December 1919, New York City, New York, USA, d. 12 April 1963. In the late '30s and early '40s Nichols played piano with numerous bands in a wide variety of styles. The bands included those of Herman Autrey, Illinois Jacquet, Lucky Thompson, Edgar Sampson and Arnett Cobb, while the styles ranged across small-group swing, Dixieland and R&B. A remarkably original and talented musician, Nichols developed a personal music that owed a debt to bebop, particularly to its more idiosyncratic practitioners such as Thelonius Monk, but for much of his life the only gigs he could get were playing Dixieland music, which he came to dislike intensely. In the early '60s, he was able to work occasionally with modern musicians closer to his advanced thinking, among them Roswell Rudd and Archie Shepp, but by then he was terminally ill with leukaemia (though Rudd also blamed ‘a broken heart’ brought on by ‘years of frustration, neglect and disillusionment’). In recent years Nichols's reputation has grown rapidly and there have been several tribute albums that feature his compositions, notably two on the Soul Note label and one by Holland's Instant Composers Pool Orchestra. Nichols's own recorded legacy, though small, is of outstanding quality: two Blue Note trio sessions, reissued as the double album THE THIRD WORLD, feature sympathetic support from Art Blakey and Max Roach. A later trio set for Bethlehem has George Duvivier and Dannie Richmond. These records mostly feature his own distinctive and delightful compositions, some of which—2300 Skiddoo, Shuffle Montgomery, House Party Starting, Hangover Triangle—look like becoming established standards in the '90s. ‘There is charm and interest all around you’, Rudd wrote of Nichols's music, ‘from bright ripples on down to heavy undercurrents. What a beautiful sense of space! What incredible lyricism! What soulfullness! What grace! What an expansive palette of sonorities! Wit, taste, discretion, subtleties, nuances … and all so personal and individual.’