Early life Earl Hines was born in
Duquesne, Pennsylvania, 12 miles from the center of
Pittsburgh, in 1903. His father, Joseph Hines, 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". and $15 a week. Deppe (later a member of the Detroit
McKinney's Cotton Pickers), 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. 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. 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. Armstrong and Hines then recorded what are often regarded as some of the most important jazz records ever made. In the days of
78 rpm records, recording engineers were unable to play back a take without rendering the wax master unusable for commercial release, so the band did not hear the final version of "West End Blues" until it was issued by Okeh a few weeks later. "Earl Hines, he was surprised when the record came out on the market, 'cause he brought it by my house, you know, we'd forgotten we'd recorded it", Armstrong recalled in 1956. But they liked what they heard. "When it first came out", Hines said, "Louis and I stayed by that recording practically an hour and a half or two hours and we just knocked each other out because we had no idea it was gonna turn out as good as it did." The Sunset Cafe closed in 1927. But as Louis Armstrong and His Stompers (with Hines as musical director), they ran into difficulties trying to establish their own venue, the Warwick Hall Club, which they rented for a year with the management help of Lil Hardin Armstrong. Hines went briefly to New York and returned to find that Armstrong and Singleton had rejoined the rival Dickerson band at the new Savoy Ballroom in his absence, leaving Hines feeling "warm". When Armstrong and Singleton later asked him to join them with Dickerson at the Savoy Ballroom, Hines said, "No, you guys left me in the rain and broke the little corporation we had". Hines joined the clarinetist
Jimmie Noone at the Apex, an after-hours
speakeasy, playing from midnight to 6 a.m., seven nights a week. In 1928, he recorded 14 sides with Noone and again with Armstrong (for a total of 38 sides with Armstrong). His first piano solos were recorded late that year: eight for
QRS Records in New York and then seven for
Okeh Records in Chicago, all except two his own compositions. Hines moved in with Kathryn Perry (with whom he had recorded "Sadie Green the Vamp of New Orleans"). Hines said of her, "She'd been at The Sunset too, in a dance act. She was a very charming, pretty girl. She had a good voice and played the violin. I had been divorced and she became my common-law wife. We lived in a big apartment and her parents stayed with us". Perry recorded several times with Hines, including "
Body and Soul" in 1935. They stayed together until 1940, when Hines "divorced" her to marry Ann Jones Reed, but that marriage was soon "indefinitely postponed". Hines married singer 'Lady of Song' Janie Moses in 1947. They had two daughters, Janear (born 1950) and Tosca. Both daughters died before he did, Tosca in 1976 and Janear in 1981. Janie divorced him on June 14, 1979, and died in 2007. However, two other children from Laurice Penn exist: Michael Gordon Penn (1960) and Sandra Penn Wilson (1962 - 2023).
Chicago years On December 28, 1928 (his 25th birthday and six weeks before the
Saint Valentine's Day Massacre), Hines opened at Chicago's
Grand Terrace Cafe leading his own big band, a prestigious position in the jazz world at the time. "All America was dancing", Hines said, The Grand Terrace was controlled by the gangster
Al Capone, so Hines became Capone's "Mr Piano Man". The Grand Terrace upright piano was soon replaced by a white $3,000
Bechstein grand. Talking about those days Hines later said: From the Grand Terrace, Hines and his band broadcast on "open mikes" over many years, sometimes seven nights a week, coast-to-coast across America – Chicago being well placed to deal with live broadcasting across time zones in the United States. The Hines band became the most broadcast band in America. Among the listeners were a young
Nat King Cole and
Jay McShann in Kansas City, who said his "real education came from Earl Hines. When 'Fatha' went off the air, I went to bed." Hines's most significant "student" was
Art Tatum. The Hines band usually comprised 15–20 musicians on stage, occasionally up to 28. Among the band's many members were
Wallace Bishop,
Alvin Burroughs,
Scoops Carry, Oliver Coleman, Bob Crowder, Thomas Crump,
George Dixon, Julian Draper,
Streamline Ewing, Ed Fant, Milton Fletcher,
Walter Fuller,
Dizzy Gillespie, Leroy Harris, Woogy Harris,
Darnell Howard,
Cecil Irwin, Harry 'Pee Wee' Jackson, Warren Jefferson,
Budd Johnson,
Jimmy Mundy,
Ray Nance,
Charlie Parker, Willie Randall,
Omer Simeon,
Cliff Smalls,
Leon Washington,
Freddie Webster,
Quinn Wilson and
Trummy Young. Occasionally, Hines allowed another pianist sit in for him, the better to allow him to conduct the whole "Organization".
Jess Stacy was one,
Nat "King" Cole and
Teddy Wilson were others, but
Cliff Smalls was his favorite. Each summer, Hines toured with his whole band for three months, including through the South – the first black big band to do so. He explained, "[when] we traveled by train through the South, they would send a porter back to our car to let us know when the dining room was cleared, and then we would all go in together. We couldn't eat when we wanted to. We had to eat when they were ready for us." In ''
Duke Ellington's America'', Harvey G. Cohen writes:
The birth of bebop In 1942, Hines provided the saxophonist
Charlie Parker with his big break, although Parker was subsequently fired soon after for his "time-keeping" – by which Hines meant his inability to show up on time – despite Parker resorting to sleeping under the band stage in his attempts to be punctual.
Dizzie Gillespie joined the same year. The
Grand Terrace Cafe had closed suddenly in December 1940; its manager, Ed Fox, disappeared. The 37-year-old Hines, always famously good to work for, took his band on the road full-time for the next eight years, He went to New York and hired a "draft-proof" 12-piece all-woman group, which lasted two months. Next, Hines expanded it into a 28-piece band (17 men, 11 women), but was still able to take time out from his own band to front the
Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1944 when Ellington fell ill. It was during this time (and especially during the recording ban during the
1942–44 musicians' strike) that late-night jam sessions with members of Hines's band sowed the seeds for the emerging new style in jazz,
bebop. Ellington later said that "the seeds of bop were in Earl Hines's piano style". Charlie Parker's biographer
Ross Russell wrote: )|left As early as 1940, saxophone player and arranger
Budd Johnson had "re-written the book" has argued that "
Yardbird Suite", which Parker recorded with
Miles Davis in March 1946, was in fact based on Hines's "Rosetta", which nightly served as the Hines band theme-tune. Dizzy Gillespie described the Hines band, saying, "We had a beautiful, beautiful band with Earl Hines. He's a master and you learn a lot from him, self-discipline and organization." In July 1946, Hines suffered serious head injuries in a car crash near Houston which, despite an operation, affected his eyesight for the rest of his life. Back on the road again four months later, he continued to lead his big band for two more years. In 1947, Hines bought the biggest nightclub in Chicago, The El Grotto, but with the declining popularity of big-band music, it soon foundered and Hines lost $30,000 ($ today).
Rediscovery , Sandy DeSantis,
Velma Middleton,
Fraser MacPherson,
Cozy Cole,
Arvell Shaw, Earl Hines,
Barney Bigard at the Palomar Supper Club,
Vancouver, B.C., March 17, 1951 In early 1948, Hines joined up again with Armstrong in the "
Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars" "small-band". It was not without its strains for Hines. A year later, Armstrong became the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of
Time magazine (on February 21, 1949). Armstrong was by then on his way to becoming an American icon, leaving Hines to feel he was being used only as a sideman in comparison to his old friend. Discussing the difficulties, mainly over billing, Armstrong stated, "Hines and his ego, ego, ego ..." Three years later and to Armstrong's annoyance, Hines left the All Stars in 1951. Next, back as leader again, Hines took his own small combos around the United States. He started with a markedly more modern lineup than the aging All Stars:
Bennie Green,
Art Blakey,
Tommy Potter, and
Etta Jones. In 1954, he toured his then seven-piece group nationwide with the
Harlem Globetrotters. In 1958, he broadcast on the
American Forces Network but by the start of the jazz-lean 1960s, the aging Hines settled "home" in
Oakland, California, with his wife and two young daughters, opened a tobacconist's, and came close to giving up the profession. In 1964,
Stanley Dance, Hines's determined friend and unofficial manager, convinced Hines to perform a series of recitals at the Little Theatre in New York. They were the first piano recitals Hines had ever given; they caused a sensation, leading Hines to be "suddenly rediscovered". "What is there left to hear after you've heard Earl Hines?", asked John Wilson of
The New York Times. Hines then won the 1966 International Critics Poll for
DownBeat magazine's Hall of Fame.
DownBeat also elected him the world's "No. 1 Jazz Pianist" in 1966 (and did so again five more times).
Jazz Journal awarded his LPs of the year first and second in its overall poll and first, second and third in its piano category.
Jazz voted him "Jazzman of the Year" and picked him for its number 1 and number 2 places in the category Piano Recordings. Hines was invited to appear on TV shows hosted by
Johnny Carson and
Mike Douglas. From then until his death twenty years later, Hines recorded endlessly, both solo and with contemporaries like
Cat Anderson,
Harold Ashby,
Barney Bigard,
Lawrence Brown,
Dave Brubeck (they recorded duets in 1975),
Jaki Byard (duets in 1972),
Benny Carter,
Buck Clayton,
Cozy Cole,
Wallace Davenport,
Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis,
Vic Dickenson,
Roy Eldridge,
Duke Ellington (duets in 1966),
Ella Fitzgerald,
Panama Francis,
Bud Freeman,
Stan Getz,
Whitney Balliett wrote of his solo recordings and performances of this time: Hines recorded solo tributes to Armstrong,
Hoagy Carmichael, Ellington,
George Gershwin and
Cole Porter in the 1970s, sometimes on the 1904 12-legged
Steinway given to him in 1969 by
Scott Newhall, the managing editor of the
San Francisco Chronicle. In 1974, when he was in his seventies, Hines recorded sixteen LPs. "A spate of solo recording meant that, in his old age, Hines was being comprehensively documented at last, and he rose to the challenge with consistent inspirational force". From his 1964 "comeback" until his death, Hines recorded over 100 LPs all over the world. Within the industry, he became legendary for going into a studio and coming out an hour and a half later having recorded an unplanned solo LP. Retakes were almost unheard of except when Hines wanted to try a tune again in some other way, often completely different. From 1964 on, Hines often toured Europe, especially France. He toured South America in 1968. He performed in Asia, Australia, Japan and, in 1966, the Soviet Union, in tours funded by the U.S. State Department. During his six-week tour of the Soviet Union, in which he performed 35 concerts, the 10,000-seat
Kyiv Sports Palace was sold out. As a result, the
Kremlin cancelled his
Moscow and
Leningrad concerts as being "too culturally dangerous".
Final years Arguably still playing as well as he ever had, made by
ATV (for Britain's commercial
ITV channel), out-of-hours at the
Blues Alley nightclub in
Washington, DC. The
International Herald Tribune described it as "the greatest jazz film ever made". He played solo at Duke Ellington's funeral, played solo twice at the
White House, for the
President of France and for the
Pope. Of this acclaim, Hines said, "Usually they give people credit when they're dead. I got my flowers while I was living". Hines's last show took place in San Francisco a few days before he died of a heart attack in Oakland. As he had wished, his Steinway was auctioned for the benefit of gifted low-income music students, still bearing its silver plaque: :presented by jazz lovers from all over the world. this piano is the only one of its kind in the world and expresses the great genius of a man who has never played a melancholy note in his lifetime on a planet that has often succumbed to despair. Hines was buried in
Evergreen Cemetery in
Oakland, California. ==Style==