"Herbie Nichols - It Never Happened" written by: Steve Siegel

[Elmo]

HOW DOES AN ARTIST CREATE in such a way that his art is at once timeless, in that it is relevant to any generation, and individual, in that it evokes an era and helps to define a distinct personality? The music of Herbie Nichols is all of these things and the discovery of this fact has added greatly to our musical lives.

Herbie Nichols was an extraordinary pianist/composer who was tragically under-recognized in his lifetime, He recorded only six sessions as a leader, all in the trio format, and all with the support of creative sidemen. These sessions resulted in four releases, three on the Blue Note label, and one for Bethlehem. Unfortunately, great recordings don't always sell well and Herbie remained an obscure figure on the fringes of the jazz scene until well after his untimely death of leukemia on April 12,1963 at the age of 44.” (booklet from The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Herbie Nichols)

Link to article on Jazz Profiles: https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2023/02/herbie-nichols-it-never-happened-by.html?m=1

[Joe]

Thank you for sharing this.

[Chuck Nessa]

Looking forward.

[Gheorghe]

Thank you for sharing this. 

Very interesting to read. And very understandable, why he did not have a breakthrough like Monk had. 

And yeah, to record only as a leader with no horns added must be quite daring and might not attract many listeners. 

To a lesser amount I have similar experiences here where I live and play: A saxophonist/composer who plays only his own music and demands a lot of rehearsals and then it´s little money, complains he doesn´t have enough work. 

And maybe in 1955 it was the same. To compare him with Monk, well some said that Monk´s music is "hard to play" but you just hear it and can sing along with it and make dance steps, I hear Monk and feel that I must do those Monkish dance steps trough the room, and spin around, it´s just that he transmittes his personality thru his music in a manner that you can understand and dig it very easily. Many otherwise non jazz listeners found it nice and smiled when they heard it or saw it in action. 

And to get gigs, I don´t know how to formulate it correctly, you must have a bit of that hustler quality, you might "brag" a little and in the same time "charm" those who would book you......., or somehow to get folks to love you even if you are late for the gig or have drunk a bit too much or don´t take a bow in front of the audience (beeing late: Monk, Chet Baker, having drunk too much: Dexter, beeing rude towards the audience : Miles Davis). But people loved them and they were booked constantly..... 

[bertrand]

Pianist Lafayette Gilchrist is performing a set of Nichols pieces with a Sextet this Saturday 2/18 in Frederick, MD. The second set will be his own compositions.

My understanding is that the Nichols idea was suggested by Bill Shoemaker.

Bertrand.

[bertrand]

The compositions alluded to were not actually lost in a flood. They surfaced a few years ago, in the possession of family members:

https://jazzleadsheets.com/composers/herbie-nichols.html

 

[John B Litweiler]

A couple thoughts re the Stephen Cerra interview that Elmo quotes:

1.   How much did Ike Quebec influence the choices of whom Blue Note recorded as leader and sidemen in the 1950s?   Blue Note recorded a lot more junkies during his a&r era than his successor Duke Pearson picked for 1960s sessions, and Nichols in his Blue Note heyday was shamefully clean.

2.  On the basis of the one sideman recording I know, 2 tunes with a Joe Thomas group on Atlantic, Nichols was very bland pianist.   His 1952 trio pieces with Chocolate Williams are better and this time show Nichols to be an eclectic, a player of several different styles including bits here  and there that predict his BN and Bethlehem dates.   It's those 1955-57 recordings of mostly his original songs with their unique changes and developments that show what a great original artist he was.   He interpreted, embellished, varied his compositions more than he improvised on their changes in the bop sense.   Much as I appreciate how Rudd and Kimbrough played some of the Nichols songs that Herbie himself never got to record, I wish that a Nichols-influenced pianist  had recorded those pieces  --  dammit, those are PIANO compositions, much as other instrumentalists like them.   Simon Nabatov, bless him,  is the one who came closest to the Nichols style.    That was in a wonderful evening at the Hungry Brain club in Chicago as well as on his CD of familiar Nichols songs.

  

[Gheorghe]

1 hour ago, John B Litweiler said:

A couple thoughts re the Stephen Cerra interview that Elmo quotes:

   How much did Ike Quebec influence the choices of whom Blue Note recorded as leader and sidemen in the 1950s?   Blue Note recorded a lot more junkies during his a&r era than his successor Duke Pearson picked for 1960s sessions, and Nichols in his Blue Note heyday was shamefully clean.

 

 

  

I did think that Ike Quebec was the BN A&R man in the early 60´s. He brought some of the old masters of the past back to BN, like Dexter Gordon, Leo Parker, and a try to record Tadd Dameron, so it was three key masters of the jazz era of the 40´s . I mean it was during the time when Ike Quebek himself made some albums under his own name. It is possible that all those mentioned musicians still were junkies, and with the exception of Dexter they all died soon afterwards. I think Ike Quebec died before Bud Powell returned to N.Y., if he had lived I´m sure he would have made a record with him. 

About the fifties.....I´m not sure who was the A&R man. Once I heard that Babs Gonzales brought some artists to BN in the 50´s, among them Jimmy Smith. 
The difference between BN in the 50´s and the early 60´s was that in the 50´s they recorded all the key figures of hard bop, the most modern style then. 

In the 60´s it was not so sure in which direction they might go. They still recorded some of the hard bop masters, also made some more "mainstream" stuff like "The Three Sounds" , "Stanley Turrentine" and "Ike Quebec" , some bossa nova dedicated albums, and then the "Boogaloo" type of thing. 

As the 60´s went on, they got more advanced stuff too, modal into avantgarde, they key figures of the 60´s like Wayne, Sam Rivers , Hubbard, Hancock, and already established masters of the avantgarde like Ornette, Don Cherry and Cecil Taylor....