"Herbie Nichols: It Never Happened" by Steve Siegel

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“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.”

- Frank Kimbrough [pianist] and Ben Allison [bassist] insert booklet, The Complete Blue Note Recordings [3 CD, CDP 7243 8 59352 2 0]

With previous features on pianist Wade Legge, the Great Day in Harlem Photograph “Mystery Man” - William J. Crump, drummer Frankie Dunlop, vocalist Jimmy Rushing, critic and author Nat Hentoff, Jazz Party: A Great Night In Manhattan featuring the Miles Davis Sextet, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the September 9, 1958 fest that Columbia Records put on at the Plaza Hotel for its executives and guests, and Dupree Bolton, Steve Siegel has assumed the role of “unofficial” staff writer for JazzProfiles.

His latest effort is about pianist and composer Herbie Nichols [1919 - 1963] who is described in Richard Cook’s Jazz Encyclopedia as “A mysterious and elusive figure, Nichols has been haunting the jazz of the past 20 years much more readily than he did in his own lifetime. He studied piano in New York and began playing in bands in 1937; following his military service he drifted around the New York club scene of the 405, taking what work he could find, and paying close attention to some of his peers: he was the first to write an article on Thelonious Monk's music, in a black magazine called Music Dial. Mary Lou Williams recorded four of his tunes, and he co-led one date for Savoy in 1952, but it wasn't until Alfred Lion of Blue Note finally offered him a date in 1955 that Nichols got himself on to record in a serious way. Lion was excited enough by the music to cut 30 titles across five different sessions, and they were a fine showcase for Nichols's strange music. Titles such as 'Orse At Safari', 'Love, Gloom, Cash, Love', 'Cro-Magnon Nights' and 'Shuffle Montgomery' alone suggest that Nichols was no ordinary thinker, and his playing is quite a tough listen: he is more abstruse and difficult than Monk, ideas darting past before they settle in the mind, and in otherwise steady, mid-tempo settings he used rhythmical ideas which derail expectations. Lion never used him as a sideman on any other dates and left eight titles unissued: the records sold poorly in Nichols's lifetime, and he went back to club work, dying of leukemia in 1963. As a final cruelty, many of his original, unpublished compositions were reputedly destroyed in a flood at his father's apartment, years after his death. Yet projects led by long-time Nichols admirers such as Misha Mengelberg, Roswell Rudd and Frank Kimbrough have brought many of the pianist's tunes into something approaching the standard post-bop repertoire, and today he is lionized by musicians, if not listeners.”

© -Steve Siegel copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

“According to the 1920 census, Herbert Horatio Nichols was born on January 3, 1919 in the San Juan Hill section of Manhattan on W. 61st - the same area where Thelonious Monk lived most of his life. He was one of four children of Joel Theophilus Nichols (1894-1989), born in St. Kitts, British West Indies and his wife Ida Hazel Nichols (1892-?), also from the West Indies. Joel arrived in New York City in 1910 and found work as a building superintendent. Ida arrived in 1915. Joel and Ida took out a marriage license on July 28, 1915 and were presumably married shortly after.

As was the custom of the day, many Black families had a piano in the home and started their children with lessons at a young age. Generally, these lessons centered on light classical music fare, even though at that time, the child, no matter how precocious, had little chance of employment in the all White world of classical music. But beyond the love of music, the piano was also a status symbol of a family's determination to succeed or perhaps, as in August Wilson's work The Piano Lesson, a linkage to past generations.

So, little Herbie dutifully took his piano lessons and became very proficient on the instrument.

By 1930 the ever-expanding Nichols family of six had moved to 118th Street in Harlem.

By 1937 Nichols’ proficiency at the piano landed him his first professional job, in the then popular Royal Baron Orchestra. By 1938 Nichols was with Floyd “Horse collar" Williams’ group at Monroe's Uptown House, a soon to be, along with Minton's, incubator for the jazz modernist progressive movement of the 1940s.

According to Robin D. G. Kelly in his biography of Thelonious Monk, it appears that in 1938 Nichols had additional responsibilities at Monroe's, as the house pianist and built a reputation as an excellent player with modern ideas; though critic Leonard Feather, an actual observer of that scene at Monroe's, states that Nichols was always being pushed off the piano stool by hipsters who were not his equal. 

Despite Nichols' employment with two first rate organizations and his possible role as Monroe's house pianist, it appears that he still held down a day job in order to make a living. The 1940 census lists the 21-year-old Nichols as a “porter” in an office building. His residence was listed as Union Street in the Bronx.

By 1941 Nichols was drafted and sent overseas but never saw any action. He was discharged in the Summer of 1943 and returned to New York City to reenter the music scene. What the jazz world had in store for Nichols over the next 20 years – which would turn out to be the rest of his short life - was not what Nichols could have ever imagined. 

The first half of the 20th century, with the emergence and acceptance of new, exciting musical genres like ragtime, stride, swing, rhythm and blues and modern jazz, presented opportunities for talented Black musicians. But it wasn't always an easy life contending with the blatant as well as institutionalized racism forming a formidable barrier between the Black performer and the success he or she had worked for. 

Many Black artists have overcome these barriers and have become very famous, even to be considered legends and/or geniuses. But occasionally a Black artist comes along whose trials and tribulations are such that even genius cannot carry them to career success.

Nichols’ difficulties seemed not to be necessarily imposed by any overt racist attitudes carried by Whites but by issues of social acceptance within his own race and profession, manifested by the time and place Nichols found himself in.

In a perfect world, Nichols' peers would have judged him entirely on his skills as a musician. They would have welcomed Nichols, into the musical cliques formed around the modernist jazz artists who were exploring new avenues of expression characterized by high musicianship and the open-minded pursuit of a new, original approach to jazz. But Nichols was never afforded that opportunity because the context of the music did not possess the purity of purpose that the actual musical content provided. Yes, the ability to adapt to the new thing in jazz was important but equally so was how you dressed, how you talked, how you walked, even, perversely, what drugs you were doing. 

The reason why Nichols was relegated to being an outsider in the jazz scene might be traced to the confluence of at least 3 interrelated factors:

Nichols did not, according to first-hand accounts, fit in very comfortably with the emerging clique of modernist hipsters in neither demeanor, attitude or dress. No goatee, zoot suits, berets, jive talk, drugs or alcohol for Nichols. Simply put, Nichols was, as pianist Eric Reed described it to me, “hopelessly square.” Evidently this prevented entry into the group as well as all the privileges that entailed such as commanding the piano bench at jam sessions. 

Interesting to note that Charlie Parker, who lived an amoral life of heavy drinking and drug use and was known to hock other musicians’ instruments in order to get a “fix," was not only afforded high status in the clique but venerated and his drug use emulated by other musicians.

This is not to say Nichols was, at this point, considered to be in Parker's class as a musician, but the difference in social acceptance of the two men is striking.

Michael Cuscuna, in the notes that accompany the 1987 Mosaic Nichols box set, writes of what he sees in Francis Wolf's images of Nichols, taken at the 1955-56 Blue Note recording sessions: 

His stature, gentleness, warmth, depth, sophistication, easy manner and intensely fertile mind are all captured in Frank's lens.

Stepping into a world where many fellow musicians did not respect those admirable qualities to the extent that his virtues seemed to actually work against him and as impediments to doing what he loved and did well, must have been rather jarring to Nichols. More so because he was aware of the musical gap that existed between him and many of his less talented fellow musicians.

Secondly, his music was difficult to play and rather different from where the new sounds were heading. Few of the leaders of the modernists movement ever really acknowledged Nichols or took up his cause until years later.

For many years, Nichols pestered Blue Note's owner Alfred Lion, going as far as sending him copies of his compositions, until Lion finally consented to let Nichols audition for him. This speaks to the level of anonymity Nichols had within the modernist movement because Lion oftentimes relied on word-of- mouth from musicians already on the Blue Note roster to find new, emerging talent. 

According to Nichols: He (Lion) said I was the most persistent man he ever met. 

Lastly, primarily as a result of these challenges, Nichols struggled to make enough money to eat. 

The same 1940 census that lists Nichols as a porter, lists his 1939 income as $780 (about $16,000 in current funds). The census data also indicates that he had “no additional income” in 1939, indicating that he made no money from his involvement in music or he was paid under the table.

Pianist Eric Reed points out that there exists a rather telling comparison between the careers of Nichols and fellow Blue Note pianist, Sonny Clark, whose career at Blue Note covered the period of 1957 to 1962 – the final five years of Nichols' life - and who died in 1963, the same year as Nichols' passing.

Researching Reed's statement, we find:

Clark arrived at Blue Note in 1957, less than a year after Nichols had apparently fallen out of favor with Alfred Lion and had moved on to Bethlehem Records. During Clark's first six months at Blue Note – June to December 1957  - he led four sessions and appeared as a sideman on 10 others. 

There is no doubt that the prodigiously talented Clark was the perfect pianist to execute the musical direction that Alfred Lion was taking Blue Note during these years. But it's useful to note that the first time Nichols auditioned for him in 1955, Lion was mightily impressed and soon recorded him, resulting in what were ultimately to be considered classic albums. But following those sessions, Blue Note was never again to record Nichols.

A further point about Nichols' lack of involvement in the modern jazz scene in New York City during this period: Beyond his rather meager output as a leader, with the exception of a few obscure minor label efforts, he never once functioned as a sideman on any progressive jazz recording session. Since leaders almost always chose their own sidemen, it would be difficult to name one other musician from this era with a similar skill set to Nichols who never appeared as a sideman on any sessions for a major jazz label during a career that spanned 25 years (1938-1963), such as Nichols' did.

Beyond the three intrinsic factors that handicapped Nichols, we can point to many extrinsic factors that were happening at this time that should have worked in Nichols' favor but rarely did.

Nichols' musically mature years were in the bebop/hard bop era of the 1940s through the 1950s. During this period New York City was the reigning jazz capital of the world; a period of increasing recognition of jazz as a legitimate art form. Through articles as well as concert and record reviews, many writers helped to intellectualize the music and the musicians. Nichols, both through his demanding compositional style and his studied approach to the music, would seem to be an excellent representative for that music. But, as the title of one of Nichol's compositions so presciently predicted - It Never Happened.

The medium of radio was discovering bebop and Jazz disc jockeys such as “Symphony” Sid Torin in New York City emerged with the power to make or break an artist through heavy play of selections from their newest album as well as on-air interviews and live remote broadcasts from NYC jazz clubs. This exposure served to create demand for the artists’ work and create some cash flow for them. There are no known remote broadcasts featuring Nichols and only one comprehensive on-air interview of him.

As the 1940s gave way to the 1950s, the 78 RPM record that held 3 to 4 minutes of music, transitioned to the extended play 10 inch and then, finally, into the 12 inch long play records – perfect media for a composer like Nichols to record more long-form compositions, which he rarely was able to take advantage of.

Adding to all that potential exposure, were emerging major jazz record labels with at least some promotional staffs; a multitude of live entertainment jazz clubs; local, regional and national jazz periodicals, and in NYC, the largest, most sophisticated audience for the music in the world.

So, as this burgeoning jazz scene unfolded, it seems that in addition to his lack of acceptance by other musicians, he was also unable to leverage most of the opportunities that other modernists were able to take advantage of. 

In my discussions with Eric Reed, I asked him about the views that musicians who came of age in the early 1990’s had of Nichols. 

SS: Your generation of young musicians had great respect for your elders. Was Nichols a topic of conversations between the musicians?

ER: Almost never. In part because he died so young and so early.  Also, because he did not have that many recordings out. He was not a mainstream musician, always in the margins – even in his heyday.  So, Nichols was mentioned very rarely. We knew who he was, we knew the records because they were on Blue Note and the presence of Art Blakey and Max Roach (on the recordings). I think that without Blakey and Roach he would have been talked about even less. 

SS: What modern jazz pianists might have been influenced by Nichols?

ER: Geri Allen, Jason Moran, Rodney Kendricks, Benny Green, drummer Gregory Hutchinson - mainly because of the influence of Blakey and Roach. So, there was always a small circle of us who discussed Herbie Nichols and his recordings. 

Herbie, in a 1962 interview on radio station WBAI, places some of the blame for his failure to break through to a wider jazz audience, on the jazz critics. He wasn't complaining about receiving a negative review, nor was he complaining of an inaccurate assessment; he was complaining that with the exception of some favorable reviews of his Blue Note recordings, he had received little attention from the critics; despite producing what he knew was creative, forward-looking music. 

Interestingly, he concluded that he felt all critics should be required to have music degrees, strongly implying that he was being ignored because the untrained critics were so flummoxed by his music that they simply chose to ignore it. 

The word flummoxed could also be applied to how writers and critics had initially looked upon Nichols' contemporaries, Thelonious Monk and later in Nichols' career, Cecil Taylor. More than one jazz writer or critic has opined that Nichols was the missing link between Monk and Cecil Taylor. But maybe the real issue is not the supposed linkage as it is that perhaps in the judgment of record owners/producers like Bob Weinstock at Prestige, Alfred Lion at Blue Note and Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer at Riverside, that the entire musical territory from Monk's later progressivism to Taylor early avant-gardism was already covered by these two giants. With no clearly defined market slice available for Nichols, perhaps he was simply squeezed out of the scene by economics.

From this economic perspective, it bears remembering that even as early as the 1950s, owners of jazz record labels had profit motives and were primarily in the business of staying solvent and though they recorded what they liked, their number one priority was not producing grand art; though history has shown us that at times, they did just that. 

The real discussion might be why Monk’s music was eventually so palatable to the public that a mainstream label like Columbia stuck with him through six albums and Nichols' commercial value was considered bupkis. 

From a musical perspective, both Monk and Nichols had a great percussive drive to their music. Both had very particular ideas on the role of both bass and drums. Monk's rhythms were more angular with a forever moving rhythmic center. Monk's music also offered catchy melodic motifs which were hummable and oftentimes humorous, even bringing a smile to the faces of the over intellectualized hipster listeners of the day. 

So, Monk's music presents an emotional edge may it be happy, sad or mysterious – sometimes all in the same performance. Nichols, the intellectual, had a more classical view of composition which lacks much of Monk's emotionalism but in its place manages to combine all the musical elements of great rhythmic vitality, ever shifting snippets of melody and as we hear in Monk, surprising harmonic changes. These factors blend into a rather unique mix, which was ahead of its time and perhaps foreign to the ears of many and antithetical to what the typical consumer of jazz was looking for in the hard bop era of the mid to late 1950s.

Eric Reed: Herbie's music was extremely complex but then so was Thelonious Monk's music. In addition to that, Monk's music was at times severely criticized by writers but Blue Note, Prestige and Riverside all took a chance on Monk and recorded him. Herbie Nichols did not get that same consideration.

The February 1964 Time Magazine cover article on Monk entitled The Loneliest Monk, established The High Priest of Bebop as an eccentric genius. But because the article ran in Time, a very mainstream magazine, it also established Monk as having enough soft edges to be safe for the mainstream jazz fan but yet counter-culture enough for the leading edge of post war baby boomers who were in their late teens and were looking for some music to call their own. No doubt many purchased Monk's albums for no other reason than to scare the hell out of their parents.

By the time Nichols had completed his recordings for Blue Note in 1956, the hard bop scene had captured a large share of the jazz market. Nichols had to deal with this new reality.   

Four of hard bop’s classic albums were released in the years 1956 to 1958. Clifford Brown and Max Roach – Brown and Roach Incorporated; Thelonious Monk's – Brilliant Corners; John Coltrane's – Blue Train and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ - Moanin'. What they had in common was a standard rhythm section with either 2 or 3 front line players composed of some combination of saxophones, trumpets and trombones. This had become the standard configuration for hard bop groups, allowing for a greater variety in soloing, unique and ever-changing voicings as well as more potential writers of material for the group, resulting in a diverse and ever-changing sound.

To a great extent this was what the jazz market was now buying. Against this backdrop Nichols' very cerebral piano, bass, and drum music had little chance to be heard. 

The difficulty of the jazz market to understand Nichol’s compositions is somewhat reminiscent of the literary public’s response to the Impressionist movement of composition. 

Impressionistic writing is a style that relies on abstract associations …. The impressionistic style of writing leaves the reader to determine the author's ultimate meaning.

Listening to such Nichols compositions as The Gig, House Party Starting and Terpsichore. We hear a very different approach than what the beboppers of this period were doing. Similar to some of Monk's work but more structured and a little more buttoned - down. 

Perhaps, as pointed out in the definition of Impressionism in writing, many listeners to Nichols’ compositions might not have had the patience to search for what his ultimate meaning was. After all, the period of 1955 to 1957, when Nichols made his albums for Blue Note as well as his one Bethlehem album, were the apogee years of hard bop with the music becoming less nihilistic, less intellectual and more emotional (soulful) than bebop was.  Perhaps more attractive to the generation of listeners who grew up less with the bebop of Gillespie and Parker and more the sounds of rhythm and blues.

As Ethan Iverson pointed out in his 2019 essay on Nichols:

Sometimes it feels as if he’s treading water… . Listening to a bunch of Nichols in succession can be a little unsatisfying. It is better to just deal with a few of his astounding tracks in the context of a bunch of other groovy ’50s jazz.

Could it be that Nichols was simply the wrong musician at the wrong time, playing the wrong music to the wrong audience, with many baffled critics looking on and ignoring the whole thing?

Even though Nichols’ recorded output was always done in a trio format, he had always expressed a desire to record his compositions with horns, but it never happened in his lifetime. It wasn't until the early 1980s that Nichols’ music was scored for an ensemble - 1982’s Roswell Rudd, Steve Lacey and Misha Mengelberg's album, Regeneration, contained four Nichols compositions. In 1984, Lacy and Mengelberg reunited and with trombonist George Lewis replacing Rudd in the front line, released an album entitled Change of Season which was the first entire album of Nichols compositions played by someone other than Nichols. In the late 1990s, pianist Frank Kimbrough and bassist Ben Allison started The Herbie Nichols Project. The group, including horns, recorded albums featuring Nichols’ compositions.  

In listening to the two Lacy - Mengelberg albums, one can understand why Nichols wanted his music to be interpreted by a larger group. The work of Lacy and Lewis on the Change of Season album reveals that Nichols' trio recordings were more like a sketch than a finished product. The rather unusual presence of trombone and soprano saxophone serves to animate Nichols' compositions much like a cartoonist animates by filling in a sketch with vibrant colors and adding movement. Suddenly the very human elements of Nichols' musical vignettes become evident, for instance Lacy’s childlike soprano voice being reprimanded by Lewis' stern trombone. The colors of Nichols' unusual harmonics are captured much more clearly in the ensemble work than could be expressed on a solo piano.

Side A of the Regeneration album, which contains the four Nichols compositions, might be the most authentic presentation of his music because of the presence of Roswell Rudd who studied with Nichols and tried to keep Nichols' music before the public. Of all the musicians who knew Nichols, Rudd could best conceptualize his vision. 

Rudd: … I have given years of study to this music. And with regard to Herbie Nichols my performances and studies with him were without doubt the most fortunate thing that ever happened to me in terms of my musical education.

We will never know if the sounds produced by the ensemble casts on these two albums is what Nichols had in mind but the results make it clear that there was much more meat-on-the-bones of his compositions than any trio could adequately express.

Returning to the Nichols – Monk comparisons, the transformation of Nichols' compositions on these two albums, bring to mind how, on Thelonious Monk's Big Band album, Hall Overton’s arrangements for a large ensemble managed to mine Monk's compositions for additional gold.

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Postscript:

In concluding I would like to twist the narrative around to list what, in a more just musical world, should have happened to Nichols. We pick up the fantasy directly following the final recording session for Blue Note in 1956:

Mostly due to clean living Nichols lives as long as his father, passing away peacefully of natural causes in 2013 at the age of 94. So, in his much extended life…  

Alfred Lion promotes Nichols’ albums and continues to record him as leader and occasionally as a sideman (would have been fascinating to have heard him on some of the more progressive 1960's Bobby Hutcherson albums). This exposure then allows him to book gigs in major New York City venues and make enough money to support a working trio.

Nichols and Rudd get together with Steve Lacey, Art Blakey and Al McKibbon and Nichols realizes one of his dreams - to have his work performed with horns in the front line. They do a week at the Village Vanguard with Alfred Lion and Rudy Van Gelder recording the proceedings. A Blue Note recording entitled The Herbie Nichols' All Stars Live at the Village Vanguard is released to much critical acclaim.

Nichols is contacted by Guenther Schuller to do some writing and arranging on a Third-Stream album that Schuller has in mind.

He completes over 300 compositions in his lifetime

On April 12, 1963, Herbie Nichols passed away from Leukemia. Reportedly penniless. He was 44 years old.