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Herbie Nichols: A Jazzist's Life

By Raul d'Gama Rose
January 2, 2010
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Herbie Nichols: A Jazzist's Life
Mark Miller
Soft cover; 224 pages
ISBN: 978-1-55128-146-0
The Mercury Press
2009

Although he is considerably better known and respected today than he was in his lifetime, pianist

Herbie Nichols

piano
1919 - 1963

" data-original-title="" title="">Herbie Nichols and his spectacularly original music remains relatively obscure. This is one of the conundrums of our time, for his music is infinitely more accessible than, say, the music of pianist

Cecil Taylor

piano
1929 - 2018

" data-original-title="" title="">Cecil Taylor. Therefore an event such as Mark Miller's book, Herbie Nichols: A Jazzist's Life, is more than celebratory, it is downright courageous. After all, it is a book about one of music's most self-effacing and tragic figures. Nichols' life is perhaps even more tragic than saxophonist

Charlie Parker

saxophone, alto
1920 - 1955

" data-original-title="" title="">Charlie Parker's or trumpeter

Clifford Brown

trumpet
b.1930

" data-original-title="" title="">Clifford Brown's. Both died young, but not only did Nichols die young, his unappreciated career spanned just 12 years between 1946 and 1958, leading just four recording dates—three for Blue Note and one for Bethlehem.

Many musicians and writers have tried to give Nichols his due—from critics such as Martin Williams and Nat Hentoff, and more importantly musicians such as trombonist

Roswell Rudd

trombone
1935 - 2017

" data-original-title="" title="">Roswell Rudd, saxophonist

Steve Lacy

saxophone, soprano
1934 - 2004

" data-original-title="" title="">Steve Lacy, bassist

Buell Neidlinger

b.1936

" data-original-title="" title="">Buell Neidlinger and pianist

Misha Mengelberg

piano
1935 - 2017

" data-original-title="" title="">Misha Mengelberg. The latter four went to considerable effort to keep his unique musical legacy alive and they were perhaps only marginally more successful than Nichols himself. Mark Miller's book will certainly go a long way in righting the wrongs that have stacked up against Nichols and it succeeds in doing so on several levels.

For starters, Miller has gone to great lengths to research his subject thoroughly. Nichols is not an easy subject to research, despite the fact that he was an articulate writer who contributed a regular column in The Music Dial, Rhythm and occasionally in other publications, among them Amsterdam News. He even wrote liner notes to his first record as leader, Herbie Nichols Trio (Blue Note, 1956). There are also some liner notes and sparsely published articles about the pianist in magazines such as Metronome, Coda, Cadence and Down Beat. Miller uses these sources not only to provide a chronology of Nichols' life, but also to make sense of the apathy in musical circles towards him. The fact that Nichols was no showman and cared little for publicity emerges strongly from Miller's analysis.

In addition to its biographical content, Miller's work goes a long way in distancing Nichols from pianist

Thelonious Monk

piano
1917 - 1982

" data-original-title="" title="">Thelonious Monk musically. The men were contemporaries, and just as some have attempted to draw a straight line between Cecil Taylor and, say,

Don Pullen

piano
1941 - 1995

" data-original-title="" title="">Don Pullen many critics have obscured facts and called Nichols a disciple of Monk. Miller clearly establishes that Nichols emerged from a much wider pool that included African-American sources and modern European music as well. Monk's remained the tradition that swirled with the stride pianists and

Duke Ellington

piano
1899 - 1974

" data-original-title="" title="">Duke Ellington and then shot off on a tangent all his own. Nichols' music is also a rich source of melodic and harmonic invention. And Nichols also wrote music with the most melodic and detailed bass lines. And here he was a singular musician, even compared to Monk. Miller's work recognizes all this.

Finally, there is the presentation of the music itself. Miller is an astute listener. In the second half of the book, he develops his theory and analysis of Nichols' music. The pianist apparently gave notice of his uniqueness with a re-interpretation of

George Gershwin

composer / conductor
1898 - 1937

" data-original-title="" title="">George Gershwin's "'S Wonderful" and from then on he was unstoppable. Miller spends considerable time examining Nichols' approach to melody and his unparalleled harmonic inventions as well. It appears that not only was Nichols well read, but he was one of those rare musicians who were open to much more than the sound of his 'hood. Miller finds that he was agape at the immensity of what could be "done with the sounds of the multiple counterpoint of Hindemith, the neo-classic polytonality of Shostakovich and Piston and the melting of the vast musical devices which Bartok loved to use at random and which makes his kaleidoscopic style come closest to jazz."

Despite recognizing this widening of Nichols' musical resources, Miller clearly establishes that Nichols was a "jazzist" at heart. It is clear that although he was constantly rebuffed by musicians, listeners, critics and the recording industry, Nichols was deeply committed to the African-American experience and this is reflected in the idioms and metaphors he chose to use in his music. And his uniqueness as a musician rests in his appreciation of the harmonies and rhythms that came to be associated with much modern music. After all, Nichols was the one who said, "I keep remembering that the overtones of fifths created by the beautiful tones of any ordinary drum was surely the first music, the precursor of the historic major scale, no less, which was built on the same principles. That is why the cycle of fifths is so prevalent in elemental jazz."

Also for the first time, there is in Miller's book a fairly extensive review of Nichols' music as interpreted by Roswell Rudd, Buell Neidlinger and pianist

Frank Kimbrough

piano
1956 - 2020

" data-original-title="" title="">Frank Kimbrough who together with bassist

Ben Allison

bass, acoustic
b.1966

" data-original-title="" title="">Ben Allison formed

Herbie Nichols Project

" data-original-title="" title="">Herbie Nichols Project and also annotated and re-arranged Nichols' music for larger format ensembles. This section alone goes a long way in establishing the accessibility and importance of Nichols' work in the context of the literature of contemporary American music.

This is a major work about a major musician whose time must surely come. Mark Miller's eminently accessible book will make Herbie Nichols' eminently accessible music to a wider and more appreciative audience.

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