By Bill Zinsser

For almost fifty years it has been common knowledge in the entertainment business that the person to call for whatever kind of music you need is the pianist-arranger-composer-organist Dick Hyman. Computerized in Hyman's brain, instantly transferable to his fingers, is every popular piano and organ style that has ever been played in America, historically correct to the year when it was in vogue. He can also replicate note for note, the style of all the American giants of jazz piano in this century. from the intricate rags of Eubie and the galloping stride of James P. Johnson to the urgent bebop of Bud Powell and the introspective lyricism of Bill Evans.

One result of this technical and scholarly breadth is that Hyman gets hired by such metabolic opposites as George Bush and Woody Allen. Bush could approve a Hyman engagement at the White House secure in the knowledge that if he felt a sudden yen for the society-band piano tinklings that he and Barbara danced to during his senior year at Yale, Hyman could oblige at a snap of the presidential fingers. Allen hired him no less confidently to provide the music that gave Radio Days, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Zelig so much of their period authenticity and charm. The story of Leonard Zelig, who keeps turning up in different guises at historical moments, found its perfect musical servant in Hyman, whose peppy Jazz Age score included a foxtrot called "Doin' the Chameleon."

The chameleon is what Hyman has been doin' for his entire career, which began in 1948. As a studio pianist and organist, he has made at least a thousand recordings. Some names he has recorded under besides his own are Ricky Alan, Peter Bennett, David Harkness, Richard Wayne, the Organ Masters, The Living Pianos, Rod Gregory & His Society Orchestra, and Stanley Sokol and the Polkateers. He has toured Europe with Benny Goodman, been the organist and musical director of Arthur Godfrey's television show (the most widely watched TV show of the 1950s), orchestrated the Broadway musical Sugar Babies, played the piano on the soundtracks of The Godfather, The WIZ, and The Night They Raided Minsky's, composed the score for Moonstruck, arranged ballroom and nightclub sequences in Billy Bathgate, and served as the musical director of Scott Joplin, King of Ragtime-arranging, and playing the piano, meticulously fitting Joplin's music to the fingers of the actor Billy Dee Williams on the screen.

He has written arrangements for the Boston Pops and for singers as diverse as Jessye Norman and Perry' Como. He has composed ballet scores for Twyla Tharp and for the Cleveland Ballet. He has published ten books of essays, musical compositions, and arrangements (Dick Hyman's Professional Chord Changes and Substitutions for 100 Tunes Every Musician Should Know). He has organized countless jazz programs of scholarly interest employing the best musicians and backing them impeccably at the piano; he is a seven-time winner of the Most Valuable Player Award of the New York chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He has been involved in the reconstruction of legendary American concerts, including the 1928 Carnegie Hall program presented by W. C. Handy's Orchestra and Jubilee Singers. For that event Hyman impersonated James P. Johnson playing "Yamekraw" on the piano and Thomas "Fats" Waller playing Handy's "St. Louis Blues" on the organ and wrote all the period orchestrations.

Origins

Dick Hyman was born in 1927 in New York and grew up in suburban Mount Vernon. He was adept at the piano at an early age and also played the clarinet, imbibing much of his musical education from the early 78-rpm jazz records that his older brother Arthur reverently brought home. He began playing gigs during his high school years, and when he went on to college at Columbia, where he composed a varsity-show score. One day he heard of a jazz piano contest that was being sponsored by radio station WOV; the winner would get twelve free lessons from Teddy Wilson, and the runner-up would get twelve from Mary Lou Williams, both of whom were to be among the judges. Turning up at the studio on the night of the contest, which was broadcast live, Hyman played Irving Berlin's "Always" and finished first. "My mother had tuned in our Zenith radio for the big moment," Hyman said, "and when I got home she asked me what it was I had played. When I told her, she expressed astonishment. Melody was not a big thing with me in those days."

Lessons with Teddy Wilson

In his lessons from Teddy Wilson, Hyman said, "I learned the Wilsonian runs that would be borrowed by a generation of jazz pianists, some of which Wilson had learned from Art Tatum, and the chord substitutions that jazz players were then applying to standard songs." He also studied with his mother's brother, the classical pianist Anton Rovinsky. "He was my most important teacher," Hyman said. "I learned touch from him and a certain amount of repertoire, especially Beethoven. On my own I pursued Chopin. I loved his ability to take a melody and embellish it in different arbitrary ways, which is exactly what we do in jazz. Chopin would have been a terrific jazz pianist. His waltzes are in my improvising to this day."

Early Gigs

Graduating from college in 1948, Hyman got a job at Wells Music Bar in Harlem, and he seems never to have missed a day's work since. "One night," he said, "my whole family came up to hear me. They marveled that I could be making that much money doing that kind of thing in Harlem-$115 a week. Later that year he did a stint at Cafe Society, and when Birdland opened, he became the house pianist. He played with the society bandleaders Lester Lanin and Emil Coleman, performing at parties and weddings. "Club-date players are admirable-they can satisfy any dance requirement," Hyman said. "I learned a million songs from them. It was continuous playing from nine to two. In the first hour you're playing this ditsy Carmen Cavallero, music and you think, 'Isn't this fun?' In the second hour the fun begins to pall, the third hour is like a dance marathon, and by the fourth hour you don't give a damn." In 1951 Hyman reversed the clock and became a daytime staff pianist and organist with radio station WMCA, and the following year went to NBC, where one of his duties was to show up for a program that started at 7:05 a.m. "We were on call eight hours a day, five days a week. I became known as the guy who would try to play anything that was needed. Usually it came out right. When they discovered that I could also play the organ and was willing to play the organ-most guys didn't like the sound or the feel of it-I was in great demand, especially for quiz shows and for the soap opera Front Page Farrell."

Favorite Activity

Hyman says, "But I think I play at my best as a soloist. You become aware that the clock is ticking and that you can't do everything forever. You have to pull back and do what you do best. For me, my best is playing the piano and, I hope, composing. The composing comes out of the playing, but of course it reacts with everything I've ever played and heard and continue to hear. One of my priorities now is to complete several unfinished compositions and get some of my existing concert works into the repertory, such as my Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Ragtime Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Sextet for Piano, Clarinet, and Strings.

"As for the piano. I'm doing more and more playing in classical venues for nonjazz audiences-people who aren't all that knowledgeable about jazz but who enjoy my kind of piano. I no longer make a big deal about the fact that I can play in various styles. What I can do most effectively is to improvise on American songs by composers like Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin, calling on all the strands from my past. It's frankly virtuosic presentation. I enjoy being on stage now. When I was younger, I was comparatively withdrawn. I preferred playing in a recording studio to doing it in front of people, and when I did perform people got annoyed because I didn't smile. I've learned to smile; I've become more outgoing. I'm also playing better than ever before, and my playing is more emotional. You reach a point where you don't have to display everything that's in your command. People know you can play fast.

There an other values to be pursued: feeling, swinging, directness, harmonic exploration."

A chameleon's skin, however, is not easily shed. I knew that one of the Hymans' three children, Judy Hyman, is also a musician, and I asked Hyman about her career. He said that she is an old-time country-music violinist. "Well," I said. "at least that's one style you don't play." Hyman bridled. "I love that music," he said. "Judy and I play together as often as we can."

DICK HYMAN (who just celebrated his 70th birthday) (from Bill Zinsser's 1995 Harper's article, used by permission)