Jazz Articles about Herbie Nichols

Love, Gloom, Cash, Love

by Patrick Burnette
October 21, 2017

Herbie Nichols' story has been told again and again, but it never seems to stick. An idiosyncratic pianist and one of the handful of important jazz composers, he was born in 1919 and dead from leukemia by age forty-four. His best- known song--"Lady Sings the Blues"--is associated with Billie Holiday and I would wager many listeners assume Billie wrote it. He appears as one of the four musicians profiled in A. B. Spellman's Four Lives in the Bebop Business in ...

Herbie Nichols Trio – Blue Note 1519

by Marc Davis
September 23, 2014

OK, now I'm cheating. At least it feels that way. The next CD on my quixotic Blue Note odyssey is Herbie Nichols Trio, a 1955-56 trio record by the criminally under-appreciated pianist. Great--I'm looking forward to it! I know almost nothing about Herbie Nichols, except that he was an overlooked talent who was often compared to the quirky Thelonious Monk. How can that be bad? Except... you can't really buy this CD. Not easily. And not ...

Herbie Nichols: A Jazzist's Life

by Raul d'Gama Rose
January 2, 2010

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 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. Therefore an event ...

The Herbie Nichols Project: Strange City

by C. Andrew Hovan
December 1, 2001

Since 1992, the Herbie Nichols Project has been dedicated to performing the music of a gentleman who in his lifetime was sadly neglected but who left behind a body of work just as idiosyncratic and distinctive as that of Thelonious Monk. Following their two previous releases, Dr. Cyclop’s Dream and Love Is Proximity, the group now makes their debut on the Palmetto label with Strange City, a program made up almost exclusively by tunes that Nichols never recorded himself. Arguably, ...