Fatha Knows Best

Step up and take a look at the U.S.'s latest secret weapon. A hot missile? No, a cool cat--Earl ("Fatha") Hines, jazz pianist nonpareil. Fatha and his sextet were midway through a six-week cultural swing through Russia last week when the Soviets decided that he was just too culturally dangerous. Perhaps it was because Hines & Co. had been wowing S.R.O. audiences everywhere. In Kiev, 10,000 youngsters had packed the Sports Palace, and Hines stirred up a swirling, rhythmic turbulence that had the Russians snapping their fingers like Hollywood hippies.

With that, the Russians decided to cool it and canceled Hines's scheduled appearances in Moscow, Leningrad and Alma-Ata, rerouting him to the industrial city of Krasnodar (pop. 312,000) and the Black Sea resorts of Batumi (82,000) and Sukhumi (70,000). The State Department protested the "arbitrary changes," but the Soviets, obviously afraid that Fatha would have too big an impact in the great cities, were adamant. They may have outsmarted themselves, because Batumi and Sukhumi at this time of year are often jumping--like the east coast of Florida in January.

Tough luck for Moscow, Leningrad and Alma-Ata. What swingers there will miss--and those in the provinces will hear--is a propulsive, inventive brand of piano that has been the wonder of the jazz world for nearly 40 years. In Russia, as everywhere, Hines has been playing with a gusto born of assurance. His left hand minds the shop while his right frolics on a freewheeling holiday. Eyes squinched in concentration, his yard-wide smile flashing like neon, he launches into daring improvisational flights that, however farflung, somehow always resolve themselves into patterns as precise and neatly interlocked as a jigsaw puzzle. "These Russian cats really dig what we have to offer!" exclaimed Hines in Kiev. "They won't let us get off the stage."

Stealing from Satchmo. For Hines, the acclaim abroad is the echo of a grander triumph back home. Now 60, he is the founding fatha of modern jazz piano. Yet for the better part of the past 15 years, he foundered as a forgotten jazz immortal swept aside by capricious tastes. Two years ago, his name was nowhere on the jazz popularity polls. Many fans thought that he had passed on to that big jam session in the sky. In this year's Down Beat International Jazz Critics Poll, however, he was voted the world's No. 1 jazz pianist.

Obviously Fatha knows best, for through all his ups and downs, he has never tried to alter his style to serve fashion. Hines's playing today, save for a heightened sense of surprise, is practically the same as it was when he came out of Pittsburgh as the most original jazz pianist around. His own father had played the cornet, and Earl adapted its lusty, brassy quality to the keyboard, learned to chop out big, gaudy chords in order to be heard through a blaring orchestra. The technique was further refined when he teamed with Louis Armstrong in 1928 for a memorable series of recordings. Recalls Hines: "I wanted to play like him, and he wanted to play like me, so we both stole a little from each other." What evolved was Hines's "trumpet style"--a left hand that cushioned, a right hand that attacked. In one swoop, he freed the piano from the ricky-tick niceties of ragtime and set a standard that ever since has influenced jazz pianists, notably Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum and Erroll Garner.

Those Good Old Ways. The heyday of Hines was in the 1930s, when from the throne of a white grand piano he led the band at Chicago's Grand Terrace ballroom, which flourished under the partial ownership of Al Capone and cronies. "I couldn't afford to have stars for the band," says Hines, "so I had to make them." He nurtured dozens of first-rate musicians; Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker used the band as a laboratory for the newly emerging bebop. In 1940, stepping high in snakeskin shoes, a diamond tiepin and purple tie, Hines hit the road--just in time to witness the demise of the big-band era. The years thereafter were largely one continuous round of playing with various combos. He dyed his greying temples 'black, staged lavish press parties to promote the "New Fatha Hines." Nothing worked, and eventually he resorted to playing Dixieland in San Francisco clubs--endlessly searching for "something that people wanted to hear."

They began to listen again in 1964, when he returned to Manhattan to perform three solo concerts. The critics were ecstatic. What followed was 14 new albums, several sizzling performances on the jazz-festival circuit, and two extended tours of Europe, where Fatha is one of the most popular of all popular musicians. Viewing himself as an "evangelizing musician," Hines says: "People have been walking by me for a long time. Now it's my turn to reach the young people and teach them the old ways, the right ways, the good-time ways."

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