Saturday, February 10, 2018

Hank Jones (1918--2010): Legendary and iconic musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher

SOUND PROJECTIONS
 

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE



EDITOR:  KOFI NATAMBU



WINTER, 2018


VOLUME FIVE     NUMBER TWO

GERI ALLEN

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

TOMEKA REID
(January 27--February 2)

FARUQ Z. BEY
(February 3--9)

HANK JONES
(February 10--16)

STANLEY COWELL
(February 17–23)

GEORGE RUSSELL
(February 24—March 2)

ALICE COLTRANE
(March 3–9)

DON CHERRY
(March 10–16)

MAL WALDRON
(March 17–23)

JON HENDRICKS
(March 24–30)

MATTHEW SHIPP
(April 1–7)

PHAROAH SANDERS
(April 8–14)

WALT DICKERSON
(April 15–21)


https://www.allmusic.com/artist/hank-jones-mn0000558339/biography



Hank Jones
(1918-2010)



Artist Biography by

The oldest of the Jones brothers, Hank Jones has been a supreme accompanist and underrated soloist. He's among the most accomplished sight readers in jazz, and his flexibility and sensitive style have kept him extremely busy cutting sessions and working in various groups and styles ranging from swing to bebop. He's worked with vocalists, played in big bands and done many solo, trio, and combo dates.

Born in 1918 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Jones moved with his family to the Detroit area while still a child, and studied piano early, listening carefully to Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Earl Hines, and Fats Waller. He began playing in the midwest at age 13, and worked in territory bands. Jones met Lucky Thompson in one of these groups, and Thompson invited him to New York in 1944 to work with Hot Lips Page at the Onyx Club. Jones worked for a while with John Kirby, Howard McGhee, Coleman Hawkins, Andy Kirk, and Billy Eckstine, then began touring in 1947. He worked with Jazz at the Philharmonic, then accompanied Ella Fitzgerald from 1948 to 1953. Jones also cut many sessions for Norman Granz's labels in the late '40s and early '50s, many with Charlie Parker. He worked and recorded in the '50s with Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Milt Jackson, and Cannonball Adderley before joining CBS' staff in 1959. He worked on such programs as The Ed Sullivan Show and stayed with CBS until they disbanded the staff in 1976. He recorded several sessions with Savoy in the mid- and late '50s, playing with Donald Byrd, Herbie Mann, Wendell Marshall, and Kenny Clarke, among others. He also recorded solo and quartet dates for Epic. His quartet with Osie Johnson, Barry Galbraith, and Milt Hinton became one of New York's busiest during the early '60s, sometimes doing three dates a day. They cut albums for Capitol and ABC in 1958, though Galbraith missed the ABC sessions. Jones continued recording at Capitol, Argo, and Impulse in the early '60s, at times working with his brother Elvin. He made a host of recordings in the '70s. There were solo dates for Trio and Galaxy, and trio sessions for Interface and Concord, among others in the '70s. There were duo dates with Flanagan for Verve and Galaxy in the late '70s. Jones served as pianist and conductor for the Broadway musical Ain't Misbehavin in the late '70s. He also played in the Great Jazz Trio, originally with Ron Carter and Tony Williams. (Buster Williams replaced Carter on the trio's first recording date.) Jones continued with the trio into the '80s, though Eddie Gomez and Al Foster later became his mates, and Jimmy Cobb replaced Foster in 1982. The trio also backed Art Farmer, Benny Golson, and Nancy Wilson. Jones was the resident pianist at the Cafe Ziegfeld in the early '80s, and toured Japan with George Duvivier and Sonny Stitt. He kept his recording blitz going into the digital era. In 1989, he was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. In 2004, he was awarded as an ASCAP Jazz Living Legend; five years later, he received a National Medal of Arts; and in 2009, Jones earned a Lifetime Achievement award at the Grammys. One year later, he died in the Bronx while in hospice, just a few weeks after returning from performance dates in Japan.


https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/hankjones


 

Hank Jones




The oldest of the three Jones brothers (Hank, Thad and Elvin), Henry “Hank” Jones was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi and grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, where he studied piano at an early age and came under the influence of Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. By the age of 13 Jones was performing locally in Michigan and Ohio. While playing with territory bands in Grand Rapids and Lansing he met Lucky Thompson, who invited him to New York City in 1944 to work at the Onyx Club with Hot Lips Page.

In New York, Jones regularly listened to leading bop musicians, and was inspired to master the new style. While practicing and studying the music he worked with John Kirby, Howard McGhee, Coleman Hawkins, Andy Kirk, and Billy Eckstine. In autumn 1947 he began touring in Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts, and from 1948 to 1953 he was accompanist for Ella Fitzgerald, developing a harmonic facility of extraordinary taste and sophistication.
During this period he also made several historically important recordings with Charlie Parker for Norman Granz's labels.

After several years as a freelance player, which included engagements with Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, and recordings with such artists as Lester Young, Milt Jackson, Cannonball Adderley, and Wes Montgomery, in 1959 Jones joined the staff of CBS where he stayed until the staff was disbanded 17 years later. With his rare combination of talents as a strong soloist, sensitive accompanist, and adept sight-reader, Jones has always been in great demand for recording sessions of all kinds. By the late 1970s his involvement as pianist and conductor with the Broadway musical Ain't Misbehavin' (based on the music of Fats Waller) had informed a wider audience of his unique qualities as a musician.

During the late 1970s and the 1980s Jones continued to record prolifically, as an unaccompanied soloist, in duos with other pianists (including John Lewis and Tommy Flanagan), and with various small ensembles, most notably the Great Jazz Trio. The group took this name in 1976, by which time Jones had already begun working at the Village Vanguard with its original members, Ron Carter and Tony Williams (it was Buster Williams rather than Carter, however, who took part in the trio's first recording session in 1976); by 1980 Jones' sidemen were Eddie Gomez and Al Foster, and in 1982 Jimmy Cobb replaced Foster. The trio has also recorded with other all-star personnel, such as Art Farmer, Benny Golson, and Nancy Wilson. In the early 1980s Jones held a residency as a solo pianist at the Cafe Ziegfeld and made a tour of Japan, where he performed and recorded with George Duvivier and Sonny Stitt. 


https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/07/15/the-dean

Jazz



The Dean

Listening to Hank Jones.


The Jones Boys, as they were called in the fifties and sixties, included the pianist Hank Jones (born in 1918); the trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Thad Jones (born in 1923, died in 1986); and the drummer Elvin Jones (born in 1927). These three are, of course, brothers, who rank with the most gifted, adventurous, and persuasive of all jazz musicians. Thad was the cofounder of the bellwether Thad Jones–Mel Lewis Orchestra, a fine composer (“A Child Is Born”; lyrics by Alec Wilder), and a formidable trumpet player who never got his due. Elvin perfected an extraordinary polyrhythmic attack during his years with John Coltrane, and has become the most widely imitated modern drummer. And Hank, who has been a kind of one-man foundation under jazz during the past fifty years (a Jazz at the Philharmonic mainstay, an accompanist for Ella Fitzgerald, a CBS staff musician, the pianist on a thousand record dates), is widely regarded as the dean of jazz pianists. One winter, for a short, delirious time, George Shearing was ensconced in the Café Carlyle while Hank Jones was across the hall in the Bemelmans Bar. The minute his first show was over, Shearing, a dazzling pianist himself, would speed across the hall on the arm of his wife, Ellie, and station himself at Jones’s right elbow, and remain until it was time to go back to work. “Hank has been my mentor since 1947,” Shearing said recently.

Jones first came to New York in 1944, to join Hot Lips Page’s band, on Fifty-second Street. He was entering a land of pianistic giants and near-giants. Art Tatum was God, and nearby were Nat Cole, Teddy Wilson, and Marlowe Morris; and just coming up were Bud Powell, Al Haig, Erroll Garner, and Thelonious Monk. Jones listened, appropriating a little of Tatum, a little of Wilson and Cole, and a little of Powell and Garner. The result is a quiet, lyrical, attentive style, so subtle and technically assured as to be almost self-effacing; you have to lean forward to catch Jones properly. He will start two choruses of the blues with delicate single notes, placing them in surprising, jarring places, either behind the beat or off to one side—a path over a rocky place—and then play several dissonant chords; return to single notes, this time letting them pour in Tatum runs, some going up, some down; slip in more chords; and close the solo with a chime sound. Unlike most modern pianists, Jones constantly uses his left hand, issuing a carpet of tenths, little offbeat clusters, and occasional patches of stride. Jones’s solos think, and they rest far above the florid, gothic roil that many jazz pianists have fallen into in the past twenty years.
Jones is a crisp, compact, serious man who laughs a lot and invariably wears a tie and jacket. He likes to talk about improvisation, and here are some of the things he said recently: “You have to stay in shape, so I do scales and exercises three or four hours a day, and then I practice sight-reading. Of course, there is an extremely important prelude to improvising. Every tune you play has its correct tempo, and you have to find it. When you do, it practically plays itself. It’s not what you think it should be, it’s what the tune demands. Improvisation is instant composing. You try and conceive the totality in your mind of what you’re going to do, and then flesh it out with an F-minor seventh, or G-flat minor, or augmented fourth. You’re superimposing another line on the original composition, and you think about the chord pattern—not each chord—and you think about the melody. Music is colorless, but there are shades of music—brightness, sombreness, any kind of mood. It’s difficult not to repeat certain figures and patterns. When you do, it means your concentration is not what it should be. Concentration is the difference between the great players and the players who are not great. Other pianists have told me that once in a rare while they play on a level they have never reached before, and this makes me wonder if there is a level of the subconscious that improvisers suddenly tap into. I remember once I was working with Coleman Hawkins and J. J. Johnson and Max Roach, and I was late. They were already on the bandstand, and that must have shocked me, because I reached a level that I’ve only reached a few times since.”

Jones spends as much time as he can on a farm he bought some years ago in upstate New York, but he still appears in New York, tours abroad, and makes at least one CD a year. In the past five years he has recorded two stunning trio albums—”Essence” (D.M.P.), with Ray Drummond on bass and Billy Higgins on drums, and “Hank Jones: Upon Reflection” (Gitane), with George Mraz on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The second album contains ten Thad Jones songs, and is full of marvellous Hank Jones single-note lines and wild, whomping Elvin Jones brushwork. (Elvin is so strong that he once hugged Zoot Sims and broke two of his ribs.) Jones has also recently made two solo albums, “Hank Jones: Live at Maybeck Recital Hall” (Concord) and “Hank Jones: Handful of Keys” (Gitane), a celebration of Fats Waller, who occasionally passes through Jones’s playing. (He had died just a year before Jones arrived in New York.) The Waller is rather noncommittal, but listen to the way Jones rebuilds “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” and “Blue Monk” on the Maybeck Hall CD. Best of all, though, is Jones’s recent “Steal Away: Charlie Haden and Hank Jones” (Verve).

Haden, the sometime avant-garde bassist, had heard Jones’s majestic 1977 recording of “It’s Me, O Lord” in the Smithsonian “Jazz Piano” box, and he asked Jones if he would be interested in recording an album of spirituals and hymns with him, and Jones said yes. There are seventeen tunes, among them “It’s Me, O Lord,” “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “I’ve Got a Robe, You Got a Robe,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Amazing Grace.” The album, as quiet as God’s thoughts, is unique and irresistibly affecting. The two men work as one, in unison or in harmony, and the recording becomes a subtle meditation on the horrors of slavery as well as a celebration of the great songs that came to be the slaves’ solace. The album is also, I suspect, a celebration of Jones’s parents, both of whom were seven-days-a-week churchgoers. (Jones still feels uneasy about performing on Sunday.) Most of the numbers are played straight but with the harmonic and rhythmic inflections that separate jazz from the rest of music. On “Wade in the Water” and “Go Down, Moses,” however, Jones improvises delicately, and on “We Shall Overcome” he pauses after a unison statement of the melody, Haden begins to “walk,” and Jones suddenly lifts into four ringing choruses of the blues, his single-note lines sparkling and his chords bell-like. It’s an electric moment. ♦

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/arts/music/18jones.html 

Music


Hank Jones, Versatile Jazz Pianist, Is Dead at 91


Hank Jones, whose self-effacing nature belied his stature as one of the most respected jazz pianists of the postwar era, died on Sunday in the Bronx. He was 91.

His death, at Calvary Hospital Hospice, was announced by his longtime manager, Jean-Pierre Leduc. Mr. Jones lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and also had a home in Hartwick, N.Y.

Mr. Jones spent much of his career in the background. For three and a half decades he was primarily a sideman, most notably with Ella Fitzgerald; for much of that time he also worked as a studio musician on radio and television.

His fellow musicians admired his imagination, his versatility and his distinctive style, which blended the urbanity and rhythmic drive of the Harlem stride pianists, the dexterity of Art Tatum and the harmonic daring of bebop. (The pianist, composer and conductor André Previn once called Mr. Jones his favorite pianist, “regardless of idiom.”)

But unlike his younger brothers Thad, who played trumpet with Count Basie and was later a co-leader of a celebrated big band, and Elvin, an influential drummer who formed a successful combo after six years with John Coltrane’s innovative quartet, Hank Jones seemed content for many years to keep a low profile.

That started changing around the time he turned 60. Riding a wave of renewed interest in jazz piano that also transformed his close friend and occasional duet partner Tommy Flanagan from a perpetual sideman to a popular nightclub headliner, Mr. Jones began working and recording regularly under his own name.

Reviewing a nightclub appearance in 1989, Peter Watrous of The New York Times praised Mr. Jones as “an extraordinary musician” whose playing “resonates with jazz history” and who “embodies the idea of grace under pressure, where assurance and relaxation mask nearly impossible improvisations.”

Mr. Jones further enhanced his reputation in the 1990s with a striking series of recordings that placed his piano in a range of contexts — including an album with a string quartet, a collaboration with a group of West African musicians and a duet recital with the bassist Charlie Haden devoted to spirituals and hymns.

Henry W. Jones Jr. was born in Vicksburg, Miss., on July 31, 1918. One of 10 children, he grew up in Pontiac, Mich., near Detroit, where he started studying piano at an early age and first performed professionally at 13. He began playing jazz even though his father, a Baptist deacon, disapproved.

Mr. Jones worked with regional bands, mostly in Michigan and Ohio, before moving to New York in 1944 to join the trumpeter and singer Hot Lips Page’s group at the Onyx Club on 52nd Street.



Hank Jones at the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in Tompkins Square Park in 1995. Credit Jack Vartoogian
He was soon in great demand, working for well-known performers like the saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and the singer Billy Eckstine. “People heard me and said, ‘Well, this is not just a boy from the country — maybe he knows a few chords,’ ” he told Ben Waltzer in a 2001 interview for The Times. He abandoned the freelance life in late 1947 to become Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist and held that job until 1953, occasionally taking time out to record with Charlie Parker and others.

He kept busy after leaving Fitzgerald. Among other activities, he began an association with Benny Goodman that would last into the 1970s, and he was a member of the last group Goodman’s swing-era rival Artie Shaw led before retiring in 1954. But financial security beckoned, and in 1959 he became a staff musician at CBS. He also participated in a celebrated moment in presidential history when he accompanied Marilyn Monroe as she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy, who was about to turn 45, during a Democratic Party fund-raiser at Madison Square Garden in May 1962.

Mr. Jones remained intermittently involved in jazz during his long tenure at CBS, which ended when the network disbanded its music department in the mid-’70s. He was a charter member of the big band formed by his brother Thad and the drummer Mel Lewis in 1966, and he recorded a few albums as a leader. More often, however, he was heard but not seen on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and other television and radio programs.

“Most of the time during those 15 or so years, I wasn’t playing the kind of music I’d prefer to play,” Mr. Jones told Howard Mandel of Down Beat magazine in 1994. “It may have slowed me down a bit. I would have been a lot further down the road to where I want to be musically had I not worked at CBS.” But, he explained, the work gave him “an economic base for trying to build something.”

Once free of his CBS obligations, Mr. Jones began quietly making a place for himself in the jazz limelight. He teamed with the bassist Ron Carter and the drummer Tony Williams, alumni of the Miles Davis Quintet, to form the Great Jazz Trio in 1976. (The uncharacteristically immodest name of the group, which changed bassists and drummers frequently over the years, was not Mr. Jones’s idea.)

Two years later he began a long run as the musical director and onstage pianist for “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” the Broadway revue built around the music of Fats Waller, while also playing late-night solo sets at the Cafe Ziegfeld in Midtown Manhattan.

By the 1980s, Mr. Jones’s late-blooming career as a band leader was in full swing. While he had always recorded prolifically — by one estimate he can be heard on more than a thousand albums — for the first time he concentrated on recording under his own name, which he continued to do well into the 21st century.

He is survived by his wife, Theodosia.

Mr. Jones was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 1989. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2008 and a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 2009. And he continued working almost to the end. Laurel Gross, a close friend, said he had toured Japan in February and had plans for a European tour this spring until doctors advised against it.

Reaching for superlatives, critics often wrote that Mr. Jones had an exceptional touch. He himself was not so sure.

“I never tried consciously to develop a ‘touch,’ ” he told The Detroit Free Press in 1997. “What I tried to do was make whatever lines I played flow evenly and fully and as smoothly as possible.

“I think the way you practice has a lot to do with it,” he explained. “If you practice scales religiously and practice each note firmly with equal strength, certainly you’ll develop a certain smoothness. I used to practice a lot. I still do when I’m at home.” Mr. Jones was 78 years old at the time.



JAZZ NOTES

High praise for the low-profile Hank Jones

Pianist Hank Jones is the eldest and least well-known of the three great Jones brothers of jazz.

The late Elvin Jones, Hank's junior by nine years, revolutionized jazz drumming in the early 1960s as a member of John Coltrane's legendary quartet. Middle brother Thad, an arranger and composer who died in 1986, made his name playing trumpet with Count Basie in the mid-1950s and cofounding the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra a decade later.

Now 86, Hank was smartly labeled ''the dean of jazz pianists" by the New Yorker a few years ago. Still, his self-effacing manner, his genius as an accompanist, and his deft interpretations of others' compositions have conspired to keep his profile relatively low.

But student musicians in Harvard's various jazz ensembles are getting to know Jones and his work quite well this week. They'll be joining Jones and saxophonist Joe Lovano at Sanders Theatre on Sunday for ''Thanking Hank: A Salute to the Piano Master," a concert culminating Jones's four-day residency in Cambridge.

(A ''Learning From Performers" discussion with Jones at 3:30 p.m. today in the living room at Cabot House, 60 Linnaean St., Cambridge, is free and open to the public.)

In Jones, the students are encountering a musician unusually steeped in jazz history, and one who remains very active. A notable recent triumph was joining bassist George Mraz and drummer Paul Motian for Lovano's ''I'm All for You," an album of ballads that topped some critics' lists as best jazz album of 2004. The project went over so well that the quartet reassembled for a second CD, ''Joyful Encounter," due out from Blue Note next month.

Jones got his start playing piano in Pontiac, Mich., third in line at the family piano behind two elder sisters. His early influences included Fats Waller, Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Nat King Cole, and Art Tatum. Elements of his style, such as his subtle use of dynamics and the active, stride-like use of his left hand, can be traced back to the heroes of his youth.
After several years of performing professionally in the Midwest, Jones moved to New York in 1944, his friend and onetime bandmate Lucky Thompson having gotten him a job with Hot Lips Page. But union rules required a waiting period before he could begin working with Page's band. He spent the time going out to clubs and hearing music, and adding to his list of piano influences.

''I knew nothing of Bud Powell and [Thelonious] Monk, people like that, until I arrived in New York," says Jones. ''One of the places I went was the Three Deuces, where Charlie Parker was working with Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell, or Al Haig. They were playing down there, and then you had Max Roach or Stan Levy playing drums. Fantastic group. And playing a different style -- a very exciting, very cerebral style. And it was difficult to play. You had to listen carefully to even absorb it. A lot of people didn't like it, including some musicians."

That style, of course, was bebop, and Jones was catching it right at its inception. It wasn't long before Jones was playing bebop with Parker on Jazz at the Philharmonic tours. Those tours led to other work, most notably several years as accompanist to Ella Fitzgerald and some late-'50s stints touring with Benny Goodman. By 1959, though, Jones was ready to come off the road. He spent the next 17 years as staff pianist at CBS, where he worked on hit TV programs including ''The Jackie Gleason Show" and ''The Ed Sullivan Show," did two or three radio shows a week, and accompanied a steady stream of auditioning singers.

''People used to say to me, incredulously, 'Why are you working at CBS? You could be out on the road making five times as much money,' " Jones recalls. ''They forgot to mention that the road has its drawbacks, too. You lose a lot of sleep, you do a lot of traveling, you stay in sometimes less than four-star hotels, and eat food that is not, let's say, the very best food possible. I considered all that. I thought working at CBS was an advantage for me, because I was able to build a modest financial base, and I could count on checks coming every week."

It wasn't until 1975 that Jones resumed freelancing full time, and he's been doing it ever since. Highlights among his recordings include a couple of trio dates with his brother Elvin: ''Upon Reflection," an examination of 10 pieces by their brother Thad, and last year's ''Someday My Prince Will Come."

Then there's his copious sideman work. Hank Jones may not be a household name, but his fellow musicians revere him.
''I've learned so much playing with him as far as spontaneous orchestration for a quartet," says Lovano. ''He doesn't play a thousand choruses like a lot of people. He's really clear and focused, and he could play two choruses on any given tune and it's as deep as someone else might have to play 10 [to accomplish]."

Lovano continued: ''He's the ultimate as far as leading a rhythm section and playing with the kind of execution that feeds you and follows you at the same time. He doesn't just play chords and rhythm. He feels the music so beautifully."

Special events: This weekend is a busy one for campus-based concerts, with the proceeds from two to help tsunami victims. At Berklee Performance Center tonight, Russell Ferrante and Marcus Baylor of the Yellowjackets will lead Berklee students through a performance of selections from the famed fusion group's songbook. On Sunday, at the same place, Berklee faculty will perform ''The Great American Songbook: The Music of Cole Porter," proceeds going to Mercy Corps' tsunami relief efforts. Also: a lengthy list of local musicians will perform from 3 to 9 p.m. tomorrow at Roxbury Community College's Media Arts Building (1234 Columbus Ave.) in a benefit concert for Oxfam America.

Hank Jones will perform with guest Joe Lovano and the Harvard University jazz bands at "Thanking Hank: A Salute to the Piano Master" on Sunday at 7 p.m. at Sanders Theatre. Tickets: $15 ($8, students and seniors). Call 617-496-2222.




https://jazztimes.com/features/hank-jones-i-havent-done-my-best-yet/

Hank Jones: I Haven’t Done My Best Yet





Hank Jones says he’s lost a couple of inches in the length of his fingers over the years. A lot of “rock ‘n’ roll dates, pounding the keys to play triplets” were the cause, he suggests. Two inches sounds like a lot-even for too many “rock ‘n’ roll dates”-but it hovers on the edge of reason when one takes into account the fact that Jones celebrated his 90th birthday in July 2008. Shrinkage happens.

But when he reaches out for a handshake, and you feel your own hand-not exactly small-completely enveloped by his, you can only marvel at what his paws must have been like, say, a half-century ago. At the moment, they look as though they could cover the span of a major tenth on the keyboard. (For non piano-playing readers, that’s a reach from a C to the E beyond the next C; 10 white notes, in other words.)


Jones, a tall, slender, confident-looking man with an elegant manner, intense eyes and a face on which history is written in every line, simply smiles when the keyboard span of his fingers is mentioned.


“Wouldn’t matter how far you could reach if you didn’t have anything to say, would it?” he says with a smile.

Hard to argue with that. And it’s equally impossible to ask if Jones himself has something to say. The truth is he’s had a lot to say musically, reaching back to the ’40s, with his feather-soft touch, masterful harmonies and irresistible rhythmic lift. And he’s been having, in addition, something of a creative renaissance since 1975, when he wrapped up a 17-year stint as a staff pianist at CBS. Among the highlights, his “Great Jazz Trio” recordings, with players ranging from Ron Carter and Tony Williams to Jimmy Cobb and Christian McBride, as well as duo piano outings with John Lewis and Tommy Flanagan. He’s also recorded hymns with Charlie Haden, standards with singer Roberta Gambarini, collaborated with a Malian Mandinka band, and released numerous solo albums. His recent duet partnership with saxophonist Joe Lovano is a stunning and utterly timeless interfacing of musical generations. And, as a respected, in-demand jazz rhythm section sideman, he’s been at the top of the A-list seemingly forever. His indelible contributions to the music have earned him an NEA Jazz Master title in 1989 and a 2008 National Medal of the Arts.


Jones was in L.A. a couple of times last year, first for a gig at UCLA with bassist John Clayton and drummer Joe La Barbera and a few months later for a birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl with Gerald Wilson, also celebrating his 90th. While he was in town for the latter date, JazzTimes joined him in his suite at the landmark Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel for a freewheeling conversation about the then and now of his nine remarkable decades, a conversation in which he was as articulate and illuminating in his verbal expressiveness as he is with his music.


He made it clear, up front, in his characteristically whimsical fashion, that he wasn’t viewing the birthday as a particularly momentous date. When asked how he felt about turning 90, he replied, in a deep voice, “You know something? I don’t feel a day over 89.”


Then, with a chuckle, he added, “I had to make that sound dramatic. Because actually, you don’t feel any different. If you’re catching a cold when you’re 89, you’re still going to be catching a cold when you’re 90.”


Whimsy aside, Jones was always spot-on serious when we talked about music, especially when the conversation veered, as it frequently did, toward the subject of creativity. Listening to him, fascinated by his physical and intellectual vigor, I was reminded of the utter unpredictability of the creative lifespan, of the manner in which it can arc through relatively short, star-crossed periods. Think Charlie Christian, Jimmy Blanton and Clifford Brown, Janis Joplin and James Dean.

                 
And of how, far more rarely, it can reach across nearly a century. Think of Benny Carter, who was still a master in his early 90s, of Picasso, at 90, producing works anticipating neo-expressionism, of Verdi composing “Falstaff” when he was 80.


Add Jones to that second list. He was born in Vicksburg, Miss., to musical parents. His father played blues guitar and was a Baptist church deacon; his mother sang and introduced her children to sounds ranging from Sunday afternoon gospel songs and jazz pianists such as Fats Waller and Earl Hines to radio broadcasts by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. His lengthy résumé begins in Pontiac, Mich., where his parents moved in the early ’20s, and where he was raised as the eldest male in a family that ultimately produced two other iconic jazz figures: trumpeter/arranger Thad and drummer Elvin. Ironically, although the senior member of that remarkable triumvirate has been called a pianists’ pianist for most of his career, he was not a particularly avid beginner.


“I had classical lessons first,” he says. “But I wasn’t much for practicing. They always had to force me, tell me the teacher was going to give me a hard time.”


He soon got past the oppositional phase, however. By the time Jones was in his teens, he was already working professionally with big territory bands from Detroit. In 1944, he made the move to New York City with Hot Lips Page, performing with Jazz at the Philharmonic in the late ’40s. Gigs with Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and dozens of others followed, thoroughly establishing his street cred as a pianist who could adapt to almost any kind of musical setting.


His younger brothers took different paths, aided by the advance word that Jones was putting out.


“Believe me, they were well known in New York before they got there,” he said. “I made sure of that. I told everybody about them. And they lived up to all the advance notices I gave them.”


But even Hank was surprised by their rapid professional progress. “I knew they were both talented,” he continued. “But I had no idea they would get to the professional level as fast as they did. And then they just got better and better and better.”


His pride in both, as paternal as it is fraternal, glowed in his recollections of the accomplishments of each brother: Thad, five years younger, and Elvin, nine years younger.


“Thad was writing arrangements when he was 15 years old,” said Jones. “And he was writing for acts like Butterbeans and Susie-people like that, comedy acts. And he was not using a score. He was just writing out the instrumental parts individually. Add to that, he was an excellent player, too, one of the finest trumpet players around. You listen to some of those recordings, and you hear that he could play with anyone. He just didn’t play as often as I thought he should with that big band. He gave the solos to everybody else. But he was the genius. If there’s such a thing as an authentic genius, Thad was it.”


His praise for his youngest brother is equally laudatory. “Elvin developed that style that he had all by himself,” he continued. “And his style was very musical. A lot of people think drums aren’t musical, but I think drums can be very musical. The more sensitive a drummer is, the more sensitive his approach is. It’s not just about playing a beat, it’s about playing different shades of volume, intensity, varying the beat. All those levels of intensity in Elvin’s playing were to enhance the music, to enhance the soloist. When he was playing drums behind me it made me feel just that much better. I didn’t have to worry about what the drummer was doing behind me. Takes a load off your mind.”


Then why did the Jones brothers perform together so rarely? They made only a few recordings together.


“Good question,” said Jones. “Our paths just didn’t cross much. We all progressed, but in different directions. Thad had the big band, I was doing stuff at CBS and Elvin was doing his own thing.


“But one thing stands out clearly,” he added, pausing for dramatic effect before continuing. “I wasn’t good enough to play with those guys.”


“You’re kidding,” I replied, not entirely sure that he was.

“Well, sure,” said Jones, once again adding a kicker. “But it’s true. I wasn’t,” he said, before erupting into laughter.

Given his age, Jones has been present as a younger or older contemporary to a large number of jazz history’s finest pianists. He lists Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson and Fats Waller as primary influences, with Tatum serving as a near-mythological model.


“He was the first one to use all those harmonic devices that later guys like Dizzy and Charlie used,” said Jones. “It sounded new to people who heard it for the first time. But it wasn’t new to someone who’d listened to Art Tatum. Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff-that’s what he was, all rolled into one. He had a great impact on me, especially harmonically. I couldn’t play lyrically the way he did-few people could-so I just worked to adopt his harmonic ideas.”

Oscar Peterson, he suggested, probably came closer, but with several provisos.


“In some respects, Oscar was very close to Tatum. He had the required technique to do it. And he admired Tatum, as we all did. But nobody played exactly like Tatum. We have to establish that he was in a class by himself. Players like Oscar, who play a fine piano, actually play a style that’s reminiscent sometimes of Tatum, but not completely. And Oscar would be the first one to acknowledge that.”


Jones’ view of his post-WWII contemporaries is, like his playing, precise, to the point and unaffected by ego. When asked if he heard anything in Thelonious Monk that became incorporated into his own playing, he paused thoughtfully for a moment before responding with a shrug.


“Sure. Some things,” he said. “But Monk had such a unique harmonic style that everything he did was pretty much his own. If anybody else tries to do what he did, it sounds unnatural.”


Queried about Bud Powell, he turned to a theme that courses through our conversation, his belief in the piano as a complete instrument, fully capable of melody, harmony, rhythm, percussion and more.


“Bud was unique,” Jones explained, “in that he played-you should pardon the expression-in the bebop style. But he played it as a horn player would play it. His playing was probably closer to Charlie Parker than it was to another pianist.”


And, when, in a sudden shift of gears, Lennie Tristano’s name came up, Jones touched upon another important personal theme, his belief in the specificity of the jazz art.

“He was a great technician,” says Jones, “made some wonderful records. But I didn’t think of them as jazz. They were jazz-related, but not true jazz.”


How, then, does he define true jazz?


“Well,” he replied, a modest look crossing his face, “bear in mind this is just my opinion. But to me, if it’s going to be pure jazz then it has to have what are commonly considered to be jazz figures. Syncopation, things like that … harmonizations. It doesn’t have to necessarily have a blues style, although players like Charlie Parker played blues wonderfully, but a feeling for the blues. And it’s not all about the notes. It’s about what you do with them. You know, you can have great technique, and still not be a great jazz player. Now, I don’t want to be dogmatic. There are a lot of different ways to play jazz. But that’s my opinion of it.”


At least two of those different ways were embodied in the evolution from swing to bebop that was taking place when Jones arrived in New York City in the ’40s. Working with leaders such as Page, Hawkins, Andy Kirk and Billy Eckstine; as a regular participant with Norman Granz’s “Jazz at the Philharmonic” concerts; and as both a player and a habitué in the 52nd Street clubs that were the musical frontline of the decade, Jones was present, in the trenches, at one of the key transitional periods in jazz history.


In his typically modest manner, however, he is reluctant to describe himself as a bopper. “I really don’t see myself as a bebop player,” he said. “Not a complete bebop player, like Bud Powell was. I came to New York City at the end of when it began happening on 52nd Street. That’s when I began listening to Parker, Gillespie, Monk.”

 
But Jones seemed, almost from the beginning, to be destined for versatility, already capable of playing in a wide variety of settings by the time he got to the Apple. “I could adapt to things,” he explained, “I guess because I used to listen very carefully to what was going on. I had to pay close attention because I was so often in settings where I wasn’t familiar with what was happening.


“The funny thing is, I didn’t start out to be versatile,” he said. “That was just an accident. They’d call me to do something and I’d say, ‘Well, I don’t know how to do it, but I’ll try.’ Trial and error. That fits it. And just a little bit of luck involved in everything.”

A little bit of “luck” has been a charm for Jones personally as well as professionally. In September 2006, an attack of shingles entered his left eye and infected fluid around his brain. In February 2007, a massive heart attack resulted in quadruple bypass surgery. Yet he still has the vigorous look of a man decades younger, and his approach to his playing has all the earmarks of a musician avidly romancing his muse.


“I don’t think I’ve done my best yet,” said Jones. “That’s a goal that I’m working toward, and I haven’t gotten there yet. It’s like the story, and it’s true, about the guy who was interviewing George Shearing, and asked George if he’d been blind all his life. And George answered, ‘Not yet.’ So, no, I haven’t done my best yet.



“You know,” he added, his dark eyes strong and focused, beaming 90 years of accumulated wisdom, “what I enjoy the most is when I don’t make too many mistakes. Because every time you sit down at the piano you’re challenging yourself. But it’s not a competition. What you’re doing is you’re trying to make each performance be better than the last one. That’s what you work for. That’s what you hope for, to make each performance better than the last one.

“Not perfection,” Jones concluded, with a wry smile. “Because I don’t believe there is such a thing as perfect. Perfection is something you strive for that you never actually reach. It’s a place where you and the instrument become one-your mind, your fingers, your body. I’m still trying to reach that level.”
 
https://pitchfork.com/news/38822-rip-jazz-pianist-hank-jones/

R.I.P. Jazz Pianist Hank Jones


The New York Times reports that jazz pianist Hank Jones died yesterday in the Bronx. He was 91.

Jones grew up outside Detroit with his two younger brothers, fellow future jazz greats Thad and Elvin. As the Times reports, in 1944, Jones moved to New York to play with singer/trumpeter Hot Lips Page. In the decades that followed, Jones worked with many great jazz figures, including Billy Eckstine, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Charlie Haden, and Charlie Parker. He served as Ella Fitzgerald's accompanist for several years, and was on staff at CBS from the late 50s to the mid-70s.

Jones posed in the famous 1958 photo ["A Great Day in Harlem"]

(http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/A_Great_Day_in_Harlem

and accompanied Marilyn Monroe when she infamously sang ["Happy Birthday"]

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/958209/jazz-piano-legend-hank-jones-dies-at-91

Jazz Piano Legend Hank Jones Dies At 91




Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
NEW YORK - CIRCA 1970: Jazz Pianist Henry 'Hank' Jones poses for a portrait circa 1970 in New York City, New York. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Jazz pianist and composer Hank Jones, whose 70-year career included a stint as Ella Fitzgerald's pianist and Marilyn Monroe's accompanist when she sang "Happy Birthday" to President John F. Kennedy, has died, his manager said Monday. He was 91.
Jones, who won a Grammy lifetime achievement award last year and received the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush in 2008, died Sunday night at a New York hospital after a brief illness, Jean-Pierre Leduc said.

A tireless musician who performed his blend of swing and bebop until the end, Jones came from a family of jazz musicians who included brothers Thad, a trumpeter, composer and arranger, and Elvin, a drummer known for the polyrhythmic beat that propelled John Coltrane's classic quartet.


Saxophonist Joe Lovano, with whom Jones made several CDs when he was an octogenarian, including the Grammy-nominated "Kids: Live at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola" (2007), called Jones "one of the master musicians in the history of jazz."


"He was the consummate accompanist and played with a very free flowing approach ... His sound, his touch, his ideas were all about feeling," Lovano said.


Throughout his career, Jones was respected by his fellow musicians for his elegant touch, melodic sensitivity and stylistic versatility, making hundreds of recordings, including more than 60 as a leader. He played with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Wes Montgomery, Nancy Wilson, Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Coltrane.


According to his website, Jones' one regret was that he didn't record more often with his late brothers. But he did manage to record "The Great Trio Collaboration" with Elvin before his brother died in 2004. He was a charter member of the big band that brother Thad co-led with drummer Mel Lewis beginning in the mid-'60s at New York's Village Vanguard jazz club.


Jones "lived and breathed music and was never far from a keyboard, even at the end," Leduc said.


"His incredible burst of productivity - concerts, recordings, fundraisers, clinics - these last few years was unprecedented and truly remarkable. He had gigs planned through next year" and was scheduled to play at the Birdland jazz club in New York next week, he added.


At last year's Jazz Awards, Jones was voted pianist of the year by the Jazz Journalists Association among a crowded field of nominees that included such distinguished veterans as Kenny Barron, Cecil Taylor, Ahmad Jamal and Keith Jarrett and newer faces like Jason Moran and Matthew Shipp. With characteristic modesty, Jones declared it "should be a group award."


"This to me is an honor and also it's a great incentive to me to do better," Jones said in accepting the honor. "It's not the end of things, it's the end of the beginning for me."

Jazz pianist-turned-impresario George Wein, who founded the Newport Jazz Festival, called Jones "an inspiration to all of us.


"Maybe by the time I'm his age, I'll know a few changes that he plays on the piano," joked the 83-year-old Wein at the awards ceremony.


Jones' contemporary, saxophonist James Moody, who recorded "Our Delight" with the pianist, said, "If someone threw ink at a piece of paper, Hank could play it."


In 1989, the National Endowment for the Arts named Jones as a Jazz Master, the nation's highest honor in jazz.


Jones "leaves behind an amazing legacy as both a leader and a sideman," NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman said of his death.


Born in Vicksburg, Miss., and raised in Pontiac, Mich., near Detroit, he was influenced by such legendary pianists as Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson and Nat King Cole.


Lovano said Jones knew them all, as well as Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell.


"He was on the scene with them in New York," he said. "He had his own touch and approach from those relationships."

He began performing at the age of 13, playing with territory bands that toured Michigan and Ohio. During those tours he met saxophonist Lucky Thompson, who helped him land a job in trumpeter Hot Lips Page's band in 1944.


After moving to New York in 1943, Jones embraced bebop and toured with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic from 1947-51. As part of the ensemble, he became Fitzgerald's pianist, touring with her from 1948-53.

In 1962, he accompanied Monroe on the piano when she sang "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden.


In a 2005 interview on National Public Radio, he described that day.


"She did 16 bars: eight bars of 'Happy Birthday to You' and eight bars of 'Thanks for the Memories,'" he said. "So in 16 bars, we rehearsed eight hours. ... She was very nervous and upset. She wasn't used to that kind of thing. And, I guess, who wouldn't be nervous singing "Happy Birthday" to the president?"


He also worked with such consummate musicians as Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Milt Jackson and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley. He joined CBS as studio pianist, a position he held for 17 years, performing on the Ed Sullivan Show and others.


His versatility also landed him gigs in Broadway stage bands, including a long-running stint as the pianist and conductor for "Ain't Misbehavin'," the hit 1970s musical revue based on songs by pianist Thomas "Fats" Waller.



After leaving CBS in the mid-'70s, Jones' career flourished as a solo pianist and in small ensembles, including the Great Jazz Trio which he originally formed with Miles Davis alumni Ron Carter and Tony Williams.

His most recent recordings were "Pleased to Meet You," an album with pianist Oliver Jones and "Come Sunday," an as-yet unreleased duet recording with bassist Charlie Haden, a sequel to their 1995 album of spirituals, hymns and folk songs, "Steal Away," which received two Grammy nominations.


"Hank was a man of elegance and genius yet remained so modest and full of humor throughout his life," said Haden, who recorded "Come Sunday" with Jones in February. At that session, Haden said, "Hank seemed ... closer than ever to the reverence of the songs that we played. ... He was - and will always be - a beautiful soul."
___


Associated Press Writer Charles Gans contributed to this report.


© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4SLSlSmW74 ""Happy Birthday, Mr. President""

to President John F. Kennedy in 1962.

https://www.npr.org/2010/08/06/111423493/hank-jones-on-piano-jazz

Hank Jones On Piano Jazz





Hank Jones was one of Marian McPartland's first guests on Piano Jazz in 1979. Rafa Rivas/Getty Images

Set List:


  • "Lonely Woman" (Bill Stegmeyer)
  • "We'll Be Together Again" (Carl Fischer)
  • "Lotus Blossoms" (Billy Strayhorn)
  • "Easy Living" (Ralph Rainger/Leo Robin)
  • "Odd Number" (Hank Jones)
  • "Lord, I Want to Be a Christian" (Traditional)
  • "Sophisticated Lady" (Duke Ellington/Irving Mills/Mitchell Parrish)
  • "Oh, Look at Me Now" (Joe Bushkin/John DeVries)

Born in 1918, Hank Jones was one of five musical siblings — his sisters studied piano, while brothers Thad (trumpeter, composer) and Elvin (drummer) were also celebrated jazzmen. By age 13, Hank Jones was playing locally in Pontiac, Mich., and began working in New York in the mid-'40s. He worked as Ella Fitzgerald's accompanist from 1948 to 1953, and recorded with Charlie Parker at this time. Jones was the house pianist at the Savoy label, where he worked with a long list of other greats, and served as the staff pianist at CBS Studios from 1959-75.

In the public mind, Jones' most memorable date was as the accompanist for Marilyn Monroe when she sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at John F. Kennedy's 45th-birthday celebration. In his later career, Jones continued to work with A-list figures in the jazz world, such as Diana Krall and Christian McBride. Hank Jones died earlier this year; he was 91.

Host Marian McPartland remembers Hank Jones on an earlier Piano Jazz episode: "He was such a master of the piano, and could do just about anything," McPartland says. "He knew every tune and such interesting harmonies. Playing duets with him was a great joy."



'Keep The Melody Intact'

In this 2009 session with guest host Bill Charlap, Jones returns to the program 30 years after his first appearance for a set of tunes spanning his career.

"Keep the melody intact," Jones says flatly. "You can do all kinds of things with the harmonies, but the melody must remain."

He credits arranger, composer and clarinetist Bill Stegmeyer with giving him great insight into the kinds of harmonies that Jones still uses in this session. And those trademark harmonies emerge with an easy grace on Stegmeyer's "Lonely Woman."

Jones brings up another point about his playing, one true to all great jazz musicians: "You're only at your best when you're relaxed." That relaxed feeling shines through in duets of "Oh, Look at Me Now" and "Lotus Blossom." The latter tune, penned by Billy Strayhorn, conjures the late-night environs of the jazz world, but Jones takes the session to Sunday morning with his tender rendition of "Lord, I Want to Be a Christian," of which he says, "I grew up in the church, and it's always been a part of my life."

Strayhorn's songs and arrangements were a cornerstone of Duke Ellington's sound, and Charlap follows with Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady." He plays the classic tune with a light, swinging touch, punctuating phrases with abbreviated bass notes from the left hand. At the close of the tune, the great Hank Jones says in unequivocal tones, "Superb! Superb! Superb!"

That would be a great way to describe this special session. It's also a fitting description of Jones' own long, illustrious career in jazz.

This session originally ran on July 31, 2009.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/may/18/hank-jones-obituary

Hank Jones obituary


Prolific jazz pianist and composer, he was a sensitive accompanist to Ella Fitzgerald 



The great jazz drummer Elvin Jones, asked by JazzUK magazine in 2001 how it felt to be still playing full-on jazz in his 70s, simply pointed to the example of his older brother. The pianist Hank Jones, the first-born of the three jazz-playing Jones brothers, was 83 at the time and still playing with the same benign determination that had distinguished his work since the 1940s.

A pianist of graceful lyricism, lightness of touch, and softness of chordal shading, Jones bridged the urbane sophistication of the swing era and the more ambiguous harmonies and zigzagging melodies of bebop. But bop's haste and mistrust of silences never diverted him from sounding notes as if concerned for their wellbeing once they left his hands. He phrased improvisations like compositions, and seemed to be in love with all his work, and incapable of making an ugly sound if he tried.

Jones, who has died aged 91, was also an underrated composer, whose work belatedly came to be covered by other jazz musicians (the US pianist Geoffrey Keezer devoted an album to his pieces as recently as 2003) and his sensitivity made him an excellent accompanist, particularly for singers. Ella Fitzgerald was Jones's principal employer for six years from the 1940s into the 50s. In 1962, he was the accompanist to Marilyn Monroe as she sang Happy Birthday to President John F Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in New York.

He was born Henry Jones in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In his early childhood the family moved to Pontiac, Michigan, where his trumpeter brother Thad and drummer brother Elvin were born – there would be 10 siblings in all. Hank was given piano lessons, and in his teens became attracted to the sounds of such stride-derived pianists as Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson, the trumpet-line mimicry adopted by Louis Armstrong's partner Earl Hines, and the blizzard of sound unleashed by the technically dazzling Art Tatum.

Hank was good enough to perform in local Michigan bands by the age of 13, and remained working professionally in the area through the 30s, eventually appearing in swing groups that included Thad on trumpet. The older Jones steadily expanded his patch to the touring "territory bands" around Grand Rapids, during which period he met the saxophonist Lucky Thompson. In 1944, Jones accompanied Thompson to New York, and a new musical world.


The New York scene of the mid-40s placed the jazz music of almost every era and persuasion side by side on such jazz boulevards as 52nd Street. Jones eagerly took it all in, and continued to freelance, primarily as a swing performer, with such high-profile, musically advanced orchestras as Andy Kirk's, John Kirby's and the singer Billy Eckstine's. But he was fascinated by the intricacies of bebop, and studied the art closely. The saxophonist Coleman Hawkins ran a hybrid swing/bop outfit in the mid-40s, and Jones recorded with it in 1946 and 1947.

In 1947, he was hired to accompany Fitzgerald, at a point in the singer's career when she had weathered difficult times and was beginning to mature as an artist, and also starting to command some of the biggest fees in the business. Tuning his ear to Fitzgerald's speed of thought and vocal elasticity, Jones became the quintessential accompanist, developing an aptitude for spontaneous shading, colouration and enhancement of the music around him that bordered on musical witchcraft.

Having appeared with Fitzgerald on the impresario Norman Granz's globetrotting Jazz at the Philharmonic package tours, Jones became a participant in other Granz projects, including recordings in the early 50s with Charlie Parker. He also worked with Duke Ellington's former trombonist Tyree Glenn and with the clarinettist Artie Shaw's Gramercy Five in 1953, and made regular appearances at the Birdland club in New York. With the pioneering bebop drummer Kenny Clarke, Jones worked regularly as a studio player for Savoy Records, briefly rejoined Hawkins in 1955, and toured with Benny Goodman.

Towards the end of the decade, he appeared with Glenn in bands led by the trombonist that sometimes featured a fitfully poetic Lester Young. His brother Elvin appeared with Jones in a 1958 edition of the Glenn ensemble, and Jones recorded with the fast-rising Cannonball Adderley in the same year.

Jones went to work on the studio staff of CBS records in 1959 – often playing on the Ed Sullivan Show – and remained with the company for 17 years. But he continued to work the jazz circuit when he could. Throughout the 70s, he performed regularly with Goodman, then became pianist and conductor on the Broadway musical Ain't Misbehavin'. He appears on hundreds of recordings, a testament to his ability to fit in at the drop of a hat, and lift everyone else's game, while still adding a uniquely identifiable chemistry of his own.

From the late 70s on, he often played unaccompanied, or duetted with likemindedly subtle and understated pianists such as John Lewis and Tommy Flanagan. Jones also performed with an ensemble that came to be known as the Great Jazz Trio – a deservedly hyperbolic name for a group born at the Village Vanguard in 1976 and initially starring Jones alongside the former Miles Davis bass and drums colossi Ron Carter and Tony Williams. The bassists Eddie Gomez and Dave Holland, and drummers Al Foster, Jimmy Cobb and Billy Higgins, appeared in later editions.

Jones was popular all over the world, but had a particular following in Japan, a country he came to visit regularly, becoming a guest professor at the Osaka College of Music from 1992. He appeared at the world's great jazz festivals well into his later years, and sustained a busy programme of club dates into his 80s.

In 1989, Jones was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, and that year Holland and the saxophonist and clarinettist Ken Peplowski contributed to one of his most mellow and captivating recordings, the Concord label's Lazy Afternoon. But Upon Reflection, made in 1993 and dedicated to his late brother Thad, and featuring Elvin on drums, laid to rest any lingering suspicions that Hank put fastidious grace above profound emotion.

Jones remained at the top of his game until the last months of his life, touring Japan in February this year. A superb live duo album, Kids, was released in 2007, featuring him in remarkably free dialogue with the saxophonist Joe Lovano, and last year he was awarded a lifetime Grammy for services to music.

He is survived by his wife, Theodosia.

Henry "Hank" Jones, jazz pianist, born 31 July 1918; died 16 May 2010
 
Jazz Profiles from NPR
Hank Jones 

Produced by Ben Shapiro 


Hank Jones
According to Hank Jones, "when you listen to a pianist, each note should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own." For nearly six decades Jones has taken his own words to heart, playing every one of his notes with a unique and deeply personal style.  
Listen to pianists Sir Roland Hanna and Billy Taylor talk about Jones' personal approach to the piano

Born on July 31, 1918 in Vicksburg, Miss., Jones grew up in Pontiac, Michigan in a family rich with musical talent. Actively encouraged to play music by their parents were oldest son Hank, his younger brother, cornetist band leader, composer and arranger Thad Jones, and the baby of the family, drummer Elvin Jones, the polyrhythmic force behind John Coltrane's classic quartet.

Jones' earliest influence was pianist Fats Waller (left), who played in the bouncy ragtime stride piano style. During junior high school, Jones used to listen to Fats Waller records on the radio before he left for school and Waller's insistent melodies and driving beat had Jones dancing all the way to class.
Listen to Hank recall how he used to listen to Fats Waller on the radio 


Jones also idolized Earl "Fatha" Hines and the great Teddy Wilson, spinning their sides as a teenager, emulating their styles. While these artists seldom came through Pontiac, he did see many lesser-known pianists perform. Often these performers played by ear, not having had formal training. By watching and listening to them, he acquired an early understanding of improvisation, a technique he himself would come to master.

Jones' greatest influence was the legendary Art Tatum (left). Hank was in awe of Tatum's energy, creativity, and flawless technique. Later, as a young professional in his early 20's, Jones was able to meet Tatum and watch him through hours of practice sessions.
Listen to Hank recall watching Tatum practice

I am the sum total of everything that I have experienced musically.
-- Hank Jones  

Always open to new approaches to music, Jones was one of the first pianists to take on the language of bebop. Many pianists were leery of making the transition to this "radical" movement in jazz. Hank saw the new style as an opportunity to enhance his own playing, and did so with great success. He recorded with bebop phenomenon Charlie Parker, and fast became an influential presence on the emerging bebop scene.

Listen to Hank talk about his immersion into bebop

Commercial success eluded Jones during most of his career -- some attribute this to his own modesty and self-effacing manner. During the 1950s, Jones kept busy as a freelancing accompanist, recording with Ella Fitzgerald and playing on the Jazz at the Philharmonic tour with Parker and Roy Eldridge. He later became the staff pianist for CBS Television, backing guests like Frank Sinatra on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Listen to Hank talk about working on The Ed Sullivan Show 

Though he hasn't achieved great fame, Hank Jones continues to leave his mark on jazz. His dynamic and diverse recordings reinterpret jazz in all of its varieties. But he also continues to expand his musical palette. In recent years he has collaborated with a West African group, fusing American jazz with African traditional folk music. Jones once again demonstrates his remarkable ability to adapt to any musical setting and shine.
Listen to Hank talk about his constant strive for excellence

SHOW PLAYLIST
NPR RESOURCES
More InfoBrowse the NPR Jazz Web site -- NPRJazz.org

ListenListen to the NPR Basic Jazz Record Library entry for Hank Jones' album A Handful of Keys

THE MUSIC OF HANK JONES: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH HANK JONES:

 

Hank Jones - On Green Dolphin Street

 

Hank Jones - The Trio ( Full Album )

 


 

Master Class with Hank Jones: The Performance

 

 

Hank Jones' The Great Jazz Trio - Blue Note, Tokyo, Japan

 

 

Hank Jones - In A Sentimental Mood

 

 

 

Hank Jones & Ron Carter - Great Jazz In Kobe 1996

 

 

 

Hank Jones - Round Midnight

 

 

 

Hank Jones Solo Piano

 


 

Hank Jones - Let's Fall in Love

 



 

Hank Jones - Solo Blues

 

 

'Hank Jones Lazy Afternoon 

 

 

 

The Great Jazz Trio by Hank Jones - Live at Tokyo Jazz 2008 

 

 

Midnight sun- Hank Jones Trio

 

 

Hank Jones - Wave

 

 

HANK JONES – Willow Weep For Me (Solo, 1994, HD) 

 

 

The Great Jazz Trio by Hank Jones - Tokyo Jazz 2006

 

 

Hank Jones - "Have You Met Miss Jones?"

 

 

 

Hank Jones, Johnny Smith, Ray Brown - Yesterdays

 

 

Yardbird Suite - Hank Jones