Piano | 1903–1983

The technique Hines built his reputation on came directly from a problem: how do you carry a melody on the piano and still be heard over a full ensemble? His answer, playing the right hand in ringing octaves rather than single notes and using tremolo to sustain phrases the way a horn player would, gave jazz piano a new melodic authority that virtually every pianist who came after him absorbed in some form. He arrived in Chicago in the mid-1920s, joined Louis Armstrong's band in 1927, and the sessions they recorded together in 1928, including the trumpet-piano duet "Weather Bird" and a set of unaccompanied solos for OKeh, established his reputation immediately. From December 1928 he led the house band at the Grand Terrace Ballroom for twelve years, broadcasting to a national radio audience most nights, and in the early 1940s assembled an orchestra that included Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, and Billy Eckstine, though the musicians' union recording strike of 1942 to 1944 meant almost none of it was captured on record. A 1964 comeback, arranged by jazz writer Stanley Dance with a series of New York recitals, prompted a sustained final chapter of recordings on which the playing remained entirely uncompromised.