He Was the Campy Stride Pianist Who Liked to Sing Funny Songs Like AinT Misbehavin
DICK HYMAN REVAMPS THE QUINTET
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December 18, 1981
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WHEN Dick Hyman took a jazz quintet into Michael's Pub seven years ago to play a program of pieces by Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin and James P. Johnson, he was known as a versatile pianist, electronic organist, arranger and composer closely associated with ragtime and stride piano. His group was billed as the ''Dick Hyman Quintet.''
Now, in his seventh annual holiday season at Michael's Pub, ragtime and stride have given way to Broadway, where Mr. Hyman is the musical arranger of ''Sugar Babies,'' and films, where he is writing and arranging music for a film that Woody Allen is shooting. His talents have now been extended to singing and to playing the pipe organ, and the group he leads at Michael's Pub is known as ''The New All Star Perfect Jazz Repertory Quintet,'' an extension of the name it has used for the last four years.
''We got the name from Whitney Balliett, the jazz critic of The New Yorker,'' Mr. Hyman said the other day. ''He suggested it because he thought the ''Dick Hyman Quintet'' wasn't sufficiently glamorous. I wouldn't have had the nerve to take the name if he hadn't proposed it.''
The quintet this year added the words ''New'' and ''All Star'' to point up the fact that all its members lead groups of their own and that there have been changes since the quintet first came to the Michael's Pub bandstand. The original trumpeter, Pee Wee Erwin, who died last spring, was replaced by Warren Vache. The original clarinetist, Bob Wilber, has been replaced by Phil Bodner, who leads his own trio and who headed a prolific recording group in the 1970's, the Brass Ring. Panama Francis, who leads a nine-piece band, the Savoy Sultans, has succeeded Bobby Rosengarden on drums and Bob Haggart, co-leader with Yank Lawson of the World's Greatest Jazz Band, is playing bass in place of Milt Hinton. Last of the Original Quintet
Mr. Hyman is the only player left from the original group, and even he has changed. In the quintet's third year at Michael's Pub, he began singing. ''I started out of desperation,'' Mr. Hyman said. ''A group at Michael's Pub is supposed to be entertaining, so singing seemed to be a good idea. The first year I talked my way through a Gershwin song, 'Blah-Blah-Blah.' Even with lyrics like that, I had trouble remembering them. I also tried 'Just Another Rhumba.' When I decided I could get away with comedy songs, I did 'The Babbit and the Bromide' with Bobby Rosengarden.
''At first, I found that singing was strange. Now I like it more and more. My confidence is improving even though my voice isn't.'' This month, there's a new twist to his singing: he's doing songs that he has written. One, ''Hello, Sad and Lonely,'' was part of an Emmy-winning score he wrote for a television special, ''Sunshine Is on the Way.''
Another is a song that he found in his files. ''Several years ago I wrote an instrumental piece called 'Happy Ever After' for a recording session by Enoch Light and the Brass Menagerie,'' Mr. Hyman recalled. ''The record got quite a bit of radio play. Johnny Mercer heard it and wrote a lyric for it. He never did anything with it, possibly because he did not consider it finished. I found it when I was going through my files and I felt that finished or not it was a very good specimen of a wittily rhymed Mercer lyric. They Love Authenticity
Mr. Hyman says that he sings it ''as well as it needs to be sung - at least, by the composer,'' adding that ''composers are notoriously authentic.''
Another change in Mr. Hyman since he first brought the quintet to Michael's Pub is his growing interest in performing on the pipe organ. Because he has done so much work on electronic organ, he thought that the pipe organ would be a natural transition.
''But pipe organ is a totally different creature,'' he said. ''You can play an electronic organ with the rhythm section. It responds immediately and it adds a different color to the rhythm section. But a pipe organ is basically a solo instrument. It has a different feeling from an electronic organ. A pipe organ wants to be played more lyrically. It loves to be played out of tempo. A pipe organ tries to tell the player what to do. You can coax it into swinging in a sedate, old-fashioned way. And when you really get going, it's like leading a herd of elephants.''
Mr. Hyman has been building a repertory based on solos recorded by Fats Waller in 1926 and 1927 on a church organ in Camden, N.J., and has made an album of pipe organ recordings, ''Cincinnati Fats,'' commmemorating the 1930's period when Mr. Waller broadcast on pipe organ regularly on WLW in Cincinnati. New Venue for Concerts
Churches and movie theaters are where he usually finds organs for his concerts, but in Denver, he found a potential new venue for pipe organ concerts - pizza parlors.
''There are several of these glorified pizza parlors in the Midwest,'' he said. ''The restaurant is built around the works of a theater organ. The organ's works are lighted up and the pipes are enclosed in glass so you can see them throb. I wouldn't mind playing in one of those places. I like pizza.''
Last summer Mr. Hyman gave a jazz concert in the huge auditorium in Ocean Grove, N.J., where camp meetings are held. First he went to Ocean Grove to familiarize himself with the organ, a combination theater and church organ. Like all such instruments, it had a variety of registration tabs marked ''flute,'' ''strings'' and other effects that could be produced by pushing the tabs.
''One registration tab was marked 'flag,' '' Mr. Hyman said. ''I pushed it and suddenly, above the organ, a galaxy of electric lights began blinking, forming a waving American flag surmounted by a cross.'' This so impressed Mr. Hyman that he used it in the concert as a finale with Fats Waller's song, ''Ain't Misbehavin.' '' ''Fats would have liked that,'' Mr. Hyman declared.
The New All Star Perfect Jazz Repertory Quintet performs at Michael's Pub, 211 East 55th Street (758-2272), three times tonight and three times tomorrow evening, starting at 9:15 P.M. There is a $10 minimum but no cover charge.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/18/arts/dick-hyman-revamps-the-quintet.html
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