Dick Hyman
Richard Hyman (born March 8, 1927) is an American jazz pianist and composer. Over a 70-year career, he has worked as a pianist, organist, arranger, music director, electronic musician, and composer. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters fellow in 2017.[1]
Dick Hyman
Richard Hyman
March 8, 1927
New York City, New York, U.S.
Musician, composer
Piano, organ
1940s–present
As a pianist, Hyman has been praised for his versatility. DownBeat magazine characterized him as "a pianist of longstanding grace and bountiful talent, with an ability to adapt to nearly any historical style, from stride to bop to modernist sound-painting."[2]
His grandson is designer and artist Adam Charlap Hyman.[3]
Early life[edit]
Hyman was born in New York City on March 8, 1927[4][5] to Joseph C. Hyman and Lee Roven (née Rovinsky), and grew up in suburban Mount Vernon, New York.[6] His older brother, Arthur, owned a jazz record collection and introduced him to the music of Bix Beiderbecke and Art Tatum.[7]
Hyman was trained classically by his mother's brother, the concert pianist Anton Rovinsky, who premiered The Celestial Railroad by Charles Ives in 1928.[8] Hyman said of Rovinsky: "He was my most important teacher. I learned touch from him and a certain amount of repertoire, especially Beethoven. On my own I pursued Chopin. I loved his ability to take a melody and embellish it in different arbitrary ways, which is exactly what we do in jazz. Chopin would have been a terrific jazz pianist! His waltzes are in my improvising to this day."[8][9]
Hyman enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1945, and was transferred to the U.S. Navy band department. “Once I got into the band department, I was working with much more experienced musicians than I was used to," Hyman once stated. "I’d played in a couple of kid bands in New York, playing dances, but the Navy meant business — I had to show up, read music, and be with a bunch of better players than I had run into." After leaving the Navy he attended Columbia University.[10] While there, Hyman won a piano competition, for which the prize was 12 free lessons with swing-era pianist Teddy Wilson. Hyman has said that he "fell in love with jazz" during this period.[11]
After graduating from Columbia, Hyman married his wife, Julia, in 1948.[12]
Career[edit]
Relax Records released Hyman's solo piano versions of "All the Things You Are" and "You Couldn't Be Cuter" around 1950.[13] He recorded two honky-tonk piano albums under the pseudonym "Knuckles O'Toole" (including two original compositions),[14] and recorded more as "Willie the Rock Knox" and "Slugger Ryan".[15]
As a studio musician in the 1950s and early 1960s, Hyman performed with Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Guy Mitchell, Joni James, Marvin Rainwater, Ivory Joe Hunter, LaVern Baker, Ruth Brown, The Playmates, The Wildcats, The Kookie Cats, The Four Freshmen, The Four Sophomores, Mitch Miller, and many more.[10] He played with Charlie Parker for Parker's only film appearance.[4] His extensive television studio work in New York in the 1950s and early 1960s included a stint as music director for Arthur Godfrey's television show from 1959 to 1961.[4][16]
Hyman has worked as composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist for the Woody Allen films Stardust Memories, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Bullets Over Broadway, Everyone Says I Love You, Sweet and Lowdown, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Melinda and Melinda. His other film scores include French Quarter, Moonstruck, Scott Joplin, The Lemon Sisters and Alan and Naomi. His music has also been heard in Mask, Billy Bathgate, Two Weeks Notice, and other films. He was music director of The Movie Music of Woody Allen, which premiered at the Hollywood Bowl.[17]
Hyman composed and performed the score for the Cleveland/San Jose Ballet Company's Piano Man, and Twyla Tharp's The Bum's Rush for the American Ballet Theatre. He was the pianist/conductor/arranger in Tharp's Eight Jelly Rolls, Baker's Dozen, and The Bix Pieces and similarly arranged and performed for Miles Davis: Porgy and Bess, a choreographed production of the Dance Theater of Dallas. In 2007, his Adventures of Tom Sawyer, commissioned by the John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts and produced for the stage by Toni Pimble of the Eugene Ballet, premiered in Eugene, Oregon.[18]
In the 1960s, Hyman recorded several pop albums on Enoch Light's Command Records. At first, he used the Lowrey organ, on the albums Electrodynamics (US No. 117), Fabulous (US No. 132), Keyboard Kaleidoscope and The Man from O.R.G.A.N. He later recorded several albums on the Moog synthesizer which mixed original compositions and cover versions, including Moog: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman(Can No. 35),[19] and The Age of Electronicus (US No. 110).
The track "The Minotaur" from The Electric Eclectics (1969) charted in the US top 40 (US R&B Singles No. 27; Hot 100 No. 38)[20] (No. 20 Canada), becoming the first Moog single hit (although, as originally released on 45, it was labeled as the B-side to the shorter "Topless Dancers of Corfu"). Some elements from the track "The Moog and Me" (most notably the whistle that serves as the song's lead-in) on the same album were sampled by Beck for the track "Sissyneck" on his 1996 album Odelay. Hyman has been a guest performer at jazz festivals and concert venues. Around 1995, Hyman and his wife, Julia, moved permanently to Venice, Florida.[21]