Herbie Nichols

Herbert Horatio Nichols (January 3, 1919 – April 12, 1963) was an American jazz pianist and composer who wrote the jazz standard "Lady Sings the Blues". Obscure during his lifetime, he is now highly regarded by many musicians and critics.

Life Herbie Nichols was born in San Juan Hill, Manhattan, New York, United States, During much of his career, he took work as a Dixieland musician while also pursuing the more adventurous kind of jazz he preferred.

One of the four essays in A. B. Spellman's Four Lives in the Bebop Business (also known as Four Jazz Lives, 1966) is about Nichols. A biography, Herbie Nichols: A Jazzist's Life, written by Mark Miller, was published in 2009.

Influence Nichols's music was energetically promoted by Roswell Rudd, who worked with Nichols in the early 1960s. Rudd released three albums featuring Nichols's compositions (Regeneration, issued in 1983 by Soul Note, and The Unheard Herbie Nichols (1997), issued by CIMP in two volumes), as well as a book The Unpublished Works (2000).

In 1984, the Steve Lacy quintet with George E. Lewis, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink, and Arjen Gorter performed the music of Nichols at the Ravenna Jazz Festival in Italy. That same year, they recorded an album titled Change of Season (Music of Herbie Nichols) (Soul Note, 1985).

A New York group, the Herbie Nichols Project (part of the Jazz Composers Collective), has recorded three albums largely dedicated to unrecorded Nichols' compositions, many of which Nichols had deposited in the Library of Congress.

In 2024, Sonic Camera Records released Tell the Birds I Said Hello: The Music of Herbie Nichols, an album by double bassist Ben Allison, guitarist Steve Cardenas, and saxophonist Ted Nash.

Discography As leader

Omnibus Hampton Hawes, John Mehegan, Herbie Nichols, Paul Smith I Just Love Jazz Piano! (Savoy, 1957)[LP] – recorded in 1952 Compilation

As sideman 1953: Rex Stewart and his Dixielanders, Dixieland Free-For-All (Jazztone, 1956) 1958: Vic Dickenson & Joe Thomas, Mainstream (Atlantic, 1959)