I come here today to make a case for Dan Hicks as one of the great unsung geniuses of American music. Readers of a certain age may recall Hicks from the late '60s when his band, the Hot Licks, had a flicker of success as a psychedelic novelty act. Decked out in thrift store finery, the group cut several very fine records, but the Hot Licks were just the tip of the iceberg as far as revealing what Hicks was capable of.
To begin at the beginning, however, Hicks was born to a military family in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1941, and when he was five years old the family moved to Santa Rosa, California. Thus, Hicks came of age in Northern California just as the hippie thing was exploding. Hicks' street smarts and sense of humor were far too well developed for him to embrace the muddled ideology of the late '60s, but he loved the unlimited possibilities it afforded artists, and he used those wide open spaces to cobble together an innovative group that synthesized elements of western swing, ragtime and jazz.
The music was great and Hicks was a born showman, but problems began surfacing immediately. The most pressing one was the fact that Hicks could easily have had a second career as a comedian -- he has a droll sense of humor laced with sarcasm, and a deadpan stage presence that are hilarious. At the same time, the music he plays is a highly sophisticated one requiring enormous skill, and he was incapable of masking the contempt he felt for goofball audience members calling out for what can only be described as the silly songs in his repertoire. Watching him onstage in the '70s -- and today -- you can see him torn between getting a laugh, telling the audience to fuck itself, or creating something beautiful. During the '70s his solution to this conflict was to drink heavily. His career fell apart, of course, and the Hot Licks were history by 1973.
By the time Hicks got sober and returned to the stage in 1987, his formidable talent was in full bloom. Most performers are really good at one thing, but Hicks does several things extraordinarily well. For starters, he's a brilliant songwriter with an exquisite and completely original sense of melody. Hicks' snappy, cheerful numbers are the ones people request at his shows, but it's his ballads -- "A Magician," "Reelin' Down," "It's Not My Time to Go" -- that kill me. Because Hicks makes a living as a touring musician, he makes an effort to give the crowd what they want, so those haunting, downbeat numbers rarely get heard, but several of them are as wistful and great as anything Hoagy Carmichael ever wrote. (Speaking of whom, I wish Hicks would cover Carmichael's "Baltimore Oriole").
Hicks' playing is astonishing as his composing. Tearing into hot jazz numbers in the Django Reinhardt tradition, Hicks breezes through material few musicians even attempt. This was particularly apparent when he was touring with the Acoustic Warriors, a group he fronted from 1987 to 1997. To play really fast and manage to swing is no small achievement, and when Hicks and the Acoustic Warriors raced through tunes like "The Buzzard Was Their Friend" and "Long Comma Viper," they created some of the most thrilling live music I've ever seen (and I saw Led Zeppelin and the Sex Pistols).
As for Hicks the singer, there's no one else remotely like him when it comes to subtlety, inflection and timing. He tends to sing a bit behind the beat and has an approach to phrasing that makes it seem like it's no big deal what he's doing up there onstage. He comes on like a guy in a bar telling a shaggy dog story you can choose to listen to or not, but Hicks' singing is perfection. He can bend a note into impossible places, jump octaves, and toss off syncopated harmonies without breaking a sweat.
America is notorious for taking poor care of its homegrown geniuses, and Hicks is no exception to that rule. He has a new CD out (Selected Shorts), co-produced by Dave Kaplan and former Manhattan Transfer member Tim Hauser, and although this certainly isn't my favorite Hicks album (too much production and too many electric instruments), I'm grateful to the powers that be that he's still working and making music. Dan Hicks is wonderful.
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