Fatha Hines: The Father of Modern Jazz Piano

Earl Kenneth Hines was born in Duquesne, just outside Pittsburgh, in nineteen oh three, and he grew up to transform jazz piano so thoroughly that musicians still call him Fatha, short for father, because he fathered the modern approach to the instrument. Before Hines, jazz pianists essentially played a rhythm section, marking the beat like a left-hand metronome. Hines liberated the right hand to improvise melodically, in the style of a horn player, creating what scholars call trumpet-style piano.

He was also one of the first Black musicians to perform on American radio, in nineteen twenty-one. His orchestra in the nineteen thirties and forties launched the careers of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, and Billy Eckstine, making his band an incubator for the bebop revolution that followed. He kept performing until shortly before his death in nineteen eighty-three.