Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

HICKMAN, Art

(b 13 June 1886, Oakland CA; d 16 January 1930) San Francisco pianist and bandleader who along with Isham Jones, Edgar Benson in Chicago and a few others, is generally given credit as an inventor of the type of dance band which dominated popular music for half a century. Hickman seems to have been the first: before the First World War he broke away from the potted-palm sort of polite hotel music, presenting rhythmic interpretations of pop songs using three brass and two or three saxophones divided into sections, putting in place the characteristics of the big dance band that was the main style in pop music for the next 40 years. Arranger Ferde Grofé wrote separate music for the reed and brass sections, combining the higher and lower instruments in each section into choirs, making possible call-and-response patterns as well as richer harmonies. Hickman and his arrangers also pioneered orchestrated 'breaks' (interruptions in the rhythm, not simply gaps in the arrangment), to be filled by syncopated figures from any instrument or group of instruments.

They were certainly aware of what was coming to be called jazz. Among Hickman's compositions was 'Rose Room', published in 1917, a tune that lends itself to an interesting arrangement, greatly admired by Benny Goodman, whose sextet recorded it nearly twenty-five years later. Duke Ellington's 'In a Mellotone' (1940), one of the classics of the whole era, is a countermelody to it. We think of it as a pretty, mid-tempo ballad, but Hickman's own recording includes plenty of hot piano.

Saxophonists Clyde Doerr and Bert Ralton joined the lineup in 1919; both remained influential for many years, Ralton later turning up in London directing the Savoy Orpheans, one of that country's most popular bands. Grofé left to join Paul Whiteman in 1920, who became one of the most successful recording artists of the while era. Hickman suffered from ill health and died relatively young in 1930, but by then bands all over the world were playing his kind of music: black and white, hot and 'sweet' (or 'strict tempo', as it is called in Britain).

Many of Hickman's records were good sellers, especially on Columbia in 1920-21; 50 titles are available in very good transfers on two CDs from Archeophone Records.