Dan Hicks, 74; leader of eclectic band Hot Licks . Alan Dep/Marin
Independent Journal/AP/file 2012 Mr. Hicks led Dan Hicks and the Hot
Licks, a musically eclectic band. Its final album, "Last Train to
Hicksville," helped land Mr. Hicks on the cover of Rolling Stone
magazine. NEW YORK - Dan Hicks, a singer, songwriter, and bandleader
who attracted a devoted following with music that was defiantly
unfashionable, proudly eccentric, and foot-tappingly catchy, died
Saturday at his home in Mill Valley, Calif. He was 74. The cause was
liver cancer, said his wife, Clare. Mr. Hicks began performing with his
band, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, in the late 1960s in San Francisco,
where psychedelic rock bands such as Jefferson Airplane and the
Grateful Dead dominated the music sound. The Hot Licks' sound could not
have been more different. At a time when rock was getting louder and
more aggressive, Mr. Hicks' instrumentation - two guitars (he played
rhythm), violin and stand-up bass, with two women providing harmony and
backup vocals - offered a laid-back, all-acoustic alternative that was
a throwback to a simpler time, while his lyrics gave the music a
modern, slightly askew edge. He came to call his music "folk swing,"
but that only hinted at the range of influences he synthesized. He drew
from the American folk tradition but also from the Gypsy jazz of Django
Reinhardt, the Western swing of Bob Wills, the harmony vocals of the
Andrews Sisters, the raucous humor of Fats Waller, and numerous other
sources. "It starts out with kind of a folk music sound," Mr. Hicks
explained in a 2007 interview, "and we add a jazz beat and solos and
singing. We have the two girls that sing, and jazz violin, and all
that, so it's kind of light in nature, it's not loud. And it's sort of,
in a way, kind of carefree. Songs such as "How Can I Miss You When You
Won't Go Away? ," "Milk-Shakin' Mama" ("I saw the girl who keeps the
ice cream/And now it's I who scream for her") and "Hell, I'd Go," about
a man whose fondest wish is to be abducted by aliens, displayed his dry
and often absurd wit, as did his gently self-mocking stage presence.
But he had his serious side, too: "I Scare Myself," a longtime staple
of his repertoire, was a brooding, hypnotic minor-key ballad about
being afraid to love. Mr. Hicks's records never sold in the millions,
but at the height of his popularity in the early 1970s, he and his band
appeared on network television and headlined at Carnegie Hall, and he
appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. Fellow musicians were among his
biggest fans: Guest artists on "Beatin' the Heat" (2000), the first Hot
Licks album after a long hiatus, included Bette Midler, Elvis Costello,
and Tom Waits, while Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffett joined him in the
studio four years later for "Selected Shorts. Daniel Ivan Hicks was
born on Dec. 9, 1941, in Little Rock . His family moved to Santa Rosa,
Calif., when he was a child. He took up drums in sixth grade and guitar
as a teenager. After graduating from San Francisco State University
with a degree in broadcasting, he performed in local folk clubs while
also playing drums with dance bands. From 1965 to 1968, Mr. Hicks was
the drummer and occasional vocalist with the Charlatans, widely
regarded as the first San Francisco psychedelic band, although he
himself remembered it as less a band than "just kind of some loose
guys. While still with the Charlatans, he formed the first version of
the Hot Licks. The group's 1969 album, "Original Recordings," sold
poorly, but three subsequent albums for the independent Blue Thumb
label established it as a successful touring act. Mr. Hicks nonetheless
disbanded the group in 1973, at the height of its popularity. "It was
getting old," he said in 1997. "We became less compatible as friends. I
was pretty disillusioned, had some money, and didn't want to do it
anymore. His returned in the 1980s with a new group, the Acoustic
Warriors, which duplicated the Hot Licks instrumentation without the
female singers. In the late 1990s, he added two singers and brought
back the Hot Licks name. In addition to his wife, Mr. Hicks leaves a
stepdaughter, Sara Wasserman.
