Hi, Marty,
I wasn't a huge fan of Hot Licks but this is really sad news. I didn't know
he was the drummer with The Charlatans.
Rosie
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From: ourplace-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ourplace-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Marty Rimpau
Sent: Monday, February 08, 2016 4:48 AM
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Subject: [ourplace] dan hicks, 74; leader of eclectic band hot licks
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' instrum entation - 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 th e 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 m oved 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.
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