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AL HIRT (ARTIST BIOGRAPHY)
Al Hirt (November 7, 1922 – April 27, 1999) was an American
trumpeter and bandleader. He is best remembered for his million selling
recordings of "Java", and the accompanying album, Honey in the Horn (1963). Al
was a member of The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
A phenomenally proficient trumpet player, Al Hirt was one of the most successful
instrumental recording artists of the 1960s. Perhaps modeling his genial stage
personality after Louis Armstrong, Hirt was a tremendously popular performer,
easily capturing the center of attention with his massive 300-pound, 6-foot-2
frame (among his nicknames were “Jumbo” and “The Round Mound of Sound”) but
holding it with his joyful spirit and jaw-dropping virtuosity.
Although Hirt came out of New Orleans leading a Dixieland band, he never let
himself get stereotyped in that narrow genre. He was honest about his choice of
style, never calling what he played “jazz”: “I'm a pop commercial musician,” he
once said. “and I've got a successful format. I'm not a jazz trumpet and never
was a jazz trumpet.”
Alois Maxwell Hirt was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of a police
officer. At the age of six, he was given his first trumpet, which had been
purchased at a local pawnshop. He would play in the Junior Police Band with the
children of Alcide Nunez, and by the age of 16, Hirt was playing professionally,
often with his friend Pete Fountain. During this time, he was hired to play at
the local horse racing track, beginning a six-decade connection to the sport.
Hirt was always very serious about perfecting his mastery of his instrument, and
he studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory for three years in the early 1940s.
After playing with Army bands during World War Two, he worked with Tommy Dorsey,
Ray McKinley, and Benny Goodman's big bands--usually as first chair, but not a
soloist--until he returned to New Orleans and formed his own band in 1950.
For most of the 1950s, he was comfortable staying close to home--musically and
professionally. Raising eight kids with his first wife probably had something to
do with it, but Hirt was always happy to have a strong association with the
music and lifestyle of New Orleans. He often performed with clarinet player Pete
Fountain, who achieved nearly the same level of national fame, and the two
remained close friends and colleagues until Hirt's death. Hirt recorded a number
of mainstream Dixieland albums for Audio Fidelity and others during this period.
In 1960, Hirt's group, the Dixieland Six, played Las Vegas and was spotted by
Dinah Shore, who booked them onto her television variety show. Television and
Hirt took to each other, and RCA quickly signed him and began promoting him as a
major artist. To get and keep a national audience, Hirt had to loosen his ties
to Dixieland. Virtually none of his RCA albums have a strong Dixieland flavor,
most of them featuring large studio ensembles and arrangements by veterans like
Marty Paich, Billy May, and Marty Gold. His albums “Honey in the Horn,” and
“Cotton Candy,” were both gold records, and he was named “Top Instrumentalist”
by Billboard magazine in 1965. His recording of “Java,” won him a Grammy.
Hirt never turned his back on his roots, though, and at the same time he was
coming to fame, he opened his own night club in the French Quarter and appeared
there regularly. Although he toured steadily well into the 1980s, often in pops
concerts with symphony orchestras, he tried to work his schedules to bring him
back home quickly. His 1965 album with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops was
among his best-selling records, and Hirt enjoyed playing classical showpieces as
well as popular numbers.
Hirt's weight and lifestyle eventually took its toll on his body, and in later
years, he had to perform in a wheelchair. He closed his club in 1983, fed up
with the deterioration of the French Quarter, but he continued to play there,
mostly at Fountain's club, until a few months before his death in 1999. Hirt had
eight children, ten grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. In 1990, he
married Beverly Estabrook Essel, a friend of 40 years.
Al Hirt recorded more than 50 albums in his career, and played for millions of
people around the world including Pope John Paul II and 8 U.S. Presidents. He
earned 4 gold albums and 1 platinum, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Charlie “Bird” Parker Memorial Foundation.
He is a legend in his native New Orleans, where there is a live sized statue of
him in the French Quarter.
(Info mainly from allaboutjazz.com)
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AL HIRT (ARTIST BIOGRAPHY)
Other Nicknames include “Al (He’s the King!) Hirt”
and “The Round Mound of Sound.”
Date of Birth: 7 November 1922, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Date of Death: 27 April 1999, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA (liver cancer)
Height: 6’ 2” (1.88 m)
Alois Maxwell Hirt, known as “Al” or “Jumbo”, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana,
the son of a police officer. At the age of six, he was given his first trumpet,
which had been purchased at a local pawnshop. He would play in the Junior Police
Band with the children of Alcide Nunez, and by the age of 16, Hirt was playing
professionally, often with his friend Pete Fountain. During this time, he was
hired to play at the local horse racing track, beginning a six-decade connection
to the sport.
In 1940 Hirt went to Cincinnati, Ohio to study at the Cincinnati Conservatory of
Music with Dr. Frank Simon (a former soloist with the John Philip Sousa
Orchestra). After a stint as a bugler in the United States Army during World War
II, Hirt performed with various Swing big bands, including those of Tommy Dorsey,
Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Ina Rae Hutton. In 1950 he became first trumpet
and soloist with Horace Heidt’s Orchestra.
Hirt then returned to New Orleans, working with various Dixieland groups and
leading his own bands. Despite Hirt’s statement years later “I’m not a jazz
trumpet and never was a jazz trumpet” he made a few recordings where he
demonstrated ability to play in that style during the 1950s, notably with
bandleader Monk Hazel and a few other recordings on the local Southland Records
label.
Hirt’s virtuoso dexterity and fine tone on his instrument soon attracted the
attention of national labels. Hirt had 22 different record albums on the
Billboard Pop charts in the 1950s and 1960s. The albums Honey In The Horn and
Cotton Candy were both in the top 10 best sellers for 1964, the same year Hirt
scored a top hit single with his cover of Allen Toussaint’s tune Java.
Hirt’s recording of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee was used
as the theme song for the 1960s television series The Green Hornet, and again
gained public attention in 2003 when it was used in the film Kill Bill.
Planting deep roots in his community, Hirt opened up a club on Bourbon Street in
the French Quarter in 1962, which he ran until 1983. He also become a minority
owner in the NFL expansion New Orleans Saints in 1967.
On February 8, 1970, while performing in a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans,
Hirt was injured after he was struck in the mouth by a piece of concrete. The
throw from the raucous crowd severed the muscle developed in trumpet playing and
required 16 stitches to close, but he quickly recovered.
In 1987 Hirt played a solo rendition of Ave Maria for Pope John Paul II’s visit
to New Orleans, a performance Hirt considered one of his most important.
Hirt died in New Orleans of liver failure after spending the previous year in a
wheelchair due to edema in his leg. Despite this handicap, Hirt continued to
play in local clubs, often being wheeled to the stage. His remains were buried
in Metairie Cemetery.
RCA-VICTOR 47-8280
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