Herbie Nichols is documented far less extensively than, say, Thelonious Monk, to whom he is often compared. Thus Herbie Nichols Trio, the pianist’s lone item in the Blue Note 1500 series, is all the more a treasure. Add both volumes of The Prophetic Herbie Nichols and a single Bethlehem Records date (Love, Gloom, Cash, Love) and we’re looking at the entirety of Nichols’ recorded output, spanning just 1955 to 1957. But though it eluded mainstream notice at the time, Nichols’ music has offered inexhaustible riches for discerning listeners. He recorded exclusively in a trio setting, here with the great Max Roach on drums and two alternating bassists, Al McKibbon and Teddy Kotick.
Aside from the laidback finale, George and Ira Gershwin’s “Mine,” all the tracks on Herbie Nichols Trio are original. “I find no dearth of ideas when it comes to writing,” the pianist declared in his liner notes, and indeed it’s his compositional voice—along with a percussive, unorthodox pianism that puts him in league with other Blue Note figures including Monk, Horace Silver, Andrew Hill, and early Cecil Taylor—that makes Nichols unique. He’s particularly Monk-like on the slower yet busily melodic “Wildflower,” whereas “The Spinning Song,” instantly memorable for its spooky lyricism, sounds like no one else (“We spin out our days in alternating songs of triumph and the blues,” Nichols said of the song). On “Chit Chattin’,” “Terpsichore,” “Query,” and “Hangover Triangle,” Nichols enters a brighter, more bop-oriented space, navigating song forms with unusual twists, punctuated by the chunky low-register left-hand figures and dense right-hand chordal patterns that would endear him to later generations.