The Story Is Told
Fatha Hines
From The Deep Forest

"One night an announcer - let his name be forgotten, Earl says - was given a fatherly talking to by Hines. He'd been drinking too much on the job and Hines was asked to talk to him and he did.

​

Later that night he opened the show, sprawling on the table and leaning over the mike, lushed to the gills. He said, "Here comes Father Hines through the deep forest with his children." And the tag stuck, becoming the Hines trademark.

 

(Hines and Reginald Forsythe, the British composer, wrote that theme song, "Deep Forest", while the latter was staying with Earl in Chicago ...)

​

... One of the legends about Earl Hines that was settled in our hotel-room interview was the story that he had had the webbing between his fingers cut to enable him to make larger chords.That one is strictly a legend and was put out by a pianist who didn't like Earl, he says. "My normal reach is a tenth, though I can make elevenths and sometimes twelfths. But I really have to slip over them. The way I invert chords makes them sound bigger," he says."

​

Ralph J. Gleason (from Jam Session, An Anthology of Jazz edited by Ralph J. Gleason).