Pondering the Space Age Detour of a Piano Master

The synthesized side of Dick Hyman....

File this little blip in the illustrious career of master pianist and music historian Dick Hyman somewhere between Genius Explores New Worlds and Space Age Sound Effects.

It’s a cover of James Brown’s “Give It Up or Turn It Loose,” from Hyman’s second recorded foray on the Moog synthesizer, an album of mostly pop covers called The Age Of Electronicus. Kanye West is familiar: He snagged a bit of a Hyman original from it, “Kolumbo,” for “God Level” from his 2013 Yeezus.

I pressed play as a deep skeptic. When trawling for music, if there’s a choice between James Brown and somebody covering James Brown – even one of his many rightly revered disciples, even a pianist as well versed as Hyman – the default is always the original. This, though, was just nutty enough to spark curiosity – in recent decades, Hyman has done elegant versions of Broadway songs and standards (see the tremendous 1996 Elegies, Mostly), schooled generations of pianists on voicings and chord choices, and revived interest in the nearly lost art of stride-style piano. He’s a low key national treasure.

Meanwhile, most of the Moog projects of the era (Music To Moog By, et. al) are not what you’d call treasures. They’re more about generating awe at the quirky range of imitative sound options than showcasing the musically expressive potential of the keyboard. One shining exception is the 1968 hit that kickstarted pop culture interest in the Moog: Walter (now Wendy) Carlos’ groundbreaking Switched On Bach. That album became a big hit and unleashed a wave of copycats.

From a distance Electronicus looks like one of those – it’s got covers of Beatles tunes, and songs from the musical Hair. Talk about Nerd Clickbait: A collision from the momentous year of 1969 involving a piano legend, Dick Hyman, with a super-hot icon, James Brown, recorded at a time when a portion of the music world was deep in gee-whiz! mode about the synthesizer? Let’s go.

Right away, I was stunned into silence. Not by the kitsch factor, which, it must be said, is reasonably high. But by the musicianship. And the way Hyman really plays the synthesizer. He’s gone deep into its sound-morphing options, figured out ways to create depth by multi-tracking multiple lines (the Moog of the day was monophonic, so only one note was available at the time. That meant recording took awhile). Working with both a live drummer and the Maestro Rhythmaster drum machine, Hyman found colors and moods that eluded the creators of many early synth demonstration discs. He was clearly captivated by the synthesizer and the promise of altering its sounds on the fly; you can hear that in the unique, if sometimes attack-heavy, textures, and in the expansive sustained notes and dramatic, swooping, theremin-like pitch-bends. His understanding of the instrument extends to the way he uses it when he’s improvising: His brisk, scurrying lines foreshadow ad-lib techniques Herbie Hancock would explore a few years later with Headhunters.

But there’s more. (There’s always more.) Before that record, Hyman released an album with a space-age cover, Moog: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman, that is devoted to mostly original music he created on the synth. There’s a highly percussive rhythm study (“Tap Dance In the Memory Banks”) and an immersive etude, “Improvisation in Fourths,” that finds Hyman making the instrument snarl and bark.

And then there’s “The Minotaur,” which features the electrically charged light-beam of a lead sound that inspired Keith Emerson. If you’ve heard “Lucky Man” you know the sonic signature of “The Minotaur.” It’s one of the most enduring, instantly recognizable synthesizer creations in history. Emerson personalized it, naturally, but the core tone and the patching alchemy to get it, came from Hyman.

In the scheme of Hyman’s extensive discography, the Moog recordings can seem small; they chronicle a minor detour that lasted a year or so. Still, during that time, Hyman managed considerable feats of music-making: Just by being curious, he showed the expressive potential – and extreme dimensionality —of an instrument that was widely marketed as a kind of novelty. His understanding of the instrument transformed its sound on record, and transformed the perception of it within the music community. When you hear some heated EDM with high-velocity analog synths bouncing up and down on the beat, or the crystalline glissandos of a New Age meditation retreat soundtrack, spare a thought for Dick Hyman – who took a deep dive into synthesis and then pivoted, with characteristic grace, back to the piano.

Happily, he didn’t discard the synthesizer: