Keith Nichols (13 February 1945 – 21 January 2021) was an English

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a majo ...

multi-instrumentalist A multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays two or more musical instruments at a professional level of proficiency. Also known as doubling, the practice allows greater ensemble flexibility and more efficient employment of musicians, where a ...

and arranger, a player of the

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrat ...

, reeds, and accordion.

Biography

Born in Ilford, Essex, England, Nichols was a

child actor The term child actor or child actress is generally applied to a child acting on stage or in movies or television. An adult who began their acting career as a child may also be called a child actor, or a "former child actor". Closely associated t ...

and an award-winning

accordionist Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a ree ...

in his youth. He began by playing

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...

tunes, gaining notice in the 1970s in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

when forming the band New Sedalia. Nichols also formed the Ragtime Orchestra in the mid-1970s, along with Mo Morris, Richard Warner and Paul Nossiter. Nichols recorded and gigged with

Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...

, and

Dick Sudhalter Richard Merrill Sudhalter (28 December 1938 – 19 September 2008)Biography ''AllMusic'' was an American jazz trumpeter and writer. Biography Born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, Sudhalter was inspired to pursue a musical career by his ...

during this period. Over time, he moved on to

Dixieland jazz Dixieland jazz, also referred to as traditional jazz, hot jazz, or simply Dixieland, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The 1917 recordings by the Original Dixieland Jass Band ...

Swing Swing or swinging may refer to: Apparatus * Swing (seat), a hanging seat that swings back and forth * Pendulum, an object that swings * Russian swing, a swing-like circus apparatus * Sex swing, a type of harness for sexual intercourse * Swing rid ...

, and orchestral Jazz, including the oeuvres of

Paul Whiteman Paul Samuel Whiteman (March 28, 1890 – December 29, 1967) was an American bandleader, composer, orchestral director, and violinist. As the leader of one of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s and early 1930s, W ...

and

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was ba ...

. Nichols was also a frequent sideman for the

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 2012, ...

record label and an arranger for the New York Jazz Repertory Company,

Dick Hyman Richard Hyman (born March 8, 1927) is an American jazz pianist and composer. Over a 70-year career, he has worked as a pianist, organist, arranger, music director, electronic musician, and composer. He was named a National Endowment for the Art ...

and the

Pasadena Roof Orchestra The Pasadena Roof Orchestra (PRO) is a contemporary band from England that specialises in the jazz and swing genres of music of the 1920s and 1930s, although their full repertoire is considerably wider. The orchestra has existed since 1969, al ...

. In 1978, he helped lead the

Midnite Follies Orchestra Midnite Follies Orchestra was formed in Britain in 1978, by jazz musicians Keith Nichols and Alan Cohen, dedicated to recreating standards by some of early jazz musicians. The orchestra more or less disbanded in the 1990s. The Midnite Follies Or ...

with Alan Cohen. Other artists Nichols worked with include

Digby Fairweather Richard John Charles "Digby" Fairweather (born 25 April 1946) is a British jazz cornetist, author and broadcaster. Biography Before becoming a professional musician, Fairweather was a librarian and has retained an interest in jazz bibliograph ...

Harry Gold Harry Gold (born Henrich Golodnitsky, December 11, 1910 – August 28, 1972) was a Swiss-born American laboratory chemist who was convicted as a courier for the Soviet Union passing atomic secrets from Klaus Fuchs, an agent of the Soviet Union, ...

Richard Pite Richard Pite is a British professional musician (drums, double bass, bass ukulele, tuba and sousaphone) and jazz historian specialising in the jazz of the early 20th Century. He is founder of two music companies - PartyJazz and The Jazz Repertor ...

and

Claus Jacobi Claus Jacobi (4 January 1927 – 17 August 2013) was the editor of the German news magazine ''Der Spiegel'' from 1962–1968. He was arrested during the Spiegel scandal. Jacobi was born and died in Hamburg. In 1946, he started his journalistic ca ...

. He died of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickl ...

during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom on 21 January 2021, at The Royal London Hospital.

Discography

Paramount Theatre Orchestra (1984) (LP, Stomp Off) * ''Lolly Pops'' Dreamland Syncopators * ''Territory Jazz'' (1987) (LP, Stomp Off) Julian Vincent and Keith Nichols * ''Morton to Mozart'' (1989) (CD, Poppy HXP012) Keith Nichols' Cotton Club Gang and Janice Day with Guy Barker * ''I Like To Do Things For You'' (1991) (CD, Stomp Off) Keith Nichols and the Cotton Club Orchestra * ''Syncopated Jamboree'' (1991) (CD, Stomp Off CD 1242) * ''Henderson Stomp'' (1993) (CD, Stomp Off CD 1234) * ''Harlem's Arabian Nights'' (1997) (CD, Stomp Off CD 130) Keith Nichols' Little Devils * ''The Charmful Little Armful'' (2003) (PEK) Keith Nichols and the Blue Devils * ''Kansas City Breakdown'' (2004) (CD, Stomp Off CD 1387) Keith Nichols' Earthbound Spirits * ''Harlem Madness'' (2004) (CD, PKCD-237) Keith Nichols' Collegians * ''Collegiate Rhythm'' (2006) (CD, PEK PKCD-299) Mike Lovell and Keith Nichols * ''Dixieland at the Thornton Little Theatre'' (2006) (CD, PEK) Keith Nichols' Jazz Artists and Northern Sinfonia * ''A Tribute to

'' (2007) (CD,

Lake Records Fellside Recordings is a British independent record label, formed by Paul Adams and Linda Adams in 1976 in Workington, Cumbria, and still run by them. Paul Adams toured semi-professionally with the Barry Skinner Folk Group in his teens. He an ...

LACD245) Thomas "Spats" Langham / Keith Nichols / Richard Pite * ''London Omnibus'' (2010) (Jazz Repertory Company) The Nichols-Duffee International Jazz Orchestra * ''One More Time'' (2013) (CD, Lake)

References

External links

* * * 1945 births 2021 deaths Stride pianists Dixieland revivalist pianists English jazz pianists English jazz trombonists Male trombonists British male pianists 21st-century British pianists 21st-century trombonists 21st-century British male musicians British male jazz musicians Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in England Stomp Off artists Male jazz pianists {{jazz-trombonist-stub