Nicky Hopkins, again

Yet more on the greatness of Nicky Hopkins.


I don't know how a North London born, classically trained pianist  ended up being one of the great American musicians, but it's one of the great stories of self-transformation in British rock. I hope that Julian Dawson's new biography of Hopkins will explain how all this came to be.


I suppose the easy explanation was that Hopkins thoroughly assimilated a roots American style while hanging out on the West Coast in the late 60s, a sometime member of the Quicksilver Messenger Service, and playing with the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane (Volunteers, 1969), and the Steve Miller Band (on the wildly ambitious extended song suite, "Baby's House"). But I always had a feeling that he came to these bands fully  formed as a stylist, steeped in the New Orleans R&B music that he loved as a teenager (and that inspired him to drop out of the Royal Academy of Music).  I suppose I'll learn from Dawson whether or not my hunch was right.

 This instrumental  from 1970 is a touch on the "adult contemporary" side, but it gives you a sense of his brand of country soul. Some parts seem like a dress rehearsal for the wonderful piano intro he comes up with for the  Stones' "Loving Cup," two years later:

Hear for yourself--