I was talking with a friend recently about old music. You know, those groups that we used to listen to but kind of faded to the background through the years for one reason or another. The subject of Dan Hicks came up and I remembered this post from quite a few years back. It’s been gnawing at me for days and this morning I wanted to hear some Hot Licks. So I thought I’d share.
I was thinking of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks the other day. I’ve got a couple of his albums from the early 70’s and periodically some of his songs pop into my mind. It’s hard to categorize his music but their was always an eccentricity factor with it. He’s been around for something like 50 years or more but probably achieved his greatest success with his early work and his appearances on popular TV variety shows of the time.
One such appearance was on The Flip Wilson Show in 1972 which I’m showing here. I was going to show only this clip, given that it’s such a great snapshot of that time in popular culture, but I thought it would be interesting to also show him a few years later to show the evolution. Somewhat.
Anyway, here are a couple of Dan Hicks’ songs for your consideration. The first, By Hook or By Crook, is from 1972:
The second, I Scare Myself, is from around 1990 from the short-lived late night show Night Music with David Sanborn…
Redtree Times 
It’s always fun when you come up with something that I’ve missed entirely, and this certainly qualifies. I’d never heard of Dan Hicks. Now I find that he died in February of this year, and I don’t remember even hearing his name then. Underneath the silliness, there was some really good music there.
I didn’t know he had died this year! I missed that completely.
But to your point, I don’t think the silliness could have existed without the strength of the music.