Tell The Birds I Said Hello – Herbie Nichols

Don Sickler: "At our Herbie Nichols Piano Summit, I told the eleven attending pianists that my goal was to have each one of them pick one of the 24 songs that Frank was going to play for them, knowing that they would be able to make the first recording of their song at the Van Gelder Recording Studio, on the same piano Herbie played in 1955 and 1956 for his Blue Note albums. Since Frank had Herbie's manuscripts for some time, he'd had a chance to play through them. The one thing that he immediately said to me was, he already knew which one he wanted to record: Tell The Birds I Said Hello. As producer, I assured him 'You got it!'

"I'm sure you'll be interested hearing how he played it for the other 10 pianists at the Summit." CLIP

"When Frank Kimbrough recorded this piece, he launched our Herbie Nichols Centennial Project. The pressure was on: he recorded it for us on January 3, 2019, Herbie's 100th birthday, with Herbie's relatives in attendance at the Van Gelder Recording Studio in Englewood Cliffs, on Rudy Van Gelder's Steinway piano that Herbie had recorded on in Rudy's original Hackensack studio in 1955 and 1956."

The date attached to Herbie Nichols' manuscript for Tell The Birds I Said Hello is February 9, 1960—over two years after his last recording session. Listen to all of "The First 6" titles released January 3, 2024.