LR-born Hicks, 74, dies; musical influence in '60s

Dan Hicks, an Arkansas-born musician, who led the musically eclectic band Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks.
Dan Hicks, an Arkansas-born musician, who led the musically eclectic band Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks.

MILL VALLEY, Calif. -- Dan Hicks, an Arkansas-born musician whose work in the 1960s helped define San Francisco's psychedelic sound, has died. He was 74.

The singer, songwriter and bandleader -- who led the musically eclectic band Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks -- died Saturday after a two-year battle with throat and liver cancer, his wife, CT Hicks, said on his website and his Facebook page.

"He was true blue, one of a kind, and did it all his own way always," she wrote. "To all who loved him, know that he will live forever in the words, songs, and art that he spent his life creating."

Hicks was born in 1941 at St. Vincent Hospital in Little Rock and left the state as a child because his father was a career military man.

"I have a baby book that even tells me what room I was born in," he told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2013. "We moved off to California when I was about 5, and I got into music pretty early, but as a drummer to begin with."

He began his musical career in San Francisco in the 1960s, where he played drums for rock band The Charlatans, which, along with Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, had significant influence on the city's music scene.

In the early 1970s, he formed the Hot Licks, which drew critical and commercial success by blending country, blues, jazz, swing and humorous lyrics.

With the Hot Licks, Hicks came up with cleverly named songs such as "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away," "I Scare Myself," "Where's the Money?" "Walkin' One and Only," and put his own touch on old classics that included "I'm an Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande)."

The group's album Last Train to Hicksville helped land Hicks on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in 1973. The Hot Licks broke up that year at the height of the band's popularity.

Hicks went on to record more than a dozen more albums, and he released a new Hot Licks album, Beatin' the Heat, in 2000.

The musician performed in his home state only a few times -- including the Good Folks house concert series in Fayetteville in the early 1990s and at Juanita's in Little Rock a few years later -- before returning with the Hot Licks for the second annual Arkansas Sounds music festival in 2013.

Information for this article was contributed by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Metro on 02/07/2016

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