Wife says singer and band leader Dan Hicks dies at age 74

Known for his traditional mix of folk, jazz and country music, Dan Hicks took his last breath on February 6 in Mill Valley, California. “And it’s sort of, in a way, kind of carefree”. The group’s hits include “I Scare Myself” and “Canned Music”.

In 1973, Hicks landed on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine just as the band was breaking up after the release of the its last album, “Last Train to Hicksville“. This incarnation released 2000’s Beatin’ the Heat, which featured collaborations with Bette Midler, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones, and Brian Setzer.

Daniel Ivan Hicks was born in Little Rock, Ark., on December 9, 1941. The Charlatans played all the noted San Francisco halls but never achieved the commercial success enjoyed by other groups that came on the scene after them, such as Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service. However, Dan soon left the Charlatans and focused his energy on the Hot Licks. In the early “90s, Hicks resurrected the Hot Licks name and started performing with a rotating lineup of musicians he had worked with in the past”.

With a style that Hicks called “folk jazz”, they recorded their first album, 1969’s Original Recordings, for Epic, but when that proved unsuccessful, they moved to the acclaimed boutique label Blue Thumb Records. “It was getting old”, he explained in 1997.

His career stalled after that, but he returned in the 1980s with a new group, the Acoustic Warriors, which duplicated the Hot Licks instrumentation without the female singers.

“I will always be humble to my dying day”, Hicks, tongue in cheek as usual, said when interviewed in 2013 by Roberta Donnay of the Hot Licks.