Dan Hicks (singer)

Dan Hicks
Hicks at the Santa Fe Brewing Co., June 28, 2009
Background information
Birth name	Daniel Ivan Hicks
Born	(1941-12-09)December 9, 1941 Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S.
Died	February 6, 2016(2016-02-06) (aged 74) Mill Valley, California, U.S.
Genres	Country jazz swing bluegrass folk pop gypsy Western swing
Occupations	Singer songwriter musician
Instruments	Guitar drums
Years active	1965–2016
Website	www.danhicks.net

Daniel Ivan Hicks (December 9, 1941 – February 6, 2016) was an American singer-songwriter and musician, and the leader of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. His idiosyncratic style combined elements of cowboy folk, jazz, country, swing, bluegrass, pop, and gypsy music. He is perhaps best known for the songs "I Scare Myself" and "Canned Music". His songs are frequently infused with humor, as evidenced by the title of his tune "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?" His album Live at Davies (2013) capped over forty years of music.

Writing about Hicks for Oxford American in 2007, critic David Smay said, "[T]here was a time from the ’20s through the ’40s when swing—'hot rhythm'—rippled through every form of popular music. That’s the music Dan Hicks plays, and there’s no single word for it because it wasn’t limited to any one genre. Django Reinhardt and the Mills Brothers and Spade Cooley and Hank Garland and the Boswell Sisters and Stuff Smith and Bing Crosby all swing. You can make yourself nutty trying to define what Dan Hicks is. Then again, you could just say: Dan Hicks swings."^[1]