Has anyone heard of Herbie Nicholls?

Never heard him, sorry to say. All I know about him is what I read in
his section of A.B. Spellman's "Four Lives In The Bebop Business" and a small portion of John Litweiler's "The Freedom Principle."

it's herbie nichols [1 l]. great player who i shelve right alongside elmo hope, dodo marmarosa, mary lou williams, martial solal, etc.

i've seen the blue note 3 cd thing around still, it was reissued in the late 90s, but all i have is love, gloom, cash, love. they may not be properly "in print" but i'm sure if you try enough stores online you will find both, as well as several recent tribute albums of his unrecorded compositions.

His stuff on Blue Note is really great. A bit like Monk but with perhaps a darker flavor than Monk...he didn't record all that much, died young. Apparently a slew of his manuscript pages for unrecorded compositions was found a few years back, too. I'd say "House Party Starting" is perhaps the emblematic Nichols recording. I like him a lot--I like Monk an awful lot too. Well worth investigating. I need to go back and read the Spellman book, that's where I first really got interested in Herbie Nichols.

The guitarist Eric T Johnson recently came out with a Cd of Nichols tunes, Herbie Nichols VOl 1, on Summit, the interesting thing is without piano. quintets and trios, what I came away from it is how good the tunes are—classic-sounding late 50s bebop, like Love, Gloom, Cash, Love, Lady Sings the Blues, and especially It Didn't Happen