HOPE, ST. ELMO SYLVESTER (27 June 1923–19 May 1967), jazz composer and pianist known for his intricate and vulnerable playing style and inventively jagged compositions. Like his good friends Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, Hope worked in the bebop and hard-bop genres, though as a result of early traumatic experience and subsequent drug addiction he never achieved their renown.
Born in New York City to Caribbean-immigrant parents, Hope began playing piano at age seven and won several awards for his recitals as a teenager. He attended a high school with an excellent music program and became a proficient composer of jazz and classical pieces.
Hope’s schooling was violently interrupted at age seventeen when he was shot by a policeman; the bullet narrowly missed his spine. Upon being discharged from the hospital he was charged with assault, attempted robbery, and carrying an illegal weapon but was freed after it was determined that the policeman’s testimony had been falsified.
Hope’s recovery from the shooting would prove difficult, and he did not return to school. Instead he and Powell played piano at dance halls around town, in the course of which they met Monk; the three would become not only good friends but decisive influences on one another’s composing and playing. After an interlude in the military during World War II Hope joined various rhythm-andblues bands back in New York but was soon honing his jazz chops in the bebop idiom with a circle of like-minded musicians that included Monk.
Hope recorded his debut album, Elmo Hope Trio, in 1953 with Percy Heath on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. In 1955 he signed with Prestige Records and would record multiple albums with many rising or prominent jazz musicians, including Donald Byrd, John Coltrane, Paul Chambers, and Jackie McLean. The flurry of activity would not last, however: one day during a recording session, Hope, claiming he was visiting an aunt in the hospital, left the building and never returned. Friends and associates attributed his absence to his on-and-off heroin addiction, which ultimately landed Hope in prison and led to the revocation of his New York City Cabaret Card, meaning he could no longer play music in nightclubs in the city.
No longer able to make a living in New York, Hope toured with Chet Baker in 1957 and moved to Los Angeles. There he connected with other musicians influenced by bebop and played and recorded with many bands up and down the West Coast, though he found the jazz scene there to be severely lacking in creativity and before long moved back to New York with his wife, Bertha, and daughter.
Shortly after his return Hope recorded four albums, one of which, Hope-full, included his only solo recordings as well as piano duets with Bertha. Despite his abundant connections in the music scene, however, he found it difficult to get work, and before long he was imprisoned again for drug-related offenses. While in prison Hope recorded Sounds from Rikers Island (1963) with other musicians who had been imprisoned for drug crimes.
Though he was still a member of many New York jazz trios and quartets in the 1960s, Hope began performing less frequently owing to drug-related health issues. Ultimately he sought addiction treatment but was hospitalized with pneumonia in 1967 and died a few weeks later of heart failure at age forty-three.
Hope recorded fourteen albums as bandleader and appeared on another ten in groups led by other artists. His seventy-five original compositions have seldom been taken up by other musicians, so associated are they with Hope’s unique, difficult-to-emulate performance style. Bertha Hope, a formidable pianist in her own right, later released albums dedicated to her husband’s work and transcribed recordings of notable performances.