Former Blizzard keyboardist Henk Hilbrandie passed away last Sunday at the age of 79. The native of Assen played on the iconic Cuby + Blizzards album Desolation from 1966 and experienced the band’s national breakthrough.
Hilbrandie was a childhood friend of Harry Muskee and came into contact with music at an early age. As a child he initially played guitar, before switching to piano at the age of 11.
In the late 1950s, he founded the band The Mixtures with his brother Jaap, where Hilbrandie played the piano. Muskee started there as a guitarist, but later played upright bass. That band later became The Old Fashioned Jazz Group, a kind of precursor to C+B.
In the RTV Drenthe podcast HARRY from 2021, Hilbrandie reminisced about those times. He also had a lot to say about the recordings of Desolation. The album was largely recorded at night, because Muskee preferred that atmosphere and mood.
Hilbrandie was also at the national breakthrough of Cuby + Blizzards at the Sheherazade in Amsterdam. At the time, it was a famous jazz club on Rembrandtplein. “Someone thought that the Blizzards from the North could perform there,” he said in the podcast. “Expectations were low. ‘A bunch of guys from the North? That won’t mean anything’. Well, we totally crushed them there.”
According to Hilbrandie, that performance was a huge victory for the band. Afterwards he performed regularly with the band, but later he left. On the 1967 album Greetings from Grollo he was replaced by Herman Brood.
The LP Desolation received an Edison in 1968, the most important music prize in the Netherlands. The prize will be accepted by the line-up that played together at the time, so without Hilbrandie, among others.
After his period with the Blizzards, Hilbrandie mainly focused on jazz music. He also worked for many years as a music teacher.