Artist:   Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks
Song:   "How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away"
Album: Original Recordings
Label:   Epic
Year:    1969

After the crash of his early folk-psych group the Charlatans, Dan Hicks set up shop with the Hot Licks, keeping the fine Haight-Ashbury period garb but honing in on the swinging side of string band music and harmony singing. He was in the perfect place at exactly the right time, and Hicks definitely delivered on the early promise of his first band with flying colors. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the songs had the sharp-eyed lyrical smarts of novelist Dashiell Hammett and the sonic bravura of Gene Autry crossed with Bing Crosby. How’s that for eclectic? The king of laconic, Dan Hicks never wasted a word, warbling his brainy lines with a droll delivery that charmed audiences like a hip hypnotist. And the Hot Licks were just that: stylish female singers who could charm the ears right off a stranger, dressed in drop-dead thrift shop finery that helped spread a new look across the country. “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away” is one of their earliest chestnuts, the plea of a man who wants to fly solo but can’t quite get his girl to hear the message: “I’m not the only chicken on the roost.” The band’s debut album stayed a secret among the savvy counterculture, but a couple of years later all hell broke loose with the Where’s The Money? release, and a musical institution was born. It was always impossible to define just what Dan Hicks did, but the beauty was it didn’t matter. File him under “magic” and leave it at that.