‘He was The Man.’ Bill Hanna, the ‘Godfather of Jazz in Charlotte’, dies at age 88.

Ziad Rabie will never forget the night he finally mustered the courage to perform on stage with Bill Hanna, even though it did not end well.

Hanna, he said, was known locally as “’The Godfather of Jazz in Charlotte,” a pianist and trombonist who’d once toured America with the Stan Kenton, Woody Herman and Glen Miller Big Bands. Hanna died this week at age 88.

Rabie is now considered one of the city’s top saxophonists. But on a Charlotte stage that night several decades ago, he was still a student at Wake Forest University. But at one point, he slipped up, and Hanna let him know it. Right there on stage.

“I left the stage with my tail between my legs,” Rabie told The Charlotte Observer Friday, two days after Hanna’s death. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

If you strive to be the best of jazz musicians, Rabie said, you seek out and learn from the best.

And that man was Bill Hanna, who influenced “an infinite” number of jazz students on stage and during his long career teaching jazz in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and at Central Piedmont Community College, Rabie said. “So many I could never count,” he said.

“I would never have become the musician I became” without Hanna, said Rabie, who considered Hanna his best friend.

Hanna was a staple of the Queen City music scene. His Bill Hanna Quartet and Bill Hanna Jazz Jam performing regularly over the years at the Double Door Inn, Cajun Queen Restaurant, Morehead Tavern, the Artist’s Cafe and Petra’s.

And if you were in the crowd and pleaded to come on stage to sing or play, Hanna welcomed you, no matter your skill, or in some cases, lack thereof, said his wife, Marci Hanna.

“He’d say, ‘do another,’ “ Marci said.

Promoting jazz

After graduating from Mooresville High School, Hanna attended Davidson College. He played the trombone with a unit of the Army Band after enlisting in the Army, his family said.

He later got a master’s degree in trombone from Indiana University, but he really became known as a jazz pianist, his wife said.

He moved to Charlotte in 1960, launching a 30-year career teaching band and orchestra in CMS. After retiring from CMS, he taught jazz music at CPCC for 28 years.

Promoting jazz music in Charlotte was his biggest love, his family said.

He also loved flying his Cessna 150, and would fly people “for a $100 hamburger or better yet, Bar-B-Que,” his family wrote in his obituary.

Rabie said Hanna “was a real softy in the interior,” despite that intimidating night he experienced on stage so many years ago,

Marci Hanna said despite his many accomplishments as a jazz teacher and performer, “he was just a normal guy. No big head.”

When she said Rabie helped arrange what became a sold-out tribute to her husband in February at Middle C Jazz in Charlotte, “he didn’t feel like he was deserving. It was overwhelming to him that people would give him such accolades.”

Added Rabie, “Everybody loved him.”

Hanna also is survived by his son, Scott Sides; stepson, Jay Elmore; brother and sister, James and Donna Hanna; and nieces and nephews.

A celebration of life will be held at a later time. The Hanna Family has entrusted arrangements to Cremation Society of Charlotte.

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of George Wilson “Bill” Hanna, visit the floral store of Cremation Society of Charlotte at CSCofCharlotte.com.

Rabie was in high school when first met Hanna back in the mid-1970s. To him, Hanna “was bigger than life” in the jazz world.

“He was ‘The Man,’ ” Rabie said.

And to the legions of students and professional musicians who learned from him, he will forever be.