Jump to content

*** Bill Evans ***


Peter Johnson

Recommended Posts

Well, I was crate diggin' at the Philadelphia Record Exchange this afternoon and pulled out an original copy of Bill Evans "How my Heart Sings," a trio side with (what I believe to be) Bill Evans' working trio--Chuck Israels on bass and Paul Motian on drums.

I guess I've never paid close-enough attention to Evans' playing, either on Kind of Blue, his records as a leader or his solo outings.

Listening closely to How my Heart sings, I'm astounded by Evans' sly interpolation of quotes and improvisations on Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and, most interestingly to me as a piano player, the too-underrated Ibert. He's an extraordinarily lyrical player, and I'm surprised (maybe I'm missing the discussions) to not hear more about him in these storied circles and elsewhere.

I'm listening to Walking Up at the moment, and if anyone here has listened to much Claude Bolling, it's clear that Evans had a direct influence on the pianists who came after him.

I'm going to revisit KOB this afternoon, and pull out Trio '64 and A Simple Matter of Conviction as well.

I'd like to learn more about Evans' music and background--help me navigate the wilds, as there's a lot of his music out there!

FWIW: I've fallen under and then fallen out of Evans' spell. I'm sure I'll fall back in, as moods and feelings are always subject to change and people works in progress. He was absolutely a genius, a storyteller, one of America's great interpreters of the song form, a sublime pianist with one of the all-time great touches rivaled in jazz perhaps only by Ahmad Jamal, a reinventor of the piano trio and general innovator. But what I always missed, and I know there has been discussion of this ad nauseum, is the swing. I can't feel him in my body, though he engages my mind and spirit. When I hear Wynton Kelly, to cite another pianist closely associated with Miles Davis, and as we all know Evans' antecedent in the quintet piano chair, it's just a whole other thing.

I just listen to Evans for other things. Rhythmically, it's his oft-cited displacement that is so brilliant. But again, when I hear even those groundbreaking sides with LaFaro and Motian, even Motian was and is a hell of a straightahead drummer, even though LaFaro was another genius, it just stays in that introspective mode and I'm not moved to tap my feet or even snap on 2 and 4 like I would to Jamal, Kelly, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, etc. Of course, Bill can do things they never could. If I listened back to back to Evans' trio and, say, Sonny Rollins or anything Dizzy ever did in his life I'd have to say there would be no doubt in my mind what swing is---and isn't.

But, to end with a positive statement, as a poet, player of beautifully phrased horn-like lines (especially earlier in his career like that classic pairing with Cannonball, Know What I Mean. Goodbye from that album is a work of genius IMO), and lyric master of both piano and the American Songbook (and a hell of a contributor with his great tunes) Evans is an absolute giant. I'm glad we 'met'.

Edited by fasstrack
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 147
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I've been spending a fair bit of time recently listening to his Riverside stuff, and in particular the live sides.

What I have noticed several times (and this isn't something that is unique to Bill Evans) is that the audience seem so passé about it all.

I know it's all historical perspective and all that but you're sat just metres away from a legend (or three) and you insist on talking over it all --- Much of the listening was done on headphones and there is this one woman, at the VV, who is particularly audible!

I'm sure if many of the board members were there now, they'd be completely captivated.

Pretty irrelevant really...But he is a God.

I recall the last time I saw Evans at Ronnie Scott's. He seemed rather introspective that evening but the audience was so noisy the music was hardly audible. Clearly not the best environment to listen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I recall the last time I saw Evans at Ronnie Scott's. He seemed rather introspective that evening but the audience was so noisy the music was hardly audible. Clearly not the best environment to listen.

John - Was that the last Summer 1980 stint at Scotts with Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera? I caught 2 consecutive nights of that one. The early shows were packed out with the 'expense account' brigade and quite noisy but for the late shows there were no more than 12-15 congniscenti in the audience and he had everyone totally entranced. Unforgettable - and somehow (thank you Ronnie) I got a front row piano-side seat for the second evening.

Edited by sidewinder
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I recall the last time I saw Evans at Ronnie Scott's. He seemed rather introspective that evening but the audience was so noisy the music was hardly audible. Clearly not the best environment to listen.

John - Was that the last Summer 1980 stint at Scotts with Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera? I caught 2 consecutive nights of that one. The early shows were packed out with the 'expense account' brigade and quite noisy but for the late shows there were no more than 12-15 congniscenti in the audience and he had everyone totally entranced. Unforgettable - and somehow (thank you Ronnie) I got a front row piano-side seat for the second evening.

I can't be certain (my memory is a bit dim) but it was probably that occasion. Unfortunately I couldn't stay for the later sets.

Thinking about Evans live I also saw him at Croydon where he was totally swamped by the drummer (Philly Joe?). So my experiences of Evans live haven't been that good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can you guys tell me where to start with his solo piano cds?

I think "Alone" on Verve is his best solo effort. The earlier sessions for Riverside(?) which were not released until long after his death are touching performances, but they get me in a kind of sad mood; I don't think Evans was feeling too well.

"Alone" was reissued with additional newly discovered bonus tracks as a VME just a few years back (unfortunately leaving out an excellent "A Time for Love" which were on the first CD reissue and the complete Verve box. It had very good liner notes, which were left out when it was just recently reissued again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think "Alone" on Verve is his best solo effort.

Was that one from 1968 and did he play Never Let me Go and I think Here's That Rainy Day? If so it is indeed beautiful. I think he may have been at or near his best when playing reflectively as a solo pianist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have always preferred the Solo Sessions (vols. 1 & 2) on Milestone to either Alone or Alone Again.

Also, I have always considered Conversations with Myself a great solo album althought technically it isn't or maybe it is.

Edited by skeith
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Evans is a complo\icated subject, and Larry kart's essay deserves to be read because he certainly captures the ambivalence I've long felt about Evans's playing - I got to know Evans's wife pretty well in the late 1970s and early 1980s and met Evans on occassion - if you'll forgive the amateur psyhologizing, he was a brilliant guy who suffered fits of what seemed to be a kind of narcissistic depression. He was completely self-directed on some occasions, talkative and fascinating on others, and I do wonder if the strange variability of his playing reflects this. On his 50th birthday his wife gave a party and Evans sat down and played, unprompted, Stars Fell on Alabama, and it was absolutely perfect, unselfconcious and relaxed and without artifice (it probably helped that his audience included George Russell land Warne Marsh). Would that he could have translated that directness to all of this recordings -

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can you guys tell me where to start with his solo piano cds?

I think "Alone" on Verve is his best solo effort. The earlier sessions for Riverside(?) which were not released until long after his death are touching performances, but they get me in a kind of sad mood; I don't think Evans was feeling too well.

"Alone" was reissued with additional newly discovered bonus tracks as a VME just a few years back (unfortunately leaving out an excellent "A Time for Love" which were on the first CD reissue and the complete Verve box. It had very good liner notes, which were left out when it was just recently reissued again.

Daniel A,

My VME has two takes of a Time For Love, do you mean there were actually 3 takes?

The VME has the orginal liners by Evans himself and some updated notes by Phil Bailey in 2001, whose notes got left out?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Evans is a complo\icated subject, and Larry kart's essay deserves to be read because he certainly captures the ambivalence I've long felt about Evans's playing - I got to know Evans's wife pretty well in the late 1970s and early 1980s and met Evans on occassion - if you'll forgive the amateur psyhologizing, he was a brilliant guy who suffered fits of what seemed to be a kind of narcissistic depression. He was completely self-directed on some occasions, talkative and fascinating on others, and I do wonder if the strange variability of his playing reflects this. On his 50th birthday his wife gave a party and Evans sat down and played, unprompted, Stars Fell on Alabama, and it was absolutely perfect, unselfconcious and relaxed and without artifice (it probably helped that his audience included George Russell land Warne Marsh). Would that he could have translated that directness to all of this recordings -

Interesting. There are some people---artists or otherwise---that are more comfortable with the inner world than the outer. They reserve that right. Obviously Evans knew how much was going on inside his head and soul and seemed at least some of the time to not mind doing what it took to drive a wedge between that perfect inner world and the intrusion of the 'real' one. Perhaps his tragic flaw was that he felt the drugs was a good buffer between him and people. Maybe he just dug getting high also, like most dope fiends do. (No judgement there, but if it didn't feel good....).

At least those are the low-rent armchair-shrink interpretations. Speculation, and nothing more. Perhaps he was expansive at times and reflective at others as you say. That would make the man....human, would it not? I heard he enjoyed going to the track and also dug good comedy. Anyway, I'm just another musician, another listener, and not Evans' 'personal A.J. Weberman'. But I will allow as how his playing did go from delicate and inward to expansve and outgoing at various times. But then I never met the man. My guess, FWIW, is that extraordinarily gifted people are extraordinarily sensitive and have more mood and intellectual swings than people less gifted and 'tightly wrapped'. Not to beat this to death, but the operative word in the preceding sentence is guess.

You'd have to be inside the man's head (or anyone's head) or a close friend to know what the hell was going on. I enjoyed, for example, Peter Pettinger's bio, but it seemed he got nowhere near Evans, although some of the facts (e.g. Ellaine's and Harry's suicides) tell some of the sadder aspects of the story. As a musical chronicle, though, I thought it was an admirable job.

What made Bird play his ass off on that 1954 record at the Beehive with a pickup band when he was supposed to be 'finished'? (Realizing that this was the same year, possibly within months of the Beehive gig, that he could barely get the melodies out on some live date I can't remember now, but he faltered so badly it was painful to hear). Red Rodney spoke of a 'physical decline', and probably there is truth to that. Not knowing a person, however, leaves he unappetizing prospect of speculation, and beyond normal thoughtfulness/intellectual curiosity IMO nothing is to be gained from same in enjoying any artist's work, at least for me. I'd rather approach listening like playing: hopefully with a clean slate. Not at all easy to do, ne c'est pas?

Absence of pre-judging baggage=the possibilty of truly hearing.

Edited by fasstrack
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can you guys tell me where to start with his solo piano cds?

I think "Alone" on Verve is his best solo effort. The earlier sessions for Riverside(?) which were not released until long after his death are touching performances, but they get me in a kind of sad mood; I don't think Evans was feeling too well.

"Alone" was reissued with additional newly discovered bonus tracks as a VME just a few years back (unfortunately leaving out an excellent "A Time for Love" which was on the first CD reissue and the complete Verve box. It had very good liner notes, which were left out when it was just recently reissued again.

Daniel A,

My VME has two takes of a Time For Love, do you mean there were actually 3 takes?

The VME has the orginal liners by Evans himself and some updated notes by Phil Bailey in 2001, whose notes got left out?

Yes, the alternate of "A Time for Love" is a different one on the first CD. The six tracks which was added with the 2001 release are good to have, no doubt. But while the sound quality of the "old" 'A Time for Love' alternate is a bit muddier than the rest of the album, I think it's the finest take of them all. Which were probably composites anyway...

The most recent release only has the original LP notes by Evans.

Edited by Daniel A
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have always preferred the Solo Sessions (vols. 1 & 2) on Milestone to either Alone or Alone Again.

Also, I have always considered Conversations with Myself a great solo album althought technically it isn't or maybe it is.

I listened to some sound samples at amazon.com for Solo Session (I don't remember was it Vol 1 or 2) but I liked it A LOT.I guess I'll try to find those two here in Finland and then I'll try Alone and Conversations/Further Conversations with Myself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

a lot of Evans's issues resolve around his addictions - and the question might be, did the addiction cause his self-centeredness, or did his self-centeredness cause his addicition - this is something people have been arguing about for years with alcoholism, about cause and effect, and I don't know the answer. At the end he was definitely committing a slow suicide, shooting coke and retreating deeply into himself, complaining regularly about lack of recognition - strange, since he was in incredible demand at the time. The other thing we need to think about is the depression that ran in his family; like a lot of people in that era he was probably medicating himself -

Link to comment
Share on other sites

on the other hand - his clarity and depth, playing solo at that birthday party, tells us something else important - because it is also true that the best playing I have ever heard from Barry Harris was when no one was listening - at the bar Jimmy's in the 1970s, and one day after one of his classes when he was basically practicing and talking to me over his shoulder - so we need to worry a little bit about what that recording light (and the presence of an audience) does to a jazz musicain - I know from experience that when the tape is rolling the brain seizes up in odd ways -

Edited by AllenLowe
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The other thing we need to think about is the depression that ran in his family; like a lot of people in that era he was probably medicating himself -

Wow. Without getting into TMI I know that song only too well. That comment has almost unbearable resonance for me. (I will say that the belief in 'better living through chemistry' so popular among my parents' generation and its unfortunate lovechild self-medication, happily, never was the case with me).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

....the best playing I have ever heard from Barry Harris was when no one was listening - at the bar Jimmy's in the 1970s, and one day after one of his classes when he was basically practicing and talking to me over his shoulder - so we need to worry a little bit about what that recording light (and the presence of an audience) does to a jazz musicain - I know from experience that when the tape is rolling the brain seizes up in odd ways -

I've known the great man known as Barry Doyle Harris for 30 years (I'm going to play for the singers in his class tonight and as always will doubtless learn a thing or three myself) and I can tell you he is not one to be spooked by the red recording light. In fact he's told me he hardly even goes so far as to plan much about his dates. He knows so many tunes, and has written some nice ones, and has played so much music in so many situations that he functions at an optimum level 'off the top'. If he's doing a more detailed project such as a concert with vocalists (as is his wont) he will have one of his students sit in as rehearsal pianist and often even as performing accompanist on the concert itself.

But on his jazz dates he calls a lot of 'em off the top and, I guess, like Ben Webster is reported to have said 'if the rhythm section ain't making it, go for yourself'. :g

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hey Fasstrack - I will have to disagree on this one - Barry did tell me on one occasion (back in the 1970s) that he did not like recording, and I did hear him so much on the 1970s/80s as to be frustrated by his recordings (though two of the Riversides come closest - the Jazz Workshop and the trio with Elvin Jones - also, a nice later "live" date at Maybeck) - I think, also, he is difficult to record and this is reflected on some of the 1970s records - his touch is so subtle that on some of those mixes he gets a little buried in the rhythm section -

when I heard him at Jimmy's (must have been the early 1970s) he was in a duo with Wilbur Little - no one was listening, and it was like hearing him play for his own edification, almost like practicing at hime - and was the best I ever heard him sound -

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hey Fasstrack - I will have to disagree on this one - Barry did tell me on one occasion (back in the 1970s) that he did not like recording, and I did hear him so much on the 1970s/80s as to be frustrated by his recordings (though two of the Riversides come closest - the Jazz Workshop and the trio with Elvin Jones - also, a nice later "live" date at Maybeck) - I think, also, he is difficult to record and this is reflected on some of the 1970s records - his touch is so subtle that on some of those mixes he gets a little buried in the rhythm section -

I hear you. I guess if you catch people at different times they will say different things according to how they feel. He did tell me that though. I think his exact words were "I'm funny that way. Even on my dates I don't know til the last minute". He knows to leave a window for spontaneity (sp?).

Most musical artists are unhappy with their work when they hear it, though they probably enjoyed it at the time. Nothing new about that. Perhaps the trick is not to listen unless you evolve enough to listen in the detached (in an ego sense) way a fan would. I guess there's 'remedial listening' too, but most players after a certain time know their weaknesses so well they don't even have to bother with that.

And, yes, Barry plays kind of quietly and with an airier sound compared to some other pianists. I could always hear him cut through, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

on the Tad Dameron LP Barry made he had Gene Taylor on bass, and it sounds like they recorded Taylor direct to the board - he sounds very buzzy, and Taylor also has a tendency to play wrong notes - unfortunately almost all of the subtlty of Barry's touch is lost -

I have one Barry Harris/Bill Evans story. Around 1979 or so Barry came up to New Haven to do a concert for me in a recital room at a local music school - I told Evans's wife about it - after the concert I was walking down the stairs with Barry and who did we see rushing up the stairs - but Bill Evans! He was late, but they greeted each other warmly (Barry told me he used to run into Evans practicing at the Riverside Studios) - and had a nice talk, as a matter of fact, Barry told me later that that was the last time he saw Evans -

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have one Barry Harris/Bill Evans story...

So do I. In 1983 I was helping Barry with one of his concerts over at Nica's and he needed to be alone for a while so he told me to go look at some books or records or something. One of the records he had was a Bill Evans one on Riverside. I can't remember which one but it seemed to be an original pressing. But what was hilarious was that it was one of those that opened up to reveal text, etc. inside and it hadn't been cracked in so long that it was fused shut. :excited: It took me a full few minutes to pry it open without tearing the pictures and stuff. When I told Barry this and showed him the album man did we break up.

Edited by fasstrack
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have one Barry Harris/Bill Evans story...

So do I. In 1983 I was helping Barry with one of his concerts over at Nica's and he needed to be alone for a while so he told me to go look at some books or records or something. One of the records he had was a Bill Evans one on Riverside. I can't remember which one but it seemed to be an original pressing. But what was hilarious was that it was one of those that opened up to reveal text, etc. inside and it hadn't been cracked in so long that it was fused shut. :excited: It took me a full few minutes to pry it open without tearing the pictures and stuff. When I told Barry this and showed him the album man did we break up.

I am obviously missing something here, but why would that break anyone up?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am obviously missing something here, but why would that break anyone up?

If you have to explain 'em..... :rolleyes:

BTW, I asked you once before and I guess you never saw it, but didn't you produce a and announce a radio show on WBAI in the late 60s-early 70s? I remember hearing it but you'd have to refresh me as to the content. As I remember there was some blues on it.

Thanks in advsnce.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...