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The Bill Evans Corner


Dmitry

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A quick check at CDUniverse reveals:

(no. of CDs credited to artist)

Bill Evans 237

Oscar Peterson 222

Keith Jarrett 138

Herbie Hancock 125

Chick Corea 125

A very unofficial survey for sure.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "recorded"? (Do I sound like Bill Clinton here?) ... If you discount Duke's sitting at the piano during all of those sessions over fifty years with the orchestra, and include all of the sessions a pianist did as a sideman/accompanist, then I think that Oscar would win outright. I looked that the listings for Evans on CDUniverse, and there are lots of duplications ... not quite as many for Oscar, and many of his albums are OOP (pun intended!).

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A quick check at CDUniverse reveals:

(no. of CDs credited to artist)

Bill Evans 237

Oscar Peterson 222

Keith Jarrett 138

Herbie Hancock 125

Chick Corea 125

A very unofficial survey for sure.

Peterson was a much busier sideman than Evans, I believe...

Guy

Edited by Guy
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Not that this proves nothing with accuracy but, according to Tom Lord Discography, there are quite a few pianists with many more sessions than Bill Evans:

-Duke Ellington 1109

-Hank Jones 933

-Count Basie 609

-Teddy Wilson 557

-Fletcher Henderson 514

-Jess Stacy 489

-Herbie Hancock 464

-Stan Kenton 445

-Jimmy Rowles 444

-Oscar Peterson 412

-27 other pianists, from 379 to 242 (among them "rarities" such as Irving Brodsky, Arthur Schutt. Chummy McGregor, Bengt Hallberg or Paul Smith)

...

-Bill Evans 240

With the old version (4.4), I compiled a list in Excel for all the musicians included in the index with more than 25 sessions, that I can order alphabetically, by number of sessions or by recording years (yes, I do stupid things sometimes, I know) :g

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Not that this proves nothing with accuracy but, according to Tom Lord Discography, there are quite a few pianists with many more sessions than Bill Evans:

-Duke Ellington 1109

-Hank Jones 933

-Count Basie 609

-Teddy Wilson 557

-Fletcher Henderson 514

-Jess Stacy 489

-Herbie Hancock 464

-Stan Kenton 445

-Jimmy Rowles 444

-Oscar Peterson 412

-27 other pianists, from 379 to 242 (among them "rarities" such as Irving Brodsky, Arthur Schutt. Chummy McGregor, Bengt Hallberg or Paul Smith)

...

-Bill Evans 240

Very interesting. I'm assuming your compilation includes all appearances, sideman as well as leader dates.

One thing that's interesting is that, for example, Herbie's number on your list is 464, which is WAY up from the number I got from CDUniverse (125), whereas the number for Bill Evans is almost exactly the same as the CDUniverse number (240 compared to 237). Not sure why that is.

Thanks for providing this info EKE! I'm sure your source is much more accurate than my quick check of CDUniverse. :)

Edited by Free For All
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Very interesting. I'm assuming your compilation includes all appearances, sideman as well as leader dates.

...

Yes, both leader and sideman dates.

One thing that's interesting is that, for example, Herbie's number on your list is 464, which is WAY up from the number I got from CDUniverse (125), whereas the number for Bill Evans is almost exactly the same as the CDUniverse number (240 compared to 237). Not sure why that is.

...

Note that my list includes sessions, and not albums. For the LP era, the comparison depends on how many different recording dates are included in each album.

Anyway, being a very helpful discographical tool, Lord incudes hundreds of errors, duplications, omissions.... But still more accurate than AMG, that´s for sure! ;)

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Anyway, being a very helpful discographical tool, Lord incudes hundreds of errors, duplications, omissions.... But still more accurate than AMG, that´s for sure! ;)

I'd say Lord's has more stuff in it than allmusic. I wouldn't know which one's more accurate, but I know which one is free :g

In any case, it's very likely that Hank Jones made enough *anonymous* sessions (commercial dates, etc), at least in the 50s and 60s, to put him at the top of the list.

F

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A snippet of random day dreaming - Imagine what a duet album of Bill Evans and Lenny Breau would be like ! ! !

Bill Evans died at 51, so it would be hard to imagine that he could possibly be the most recorded jazz pianist in history, even with the appearance of so many posthumous bootlegs. His appearances as a sideman were infrequent, particularly after 1960.

Neither All Music Guide nor Tom Lord's Jazz Discography will list everything, simply because it is a Herculean task to gather so much data from the history of recorded jazz, including every European and Asian release, let alone the numerous independent or long defunct small labels. I am glad that both of them exist and I regularly contribute to each of them.

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