Who said Bill Evans couldn't play the Blues?

[skeith]

I guess they haven't heard the tune "Bass Face" on the album "Quintessence" - a blues, with blues licks and the solo swings like crazy.... look out Wynton Kelly!!!

Edited February 13, 2013 by skeith

[Dan Gould]

I haven't heard it but I think the question, to those who aren't big Evans fans, is not whether he can play the blues but whether he does play the blues. That is, does the blues form an integral part of his style? I'd say no and that's why I personally prefer Gene Harris, Junior Mance, Wynton Kelly among others.

YMMV, and probably does.

[skeith]

I haven't heard it but I think the question, to those who aren't big Evans fans, is not whether he can play the blues but whether he does play the blues. That is, does the blues form an integral part of his style? I'd say no and that's why I personally prefer Gene Harris, Junior Mance, Wynton Kelly among others.

YMMV, and probably does.

Dan

He certainly does on this track!!!

[BillF]

I always liked him on the two blues tracks from the Live at Shelly's Manne Hole album: Barney Kessel's "Swedish Pastry" and "Blues in F", credited to Chuck Israels.

[Ted O'Reilly]

I haven't heard it but I think the question, to those who aren't big Evans fans, is not whether he can play the blues but whether he does play the blues. That is, does the blues form an integral part of his style? I'd say no and that's why I personally prefer Gene Harris, Junior Mance, Wynton Kelly among others.

YMMV, and probably does.

Just to clarify, does "I personally prefer Gene Harris, Junior Mance, Wynton Kelly among others" mean that you prefer their Blues playing or all their playing, over all the playing of Evans, not just his Blues playing?

[Dan Gould]

I haven't heard it but I think the question, to those who aren't big Evans fans, is not whether he can play the blues but whether he does play the blues. That is, does the blues form an integral part of his style? I'd say no and that's why I personally prefer Gene Harris, Junior Mance, Wynton Kelly among others.

YMMV, and probably does.

Just to clarify, does "I personally prefer Gene Harris, Junior Mance, Wynton Kelly among others" mean that you prefer their Blues playing or all their playing, over all the playing of Evans, not just his Blues playing?

When many of us congregated on the Blue Note BB, I was known as the Gene Harris Fanatic. So, yeah, I prefer all of their playing over the playing of Evans. I have little use for pianists who don't bring a lot of blues to their playing. So to the above list you can add Kenny Drew too.

[Peter Friedman]

Back when I was living in Rochester, NY I went to see the Bill Evans Trio playing at The Roundtowner. I sat at the bar with Bill between sets and we talked about a number of things. I asked him why he didn't play the blues very often. He seemed a bit puzzled by my question, and turned to Eddie Gomez and said something like - don't we play the blues? I don't actually remember what Gomez answered, but thought it interesting that Bill Evans didn't seem to recognize that he did not play the blues often.

In my view Bill was a good blues player as he shows on a variety of recordings, but the reality is that he only played the blues infrequently.

[John L]

I haven't heard it but I think the question, to those who aren't big Evans fans, is not whether he can play the blues but whether he does play the blues. That is, does the blues form an integral part of his style? I'd say no and that's why I personally prefer Gene Harris, Junior Mance, Wynton Kelly among others.

YMMV, and probably does.

Just to clarify, does "I personally prefer Gene Harris, Junior Mance, Wynton Kelly among others" mean that you prefer their Blues playing or all their playing, over all the playing of Evans, not just his Blues playing?

When many of us congregated on the Blue Note BB, I was known as the Gene Harris Fanatic. So, yeah, I prefer all of their playing over the playing of Evans. I have little use for pianists who don't bring a lot of blues to their playing. So to the above list you can add Kenny Drew too.

I came to jazz from the blues and R&B, and for a long time I ignored artists who did not, in my view, sufficiently embody the blues, including Bill Evans. Although the blues is probably still my first love in music, I have come to appreciate Bill Evans very much and a number of other jazz artists who brings something else to the table.

[jazzbo]

There's no question Evans could play the blues. The blues is not the bedrock of his style as it is in the style of many other pianists we love.

Every year that passes I appreciate Evans more and more. Putting on one of his albums can transport me to another dimension in the way that those of a handful of other artists can, there are select artists that can take me to their own musical universe.

[David Ayers]

I guess that's why they call it the A sharp diminished flattened ninth basically chromatic blues.

[Joe]

To my ears: its interesting to consider this question in the context of Sonny Clark's playing. Both Evans and Clark owe a lot to Tristano, whose approach to the blues was, what idiosyncratic? Oblique? But he certainly had a grasp of the form / that mode of expression / the blues as -- to borrow from poetic discourse -- "occasion." E.g., his famous "Requiem."

The Tristano influence is most noticeable in Evans' and Clarlk's early work, but, as much as their later paths diverge, they still can be seen as running in parallel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFuzZ8LZtkA

Edited February 14, 2013 by Joe

[Simon8]

Read recently on "Do The Math":

"The bassist in the Bill Evans trio before LaFaro was Jimmy Garrison. Paul Motian told me he wanted Garrison to stay in the trio but Evans complained that everything Garrison played “sounded like the blues”."

http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/2013/01/bass-genius.html

Joe: Sonny Clark, Tristanoite ? Surprising connection, I would've never thought about it. Evans, sure, but Sonny? The one-blues guy versus the all blues one ? They both did love Powell, that's true... Do you have a particular Clark piece in mind that shows best the filiation you hear ?

Edited February 14, 2013 by Simon8

[skeith]

I always liked him on the two blues tracks from the Live at Shelly's Manne Hole album: Barney Kessel's "Swedish Pastry" and "Blues in F", credited to Chuck Israels.

BillF

I listened to my copy of that disc last night and you are correct, those are two great blues tracks by Evans... I would even say those tracks are more adventurous in terms of the notes he plays, whereas Bass Face just swings harder.

[Joe]

Joe: Sonny Clark, Tristanoite ? Surprising connection, I would've never thought about it. Evans, sure, but Sonny? The one-blues guy versus the all blues one ? They both did love Powell, that's true... Do you have a particular Clark piece in mind that shows best the filiation you hear ?

Hmmm... not sure I could single out a performance per se. Certainly, something about the length of Sonny's phrases, the way they move with respect to "bar lines" (I'm not really equipped for this kind of musical analysis; just trying to describe what I hear) "feels" Tristano-like to me. The tune itself, harmonically, is rather Powell-like, but I think this performance from Sonny' trio record for Time shows evidence of the Lennie influence...

FWIW, Clark also names Tristano as a pianist he admires in the notes to COOL STRUTTIN'.

[BillF]

Joe: Sonny Clark, Tristanoite ? Surprising connection, I would've never thought about it. Evans, sure, but Sonny? The one-blues guy versus the all blues one ? They both did love Powell, that's true... Do you have a particular Clark piece in mind that shows best the filiation you hear ?

Hmmm... not sure I could single out a performance per se. Certainly, something about the length of Sonny's phrases, the way they move with respect to "bar lines" (I'm not really equipped for this kind of musical analysis; just trying to describe what I hear) "feels" Tristano-like to me. The tune itself, harmonically, is rather Powell-like, but I think this performance from Sonny' trio record for Time shows evidence of the Lennie influence...

FWIW, Clark also names Tristano as a pianist he admires in the notes to COOL STRUTTIN'.

I'm surprising myself by detecting something of Tristano here, but I would never have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out!

[Simon8]

Thanks Joe ! I did hear some Tristano echo in there (perhaps a bouncier Tristano, but still) ! Something about the notes "articulation" (I don't have the words either), clean and full, the attack as well, and those long lines, yes.

Interesting to read Clark's quotes about Tristano and Monk in the "Cool Struttin' " notes.

[sgcim]

In "Cats of Any Color" Gene Lees writes about hearing Evans play "hard,funky,dark Southern blues" late one night at the Village Vanguard.

When Lees asked him about it, Evans replied, "I can really play that stuff when I want to."