My father's jazz collection was not exhaustive; it exposed me to many trends and offshoots but quite a few artists I've had to discover on my own as an adult. One I was VERY late in discovering -- like only recently -- is Erroll Garner (1921-1977).
I've been aware of his name forever of course -- he's considered "one of the giants" -- but for some reason I thought his music was entirely improvised. Turns out that's only partially true. Garner played standards (well-known tunes) almost exclusively but he improvised long meandering introductions to them which left audiences unable to guess where he was going or which tune he was leading into. Garner didn't read music. He played entirely by ear. Reportedly he never played a tune the same way twice. A lot of his concerts were solo piano, because a rhythm section would've had an impossible time trying to follow him.
Which makes his 1955 LP "Concert By The Sea" so remarkable. He's backed here by a bassist (Eddie Calhoun, in his first recorded appearance with Garner in what would become an 11-year collaboration) and a drummer (Denzil Best, his only appearance with Garner). The trio is incredibly tight. Either they rehearsed A LOT and the canard about "never playing the same way twice" is false, or else there was a preternatural telepathy among the musicians.
The concert was recorded, in mono, by an amateur. Given that, it's a remarkably good recording: low noise, good frequency response, no dropouts, and all the songs are complete.
Garner himself was something of an interesting story. A child prodigy, he began playing complete songs at age 3 and could soon repeat entire concerts from memory. His older brother took lessons, but young Erroll simply repeated what he'd heard without needing to practice it. At seven he started appearing on the radio. At 11 he turned professional. At 14 he began touring with swing jazz orchestras. He bridged the stylistic gap between the swing and stride players of the '20s-'40s (Fats Waller, Earl Hines, James P. Johnson, Art Tatum) and the post-war bop players (Red Garland, Ahmad Jamal, Tommy Flanagan, Bud Powell, et al.)
Why isn't he better known? Well, fairly early in his career he became disgusted by the exploitation of black musicians and the mistreatment of the 'talent' by white promoters and booking agents. He actually sued Columbia Records -- which effectively black-balled him from the industry. MOST of his recordings have never been issued. They're now held as an archive at the University of Pittsburgh.
Only recently has his catalog been receiving any long-overdue attention. Including the "Concert By The Sea," recorded September 19, 1955 and originally edited down to a 40-minute LP. In 2015 the original tape was resurrected, digitally cleaned up, and given a full 3-CD treatment (with extensive liner notes) by, wait for it, Columbia. The package is in an oversize Digipak, about halfway between a standard CD size and the old CD longbox.
I bought the brand new shrinkwrapped box for $5.39.
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