SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2019
VOLUME SIX NUMBER THREE
ANTHONY BRAXTON
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
ISAAC HAYES
(December 29—January 4)
THOM BELL
(January 5-11)
THE O'JAYS
(January 12-18)
OTIS REDDING
(January 19-25)
BOOKER T. JONES
(January 26-February 1)
THE STYLISTICS
(February 2-8)
THE STAPLE SINGERS
(February 9-15)
OTIS RUSH
(February 16-22)
ERROLL GARNER
(February 23-March 1)
EARL HINES
(March 2-8)
BO DIDDLEY
(March 9–15)
BIG BILL BROONZY
(March 16–22)
Born in Pittsburgh in 1921 (Sy Johnson's biographical note in The Erroll Garner Songbook has June 15, 1923 as Garner's birthdate), Errol Garner started playing piano at the age of two (three according to Johnson). He never learned to read music, probably because it was never a necessity for him. He learned to play the 'novelty' styles of Zez Confrey and others from listening to 78 records, a style which used steady left hand chord rhythms to support very free right-hand melodic interpretations. This provided a perfect basis for the hard-swinging jazz style that Garner was to pioneer.
At the age of seven, Garner began appearing on radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh with a group called the Candy Kids, and by the age of eleven he was playing on the Allegheny riverboats. Garner began to attract attention after he moved to New York in the early forties, and shortly afterwards he made his first recordings. By 1950, Garner had established himself an international reputation, and from that point until his death on January 2, 1977, he made countless tours both at home and abroad, and produced a huge volume of recorded work.
Garner's style evolved out of the 'novelty rags' of the twenties. More contemporary jazz influences include Earl Hines, another Pittsburgh native, and the rhythm compings of Freddie Green (Count Basie's longtime guitarist). But Garner was ultimately a very idiosyncratic player, and he doesn't fit well into any of the standard piano style groupings of 40's and 50's jazz. His characteristic traits are of course his steady, guitaristic, left hand compings, and, most obviously, his octaval treatments of melodies and solo lines. The major seventh arpeggio in octaves which introduces Garner's biggest hit, Misty is an example. Another typical Garnerism is the pizzicato, super-syncopated introduction. These intros are often highly independent of the main part of the piece. They range from fanciful to sassy, but always their choppy staccato serves to highten the driving effect once Garner turns on his relentless left hand rhythm.
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/10/656189856/into-the-vault-erroll-garner-uncovered
Perhaps best known as the composer of "Misty," Erroll Garner was
also one of the most original, intuitive and exciting pianists to emerge
during the modern jazz era. Garner's significance as a major jazz
innovator easily rivals his status as a successful composer. His
approach to melody, harmony, and especially rhythm were fresh and
inventive.
Born on June 15, 1921 in Pittsburgh, Penn., Garner and his twin brother Ernest were the youngest of six children. Raised in a musical family, he was playing the piano by the age of three. A self-taught pianist, Garner never learned to read music. Childhood friend and bassist Wyatt “Bull” Ruther took piano lessons from Garner's sister and recalls how easily Garner picked up music. Garner's natural ability was recognized by his high school band teacher, who encouraged him not to take lessons for fear it would corrupt his extraordinary talents.
In the 1940s, Garner headed to New York with an undeniable style
of his own. Garner's first recording, with its distinctive, romantic
version of "Laura," captured public attention. Other events, such as his
appearance on The Tonight Show with Steve Allen helped bolster
Garner's popularity. But it was his original tune "Misty" that
catapulted him into the ranks of stardom. Today, "Misty" remains one of
the most recognized and requested jazz standards.
In 1950, with the help of manager Martha Glaser, Garner broke new ground with his performance at the prestigious Cleveland Music Hall, traditionally a classical concert venue. Later, he became the first and only jazz artist to perform under the auspices of classical impresario Sol Hurok. His first live recording, Concert By The Sea, captured nearly every aspect of Garner's artistry and helped him become the biggest-selling Columbia Records jazz artist of his day.
AUDIO: <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/14501602/14522493" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>
At 7 he was a member of the Kan-D-Kids, an all-youth combo that occasionally played on KQV (not KDKA as some say). Later, he attended Westinghouse High where band director Carl McVicker brought Garner into the band despite his inability to read music. He later told Garner biographer James Doran that Garner once told him other suggested he take piano lessons. McVicker advised him not to bother, but to rely on the talents he had. (Note: his son, Carl McVicker Jr. played bass with Johnny Costa on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood).
In an interview seen in one of the video clips here, Garner said he tried lessons and got along until the teacher finally discovered he played it all from memory. 1937 was the year he joined a local band led by saxophonist Leroy Brown. Garner qualified for the Musicians' Union (the African-American Local 471 in that segregated era) when he turned 18. Not reading music in those days was normally a disqualifier for joining the Union. But Brown told biographer Doran that "we made allowances," adding, "A man with so much talent. It didn't matter if he could read (music) because he could play anything."
He got his union card. Like his older brother Linton, Erroll was the second Garner brother to turn professional musician. At 21, in 1944, he moved to New York, where he started making impressions in the clubs of Swing Street (52nd Street) and made his first records, home recordings in the apartment of jazz fan Timme Rosenkrantz. This is "White Rose Bounce" from January, 1945 with Red Callender, bass, Doc West, drums.
In 1947 Garner and his trio accompanied Charlie Parker on a session that produced "Cool Blues," as well as "This Is Always" and "Dark Shadows" with vocals by Earl Coleman as well as this Parker favorite:"Bird's Nest." Bird is on alto, Red Callender, bass, Doc West, drums.
There were more records, for the Savoy label, that revealed him as fully self-contained.
A 1949 recording for Atlantic: "Pavanne Mood (The Lamp Is Low)." Leonard Gaskin, bass; Charlie Smith, drums
Mitch Miller signed him to Columbia in the early 50's, and despite his proclivity for producing schlock, Miller was a jazz fan who even with occasional infusions of strings, allowed Garner to be himself. It was there he first recorded Misty and another gorgeous original ballad "Dreamy." 1955 brought the live Concert by the Sea album, still a classic to many, revered in the same way as Miles Davis's Kind of Blue or John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. A personal favorite of mine: "Teach Me Tonight" from Concert By The Sea.
There were the weird, goofy, dissonant chords he sometimes opened with before tearing (the best word to describe) into a tune, his left hand creating rhythm guitar-like accompaniment as his right hand romped all over the keyboard. This is "Misty" from Belgian TV.
He was also a popular guest on American TV and radio variety and talk shows including The Mike Douglas Show, The Joey Bishop Show, Arthur Godfrey Time, The Tonight Show, where Johnny Carson featured him frequently. While some consider Steve Allen a great jazz pianist, all he ever really did was his version of Erroll.
A Latin spin on "I Get A Kick Out of You"
Talk about not wasting any time…"Where Or When" from Holland, 1962.
"Dreamy," circa 1964. By that time he was recording for Mercury
Erroll interviewed in Germany. Note his comments regarding jazz as "entertainment" and recalling his brief period of piano lessons.
"That's My Kick" from 1972.
By early 1975, Garner's health began to fail. Hospitalized, tests revealed lung cancer. He played his final gig at the well-known Chicago nightclub Mr. Kelly's that February. He enjoyed a remission but by late late 1976, however, went into rapid decline and died January 2, 1977. He's buried in Homewood Cemetery. His headstone reads, "He gave of himself unselfishly."
This new documentary film looks like it will tell the definitive story. The comments come from Ahmad Jamal, Woody Allen and Steve Allen (who pretty much makes clear his debt to Erroll) , clearly interviewed before he died in 2000.
In 1989, actor Dudley Moore, no slouch himself as a jazz pianist, wrote liner notes to a new CD of unreleased Garner material, part of a series. He summarized his appreciation for man and musician thusly.
"The optimism of life, of being alive, of feeling alive, of communication, of love. That's what Garner is and what he does for me and will always do for me."
My sentiments exactly. Amen to that, and to where it all began: right here.
Sources: Erroll Garner: The Most Happy Piano by James M. Doran. (Scarecrow Press, 1985)
https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/erroll-garner-discusses-music-and-his-career
https://www.wrti.org/post/erroll-garner-jazz-project-restores-profound-cultural-gift
When Erroll Garner died in 1977, his business partner and manager Martha Glaser became executor of his estate. The position gave her full control over Garner's affairs and unissued recordings, which she kept under lock and key. After Glaser died in December 2014, her estate announced the formation of the Erroll Garner Jazz Project and the donation of the Erroll Garner Archive to the University of Pittsburgh. Recordings once salted away began to emerge, including the release of the complete Concert by the Sea and Ready Take One. The third album of new Garner material—Nightconcert—was recently released by Mack Avenue Records. I also review the new album today for The Wall Street Journal (go here). [Photo above of Erroll Garner and Martha Glaser]
First some background. In the 1950s and '60s, Glaser steered Garner through some tough times. A year after Columbia's release of Garner's Concert By the Sea in 1955, Garner signed a five-year contract with the label. But as sales of the live album surged, Glaser demanded that Columbia pay her client higher fees. Columbia stubbornly balked, and in 1958, the label released early Garner recordings without Garner's permission. Claiming that Columbia's move breached his contract, Garner stopped recording for the label. From August 1958 to June 1961, Garner made no new recordings.
Finally, in August 1962, two years after the parties sued each other, Columbia and Garner came to an out-of-court agreement. By then, Garner's contract with Columbia had expired and he formed his Octave Records, which would be distributed by MGM starting in 1964.
To make up the lost income from his recording standoff with Columbia between 1958 and '61, Garner embarked on a relentless touring schedule that often took him to Europe, where he built a huge fan base. In November 1964, he performed at midnight at Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw. Judging by the reception of the 2,000 attendees, Garner was beloved in the Netherlands, in part because his recordings were distributed in Europe by the Dutch Philips label and the audience was completely familiar with his work.
Now, Mack Avenue, in cooperation with the Garner project at the University of Pittsburgh, has released the concert's 16 tracks in full (1 hour and 20 minutes of music) on Nightconcert.
Years ago, an edited version of this material appeared on vinyl in Europe. The new release not only is straight off the tape, the analog recording has been painstakingly remastered for digital release. The resulting sound is spectacular, which is saying something since so many jazz recordings from the Concertgebouw tend to sound uneven due to poor miking.
The selections are Where or When, Easy to Love, On Greet Dolphin Street, Night and Day, Cheek to Cheek, My Funny Valentine, Gypsy in My Soul, That Amsterdam Swing, Over the Rainbow, What Is This Thing Called Love, Laura, When Your Lover Has Gone, No More Shadows, 'S Wonderful, and Thanks for the Memory.
Not that you'd recognize any of these songs from Garner's mischievous solo introductions. As always with Garner, these musical puzzles leave everyone in the hall guessing—including bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin, who had to enter in the right key as soon as a song's melody finally emerged from Garner's playful opening fog. [Photo above of Erroll Garner at the Concertgebouw in November 1964 courtesy of Octave/Mack Avenue Records]
The high point on the album for me is Garner's All Yours, a theme he wrote for the 1963 movie, A New Kind of Love, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. The love ballad is in the same league as Garner's embracing Misty. For those curious about All Yours, Garner recorded the song a year earlier on his album, Erroll Garner With Full Orchestra Conducted By Leith Stevens – Playing Music From the Paramount Motion Picture "A New Kind Of Love." The gorgeous album includes four new Garner originals, including the theme.
What's especially gratifying is how prudently the University of Pittsburgh is moving to release new Garner recordings and the high bar Mack Avenue has set for the remastering and packaging of this glorious music. Whether Garner's lengthy legal standoff with Columbia was prudent in the end given how much he would have earned in record sales had he been recording for the label is unknown. But ultimately he did gain control of his artistic output and we're the beneficiaries of that slow unveiling now. Listening to the new music from 1964, you can almost hear Martha Glaser smiling.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Erroll Garner: Nightconcert (Mack Avenue) here.
The album also is available at Spotify.
JazzWax clip: Here's All Yours, the theme from the film A New Kind of Love...
Here's Garner a year earlier in the studio, playing his gorgeous theme for the movie, A New Kind of Love...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erroll_Garner
Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1923 – January 2, 1977; some sources say b. 1921)[5][6] was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad "Misty", has become a jazz standard. Scott Yanow of Allmusic calls him "one of the most distinctive of all pianists" and a "brilliant virtuoso."[7] He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6363 Hollywood Blvd.
He played locally in the shadow of his older pianist brother Linton Garner and moved to New York City in 1944. He briefly worked with the bassist Slam Stewart, and though not a bebop musician per se, in 1947 played with Charlie Parker on the "Cool Blues" session. Although his admission to the Pittsburgh music union was initially refused because of his inability to read music, it relented in 1956 and made him an honorary member.[2] Garner is credited with a superb memory of music. After attending a concert by the Russian classical pianist Emil Gilels, Garner returned to his apartment and was able to play a large portion of the performed music by recall.[2]
Short in stature (5 ft 2 in), Garner performed sitting on multiple telephone directories.[2][9] He was also known for his vocalizations while playing, which can be heard on many of his recordings. He helped to bridge the gap for jazz musicians between nightclubs and the concert hall.
Garner made many tours both at home and abroad, and regularly recorded. He was, reportedly, The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson's favorite jazz musician, appearing on Carson's show many times over the years.
Garner died of cardiac arrest related to emphysema on January 2, 1977.[2] He is buried in Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery.
In 2016, Downtown Music Publishing entered an exclusive worldwide administration agreement with Octave Music Publishing Corp. The deal covers all of Garner’s works including “Misty”, as well as Garner’s extensive archive of master recordings, many of which remain unreleased.[10]
Called "one of the most distinctive of all pianists" by jazz writer Scott Yanow, Garner showed that a "creative jazz musician can be very popular without watering down his music" or changing his personal style.[7] He has been described as a "brilliant virtuoso who sounded unlike anyone else", using an "orchestral approach straight from the swing era but ... open to the innovations of bop."[7] His distinctive style could swing like no other, but some of his best recordings are ballads, such as his best-known composition, "Misty", which rapidly became a jazz standard – and was featured in Clint Eastwood's film Play Misty for Me (1971).
Garner may have been inspired by the example of Earl Hines, a fellow Pittsburgh resident but 18 years his senior, and there were resemblances in their elastic approach to timing and use of right-hand octaves. Garner's early recordings also display the influence of the stride piano style of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. He developed a signature style that involved his right hand playing behind the beat while his left strummed a steady rhythm and punctuation, creating insouciance and tension. The independence of his hands also was evidenced by his masterful use of three-against-four and more complicated cross-rhythms between the hands. Garner would also improvise whimsical introductions to pieces that left listeners in suspense as to what the tune would be. His melodic improvisations generally stayed close to the theme while employing novel chord voicings.
One World Concert was recorded at the 1962 Seattle World Fair (and in 1959 stretching out in the studios) and features Eddie Calhoun on bass and Kelly Martin on drums.[11] Other works include 1951's Long Ago and Far Away, 1953's Erroll Garner at the Piano with Wyatt Ruther and Fats Heard,[12] 1957's The Most Happy Piano, 1970's Feeling Is Believing and 1974's Magician, which see Garner perform a number of classic standards. Often the trio was expanded to add Latin percussion, usually a conga.
In 1964, Garner appeared in the UK on the music series Jazz 625 broadcast on the BBC's new second channel. The programme was hosted by Steve Race, who introduced Garner's trio with Eddie Calhoun on bass and Kelly Martin on drums.[13]
Because Garner could not write down his musical ideas, he used to record them on tape, to be later transcribed by others.[14]
The Erroll Garner Club was founded in 1982 in Aberlady, Scotland. On September 26, 1992 Garnerphiles from England, Scotland, Germany and the US met in London for a unique and historic get-together. The guests of honour were Eddie Calhoun (bassist) and Kelly Martin (drummer), Erroll's rhythm section from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. On June 15, 1996 many of the UK's keenest Garnerphiles converged in Cheltenham for an afternoon of food, music and fun on what would have been Erroll's 75th birthday. That evening they were saddened to hear of the death of another jazz legend: Ella Fitzgerald.[15]
On June 15, 2015, the estate of Martha Glaser, Garner's longtime manager, announced the formation of the Erroll Garner Jazz Project, a major new archival and musical celebration of Garner. The project includes the donation of the Erroll Garner Archive—a huge trove of newly discovered historical material from Garner's life—to the University of Pittsburgh.[16][17]
On September 18, 2015, Concert by the Sea was re-released by Sony Legacy in an expanded, three-CD edition that adds 11 previously unreleased tracks.
On September 30, 2016, 'Ready Take One' was released on Sony Legacy/Octave featuring 14 previously unreleased tracks.[18]
On July 13, 2018, a live concert recording of Garner playing in 1964 at the Concertgebouw in the Netherlands was released by Mack Avenue Records with the title Nightconcert.[19]
Erroll Garner played and composed by ear
John S. Wilson (January 3, 1977). "Erroll Garner, Jazz Pianist, 53; Composed 'Misty,' 'That's My Kick'". The New York Times. p. 23. Retrieved August 2, 2015.
"Box Set for Jazz Lovers: Erroll Garner's 'Concert by the Sea'". November 8, 2015.
"University of Pittsburgh Commemorates Black History Month". University of Pittsburgh News. January 26, 2016. Retrieved July 24, 2016.
Erroll Garner (American musician) Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Britannica.com. Retrieved November 21, 2015.
Doc Rock. "The 1970s". The Dead Rock Stars Club. Retrieved August 2, 2015.
Yanow, Scott. "Erroll Garner". AllMusic. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
James M. Doran (1985). Erroll Garner: The Most Happy Piano, Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0810817456.
John Wilson, "Return of Erroll Garner; Phone Book Is Still His Prop at Village Gate", The New York Times, May 29, 1965, p. 16.
"Downtown Music Publishing Pacts With Octave Music To Administer Erroll Garner Catalog". Retrieved July 22, 2016.
Scott Yanow. "One World Concert/Dream Street – Erroll Garner | Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
"Erroll Garner – Erroll Garner At The Piano (Vinyl, LP)". Discogs.com. Retrieved August 2, 2015.
"Garner's Serendipitous Hit", Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2009.
"Erroll Garner – Piano Solos Book 2, M.H. Goldsen, Criterion Music Corp, 1957. Preface.
J.D. Ellis (then Erroll Garner Club Treasurer) and Erroll Garner Gems Volume 2, Number 4, produced by Jim Doran, Erroll's biographer.
Niederberger, Mary (June 15, 2015). "Jazz musician Erroll Garner's materials donated to Pitt library". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
Chinen, Nate (September 16, 2015). "Erroll Garner's 'Concert by the Sea' Gets a New Sound". The New York Times.
"Ready Take One – Erroll Garner | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 2018-01-02.
Gelly, Dave (2018-07-29). "Erroll Garner: Nightconcert review – dizzying jazz talent, live in 1964". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2019-02-13.
Erroll Garner
(1921-1977)
Artist Biography by Scott Yanow
One of the most distinctive of all pianists, Erroll Garner
proved that it was possible to be a sophisticated player without
knowing how to read music, that a creative jazz musician can be very
popular without watering down his music, and that it is possible to
remain an enthusiastic player without changing one's style once it is
formed. A brilliant virtuoso who sounded unlike anyone else, on medium
tempo pieces, Erroll Garner
often stated the beat with his left hand like a rhythm guitar while his
right played chords slightly behind the beat, creating a memorable
effect. His playful free-form introductions (which forced his sidemen to
really listen), his ability to play stunning runs without once glancing
at the keyboard, his grunting, and the pure joy that he displayed while
performing were also part of the Erroll Garner magic.
Garner, whose older brother Linton was also a fine pianist, appeared on the radio with the Kan-D-Kids at the age of ten. After working locally in Pittsburgh, he moved to New York in 1944 and worked with Slam Stewart's trio during 1944-1945 before going out on his own. By 1946, Garner had his sound together, and when he backed Charlie Parker on his famous Cool Blues session of 1947, the pianist was already an obvious giant. His unclassifiable style had an orchestral approach straight from the swing era but was open to the innovations of bop. From the early '50s on, Garner's accessible style became very popular and he never seemed to have an off day up until his forced retirement (due to illness) in early 1975. His composition "Misty" became a standard. Garner, who had the ability to sit at the piano without prior planning and record three albums in one day (all colorful first takes), made many records throughout his career for such companies as Savoy, Mercury, RCA, Dial, Columbia, EmArcy, ABC-Paramount, MGM, Reprise, and his own Octave label.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/errollgarner
Garner, whose older brother Linton was also a fine pianist, appeared on the radio with the Kan-D-Kids at the age of ten. After working locally in Pittsburgh, he moved to New York in 1944 and worked with Slam Stewart's trio during 1944-1945 before going out on his own. By 1946, Garner had his sound together, and when he backed Charlie Parker on his famous Cool Blues session of 1947, the pianist was already an obvious giant. His unclassifiable style had an orchestral approach straight from the swing era but was open to the innovations of bop. From the early '50s on, Garner's accessible style became very popular and he never seemed to have an off day up until his forced retirement (due to illness) in early 1975. His composition "Misty" became a standard. Garner, who had the ability to sit at the piano without prior planning and record three albums in one day (all colorful first takes), made many records throughout his career for such companies as Savoy, Mercury, RCA, Dial, Columbia, EmArcy, ABC-Paramount, MGM, Reprise, and his own Octave label.
https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/errollgarner
Erroll Garner
Erroll Garner
Born in Pittsburgh in 1921 (Sy Johnson's biographical note in The Erroll Garner Songbook has June 15, 1923 as Garner's birthdate), Errol Garner started playing piano at the age of two (three according to Johnson). He never learned to read music, probably because it was never a necessity for him. He learned to play the 'novelty' styles of Zez Confrey and others from listening to 78 records, a style which used steady left hand chord rhythms to support very free right-hand melodic interpretations. This provided a perfect basis for the hard-swinging jazz style that Garner was to pioneer.
At the age of seven, Garner began appearing on radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh with a group called the Candy Kids, and by the age of eleven he was playing on the Allegheny riverboats. Garner began to attract attention after he moved to New York in the early forties, and shortly afterwards he made his first recordings. By 1950, Garner had established himself an international reputation, and from that point until his death on January 2, 1977, he made countless tours both at home and abroad, and produced a huge volume of recorded work.
Garner's style evolved out of the 'novelty rags' of the twenties. More contemporary jazz influences include Earl Hines, another Pittsburgh native, and the rhythm compings of Freddie Green (Count Basie's longtime guitarist). But Garner was ultimately a very idiosyncratic player, and he doesn't fit well into any of the standard piano style groupings of 40's and 50's jazz. His characteristic traits are of course his steady, guitaristic, left hand compings, and, most obviously, his octaval treatments of melodies and solo lines. The major seventh arpeggio in octaves which introduces Garner's biggest hit, Misty is an example. Another typical Garnerism is the pizzicato, super-syncopated introduction. These intros are often highly independent of the main part of the piece. They range from fanciful to sassy, but always their choppy staccato serves to highten the driving effect once Garner turns on his relentless left hand rhythm.
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/10/656189856/into-the-vault-erroll-garner-uncovered
Jazz Night In America: The Radio Program
Into the Vault: Erroll Garner Uncovered
Concert length:
57:04
AUDIO: <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/656189856/656604367" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>What makes a first-tier jazz legacy? A signature instrumental style, recognizable within a phrase or two. A body of exceptional recordings, in the studio and in concert. A legion of imitators, great and small. A sense of broad cultural relevance. Maybe even a hit song or two.
Pianist-composer Erroll Garner met all of these requirements, and at least one more: He had a tireless champion, Martha Glaser, whose influence on his career went beyond her official role as manager and business partner. Her ministrations didn't end when Garner died in 1977, at 53; she just shifted modes, protecting his name and serving his interests as guardian of his estate, until her own passing in 2014.
In this episode of Jazz Night in America, we'll get a close look at Garner's ebullient magic — the sparkling touch that kept countless other pianists in awe, the wild improvisational flights that somehow always resolved just so — while also considering his reputation. We'll hear from Garner and Glaser, as well as contemporary admirers like noted scholar Robin D.G. Kelley.
And with unprecedented access, we'll join a small delegation from the Erroll Garner Jazz Project as they open up a trove of previously sealed boxes in a remote storage facility — uncovering Garner's own record collection, rare photographs and awards, and an array of personal effects. (Stetson dress shoes? Check.)
One of the would-be Indiana Joneses in that storage unit is Christian Sands, the creative ambassador for the Jazz Project, and a pianist unabashed about Garner's influence. In the show, we'll hear Sands' trio interpreting standards associated with Garner. And of course, there's some music by the man of the hour himself — including an exclusive outtake from the 1964 recording recently released as an album, Nightconcert.
"My hope," Sands remarks, "is for other people to understand that this is someone who is very important to not only just jazz history, but just history as a whole, American history." This special Jazz Night lines up a rich abundance of resources in service of that aim.
https://www.errollgarner.com/
https://www.errollgarner.com/biography
Erroll Garner
BIOGRAPHY
“Erroll Garner personifies the joy of fearless virtuosity and exploration. His playing celebrated the greatest swinging big bands through an innovative and impossible pianism. Singular yet all embracing, Garner blurred the line between great art and popular art, and he was a staunch journeyman of the blues and his Pittsburgh legacy.”
— Geri Allen
ERROLL GARNER: 1921-1977
Pittsburgh
born Jazz pianist, prolific composer, concert hall artist, and
recording star. Garner was one of the most well known and influential
pianists in the world during his lifetime. Surrounded by a musical
family, Garner was by all accounts self-taught, began playing at the age
of three and was performing professionally by the age of seven.
Throughout his career Garner developed a distinctive and original piano
style often compared with Art Tatum, Fats Waller, as well as Claude
Debussy.
Garner released music on over 40 labels, received multiple Grammy nominations, and recorded one of the greatest selling jazz albums of all time, Concert By The Sea. His published catalog contains nearly 200 compositions including “Misty”, which was named #15 on ASCAP’s list of the top songs of the 20th century. He scored for ballet, film, television, and orchestra. One of the most televised Jazz artists of his era, Garner appeared on TV shows all over the world, including: Ed Sullivan, Dick Cavitt, Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, and many others. His prolific career began on Allegheny riverboats and spanned from the clubs of 52nd street to the top concert halls of the world.
Erroll Garner’s musical and cultural legacy is perhaps stronger today than at any point since his untimely passing in 1977, when Erroll lost his battle with lung cancer at the age of 55. Thanks to the renewed efforts of Octave Music—the successor and namesake of the company Garner formed with his manager Martha Glaser in 1952— and it’s Erroll Garner Jazz Project, his music is once again finding fresh audiences through a series of new record releases, multimedia performances, and creative partnerships.
https://pitt.libguides.com/ErrollGarner
He gets ideas, he says, from everything. "A big color, the sound of water and wind, or a flash of something cool."
- Erroll Garner in the New York Times, October 11, 1959.
Erroll Garner is known as one of jazz music's great virtuosos, praised for his energetic style and his ability to improvise. Erroll could hear a tune once and play it back perfectly, though infused with his own signature style. He also composed some of the 20th century's most popular jazz tunes, including the standard "Misty."
Born in Pittsburgh on June 15, 1921, Erroll was playing the piano by age three. He began performing at an early age and quickly went from playing riverboats to going on tour across the U.S., growing in popularity throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In 1950, Erroll joined forces with Martha Glaser, with whom he founded a publishing company, Octave Music. Martha would remain his manager until his death in 1977.
Two of Erroll's most well-known contributions to popular culture are his composition "Misty" and his album Concert by the Sea. "Misty," which he first recorded in 1954, was performed by such greats as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1991. The song's popularity was helped in part by being featured in Clint Eastwood's hit movie Play Misty For Me. The 1955 Concert by the Sea was recorded in Carmel, California, and soon became regarded as one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. Pitt Associate Professor Geri Allen, speaking of this album, praised "the way he expressed himself on the instrument... So fearless, and so free."
Erroll continued performing and recording until his death at the age of 53 in 1977. He was buried in his hometown of Pittsburgh in Homewood Cemetery. Martha continued to work to ensure that his name, music, and legacy would be carried on, collecting material for his archive and standing up for his music's rights until her death in December 2014.
In 2015, the story of Erroll Garner's life and music was given a chance to reach an audience of new and old fans alike, with the acquisition of the Erroll Garner Archive by the University of Pittsburgh.
https://www.biography.com/people/erroll-garner-9306879
Jazz
pianist Erroll Garner was born on June 15, 1921, in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Garner was influenced by Fats Waller and was entirely
self-taught. He spelled Art Tatum in the latter's trio in 1945 and
subsequently formed his own three-piece group, achieving commercial
success with Concert by the Sea (1958), which has been credited
as one of the best-selling albums in the history of jazz. Garner's
best-known composition is "Misty." He died on January 2, 1977, in Los
Angeles, California.
Quick, hum a few bars of an original composition by Erroll Garner — other than “Misty.”
Serious Garner-philes surely know the impish “Afternoon of an Elf,” the bittersweet ballads “Solitaire” and “Gaslight,” and a few others. But I’d wager that most jazz fans would draw a blank. The pianist’s populist versions of standards got most of the bandwidth, and the overwhelming fame of “Misty” dominated whatever attention was left for his originals. Even those aware of Garner’s healthy catalog would likely be stunned to learn just how prolific he was as a composer.
How large is Garner’s corpus? The Erroll Garner Jazz Project, spearheaded by the pianist’s estate, reports that 196 of his songs have been published and issued on recordings. But that number comprises only half of Garner’s total output as a composer; there are roughly 200 unpublished originals, recorded but not yet released, in the Garner archive at the University of Pittsburgh.
The newest discovery — “That Amsterdam Swing,” a previously unissued blues-with-a-bridge with a modernist edge — is one of three appealing Garner compositions on Nightconcert, an album due out on Mack Avenue on July 13. One of the others is a languorous ballad called “No More Shadows,” which has its premiere here.
It’s a pleasant tune with a warmhearted melody — and while it lacks the inspired spark of Garner’s most memorable creations, the song has an intriguingly circuitous history.
Martha Glaser, Garner’s savvy manager and protector, was always on the lookout for another “Misty.” She saw this tune as a hopeful contender, and commissioned lyrics in the early-to-mid ‘60s.
They must have been poorly received, because by the early ‘70s there was a second set of lyrics by Edward Heyman, a pro best known for his work on “Body and Soul,” “When I Fall in Love,” “I Cover the Waterfront” and “Blame it On My Youth.” Heyman’s lyrics, which appears in The Erroll Garner Songbook Vol. 2, published by Cherry Lane Music in 1987, are not his finest hour:
Garner introduced the ballad as an instrumental called “Shadows,” on the 1961 LP Close Up in Swing (ABC Paramount). A live performance bearing the title “No More Shadows” was captured in London on video by the BBC, around the time of the Amsterdam concert.
But Garner makes the most persuasive case for the song on Nightconcert. The earlier versions sound overly starched and bland in comparison; in Amsterdam he opens with a free-associative introduction that even by Garner standards heads into whimsical harmonic territory. Finally, after 65 seconds, he settles into the tune, and the rest is a bit routine. The playing here offers a catalog of Garner tropes: tremolos, Lisztian runs, harp-like arpeggios, left-hand quarter notes, right-hand melodies carried in chords phrased behind the beat.
A vivacious concert recording from November 1964, Nightconcert captures an inspired Garner leading his trio with bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin in a midnight concert at the Royal Concertgebouw. (The late start was due to a classical concert earlier in the evening.)
It’s the third recording issued under the supervision of Garner’s estate and its Octave Music imprint since the Erroll Garner Jazz Project launched in 2015, with The Complete Concert By the Sea. The following year saw the arrival of Ready Take One, a compilation of studio tracks from 1967-71, many of them previously unissued. (Both of those albums were released on Sony Legacy.)
Of the 16 tracks on Nightconcert, eight have never been issued in any form. The others were released in the mid-‘60s on Philips in Europe and Australia, but with Garner’s rhapsodic introductions heavily edited. And as anyone familiar with Garner’s playing knows, those spontaneous leaps into the unknown contain some of his most astounding improvising. You never know what death-defying aerial twists and turns he’s going to try or how the hell he managed to stick the landing.
A good example of Garner’s approach can be found on the version of “On Green Dolphin Street” from Nightconcert.
Quirky parallel chords ascend the scale during the opening gambit, heading somewhere in a hurry. But where? He pauses for a look around, likes what he sees and explores the enigmatic landscape. A rising arpeggio at 28 seconds suggests the pianist’s eyebrows going up. Then four quick steps up and — bam! — the tune starts as if shot from a cannon. A dissonant interlude kicks of the piano solo, and Garner roars through his choruses with a splashy attack, dramatic dynamics and wild flights of fancy. (Dig the rumba-beat passages!) Somehow the disparate ideas cohere into unified whole.
An Underrated Composer
I wouldn’t call Garner a major composer, but I would call him an underrated one. His most inventive pieces explore a diverse pool of melodic, rhythmic and harmonic ideas and open a window on nuanced emotional states, beyond the sheer ebullience and dreamy romanticism for which he’s best known.
His songs aren’t especially complicated, typically relying on standard 12- and 32-bar forms. While some swingers and blues are cut from perfunctory riffs, and some slow numbers slip into gauzy sentimentality, songs like “Misty” (1954) and “Gaslight” (1944) strip away the filigree in favor of straightforward melodies and efficacious harmonies that land with the sureness of Cupid’s arrow. (The chord changes of “Misty” appear largely borrowed from Billy Eckstine’s “I Want to Talk About You,” which debuted in 1944, save some differences in the bridge.)
Garner, who famously did not read music, improvised a great many pieces in the studio. “Turquoise” (1949), a chromatically enriched slow blues, introduces itself with a brief written figure, before Garner solos spontaneously. Yet the effortless flow, internal melodic rhyme, harmonic signposts, dynamics and a deep strain of melancholia create a satisfying gestalt — a masterpiece by midnight, evocative of an Ellington mood piece.
Some of Garner’s most alluring pieces, like his best solos, deliver clever feints and parries. These unexpected turns misdirect attention, suspend animation or disguise the form. The lines between composition, arrangement and improvisation can blur in ways that suggest an aesthetic kinship with Ahmad Jamal — perhaps a surprising notion, until you remember that both pianists were born in Pittsburgh, seven years apart, and Garner was one of Jamal’s major influences.
Recorded for Mercury in 1955, “Afternoon of an Elf” is a tour de force of formal ingenuity. The core of the composition is a 32-bar A-A-B-A tune in A-flat with a charming melody decorated with jaunty triplets and to-the-moon upward leaps of a minor tenth. But preceding the tune is an expansive introduction that moves from a fanfare into an impressionistic mist created by an E-flat pedal and Debussy-like suspensions. As Garner glides into the tune, his left-hand dotted-quarter rhythms and syncopations suggest a polyrhythmic triple meter swirl inside the basic 4/4 swing that sometimes hides the beat.
Garner takes two laps through the 32-bar form, staying in touch with the melody, even as his left hand falls into stride rhythm and his right hand wanders. At the end of the second chorus, he turns another corner into a 10-bar tag that ends with a return to the E-flat pedal. Now the fun really begins: Garner wings through a third chorus — keeping the melody still in sight — but he skips the tag in favor of returning to the bridge and another half chorus. Then he launches into a massive coda worthy of Beethoven in which he synthesizes all the previous material and even includes — à la Jamal — false endings. It’s as confounding and irresistible as the magic of a master illusionist, and just as delightful.
“No More Shadows,” as heard on Nightconcert, doesn’t contain this level of ingenuity — but it’s still a welcome entry in the Garner canon. It also serves to remind us: There’s a wealth of his compositions that merit a second look, and many others in the archive still waiting to be liberated.
Nightconcert will be available on Mack Avenue on July 13; preorder here.
Mark Stryker is a longtime jazz and classical music critic and culture reporter in Detroit. His book Made in Detroit: Jazz from the Motor City will be published in summer 2019 by the University of Michigan Press.
Looks like this is the season for discovering lost jazz masterpieces. Last month it was a 1963 studio session by John Coltrane; this time it’s a 1964 live concert by Erroll Garner. Of the two, Garner was the more popular during his lifetime, tirelessly touring the world’s major concert halls. This was recorded at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. A completely self-taught pianist, Garner had evolved a unique style which managed to combine over-the-top romanticism with the most ferocious swing. A favourite way of deploying these was to set up a great perfumed cloud of sound, covering the entire keyboard, out of which would suddenly emerge, tripping merrily along, a well-known tune. There’s a beauty here, introducing Cheek to Cheek, greeted by the invariable round of applause. That rare thing, genuine musical wit, it never failed. His accompanists, bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin, rarely knew quite what Garner was going to do next. Apart from his purely musical talents, he was ambidextrous, which meant that he could happily keep two rhythms going at once. There are some bewildering examples of that here, too. Oh, yes, and he also composed Misty.
Erroll Garner:
In a triumphant career that lasted forty years Erroll Garner pushed the playability of the piano to its limits, developed an international reputation, and made an indelible mark on the jazz world. And yet, his story has never been told. Until now.
Atticus Brady's new film uses an astonishing array of archival materials interwoven with interviews with friends, family, and fellow musicians, and features commentary from Woody Allen; Ahmad Jamal; Tonight Show host Steve Allen; Erroll's sister, Ruth Garner Moore; pianist and arranger Dick Hyman; Columbia Records executive George Avakian; Erroll's bass player Ernest McCarty; Erroll's biographer Jim Doran; jazz journalist John Murph; dancer/choreographer Maurice Hines; and Erroll's daughter Kim Garner, who goes on the record about her father for the first time.
The film explores Erroll's childhood in Pittsburgh; his meteoric rise in popularity while playing on 52nd street, New York's famed jazz epicenter; the origins of his most famous album (Concert By The Sea) and his most famous composition (Misty); his singular, virtuosic piano style; and his dynamic personality, both on and off the stage.
Erroll Garner, “No More Shadows” from Nightconcert
Garner released music on over 40 labels, received multiple Grammy nominations, and recorded one of the greatest selling jazz albums of all time, Concert By The Sea. His published catalog contains nearly 200 compositions including “Misty”, which was named #15 on ASCAP’s list of the top songs of the 20th century. He scored for ballet, film, television, and orchestra. One of the most televised Jazz artists of his era, Garner appeared on TV shows all over the world, including: Ed Sullivan, Dick Cavitt, Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, and many others. His prolific career began on Allegheny riverboats and spanned from the clubs of 52nd street to the top concert halls of the world.
Erroll Garner’s musical and cultural legacy is perhaps stronger today than at any point since his untimely passing in 1977, when Erroll lost his battle with lung cancer at the age of 55. Thanks to the renewed efforts of Octave Music—the successor and namesake of the company Garner formed with his manager Martha Glaser in 1952— and it’s Erroll Garner Jazz Project, his music is once again finding fresh audiences through a series of new record releases, multimedia performances, and creative partnerships.
https://pitt.libguides.com/ErrollGarner
Erroll Garner Archive @ Pitt
Erroll Garner News
University of Pittsburgh Library System: "Erroll Garner-Martha Glaser Archive Research Award," Sept. 7, 2017
KDKA: "Black History Month: Erroll Garner," Feb. 11, 2016
University Times: "Faculty member gets Grammy nomination," Feb. 4, 2016
Department of Music: "Erroll Garner Exhibit Opening Reception," Feb 4, 2016
KDKA: "Black History Month: Erroll Garner," Feb. 11, 2016
University Times: "Faculty member gets Grammy nomination," Feb. 4, 2016
Department of Music: "Erroll Garner Exhibit Opening Reception," Feb 4, 2016
Erroll Garner Links
Interested in learning more about Erroll Garner, his music, and his legacy? Visit the following sites for more information.
The Erroll Garner Jazz Project
Collection Guide for the Erroll Garner Archive
Pitt Jazz Studies Blog Posts
Erroll Garner Facebook page
Erroll Garner on YouTube
Erroll Garner on Instagram
The Erroll Garner Jazz Project
Collection Guide for the Erroll Garner Archive
Pitt Jazz Studies Blog Posts
Erroll Garner Facebook page
Erroll Garner on YouTube
Erroll Garner on Instagram
About Erroll
He gets ideas, he says, from everything. "A big color, the sound of water and wind, or a flash of something cool."
- Erroll Garner in the New York Times, October 11, 1959.
Erroll Garner is known as one of jazz music's great virtuosos, praised for his energetic style and his ability to improvise. Erroll could hear a tune once and play it back perfectly, though infused with his own signature style. He also composed some of the 20th century's most popular jazz tunes, including the standard "Misty."
Born in Pittsburgh on June 15, 1921, Erroll was playing the piano by age three. He began performing at an early age and quickly went from playing riverboats to going on tour across the U.S., growing in popularity throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In 1950, Erroll joined forces with Martha Glaser, with whom he founded a publishing company, Octave Music. Martha would remain his manager until his death in 1977.
Two of Erroll's most well-known contributions to popular culture are his composition "Misty" and his album Concert by the Sea. "Misty," which he first recorded in 1954, was performed by such greats as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1991. The song's popularity was helped in part by being featured in Clint Eastwood's hit movie Play Misty For Me. The 1955 Concert by the Sea was recorded in Carmel, California, and soon became regarded as one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. Pitt Associate Professor Geri Allen, speaking of this album, praised "the way he expressed himself on the instrument... So fearless, and so free."
Erroll continued performing and recording until his death at the age of 53 in 1977. He was buried in his hometown of Pittsburgh in Homewood Cemetery. Martha continued to work to ensure that his name, music, and legacy would be carried on, collecting material for his archive and standing up for his music's rights until her death in December 2014.
In 2015, the story of Erroll Garner's life and music was given a chance to reach an audience of new and old fans alike, with the acquisition of the Erroll Garner Archive by the University of Pittsburgh.
About the Collection
In
the wake of Martha Glaser's December 2014 death, it was made clear that
the vast amount of material she had accumulated over the years
documenting Erroll Garner's career had enormous research potential and
would be of interest to the public. In June 2015, in honor of what would
have been Erroll's 94th birthday, it was announced that Martha's estate
selected the University of Pittsburgh as the permanent home of the Erroll Garner Archive.
Erroll
was a Pittsburgh native, born in the Hill District and buried in
Homewood Cemetery. In addition, the University of Pittsburgh has two
particular strengths that make it an ideal home for the Garner Archive.
The collection is managed by and housed at Pitt's Archives Service
Center, an archival facility well-versed in dealing with large and
complex collections, which is part of Pitt's Archives & Special Collections. Secondly, the University also has a strong Jazz Studies program, led by the world-renowned pianist Geri Allen. At Pitt, the collection is expertly preserved for the future. It has already seen use from Department of Music professors and students.
See this guide's section on The Archive for
details of what the collection contains, everything from photographs to
sheet music to the phone book that 5'2" Erroll sat on to better reach
his piano keys. Similarly, all the images seen in this guide come from
the Erroll Garner Archive.
https://www.biography.com/people/erroll-garner-9306879
Erroll Garner Biography
Pianist, Songwriter
(1921–1977)
ERROLL GARNER
Erroll Garner was a
virtuosic and popular jazz pianist known for creating one of the
best-selling albums in jazz, Concert by the Sea (1958).
"The complete musician is what Garner was. He could make you cry and make you laugh and make you think. And that's what an artist is supposed to do." -- Ahmad Jamalhttps://www.wbgo.org/post/considering-erroll-garner-composer-exclusive-premiere-nightconcert#stream/0
Considering Erroll Garner the Composer, with An Exclusive Premiere From 'Nightconcert'
by Mark Stryker
June 13, 2018
WBGO.org
Erroll Garner at the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in November 1964, now captured on 'Nightconcert' Nico Van Der Stam
Quick, hum a few bars of an original composition by Erroll Garner — other than “Misty.”
Serious Garner-philes surely know the impish “Afternoon of an Elf,” the bittersweet ballads “Solitaire” and “Gaslight,” and a few others. But I’d wager that most jazz fans would draw a blank. The pianist’s populist versions of standards got most of the bandwidth, and the overwhelming fame of “Misty” dominated whatever attention was left for his originals. Even those aware of Garner’s healthy catalog would likely be stunned to learn just how prolific he was as a composer.
How large is Garner’s corpus? The Erroll Garner Jazz Project, spearheaded by the pianist’s estate, reports that 196 of his songs have been published and issued on recordings. But that number comprises only half of Garner’s total output as a composer; there are roughly 200 unpublished originals, recorded but not yet released, in the Garner archive at the University of Pittsburgh.
The newest discovery — “That Amsterdam Swing,” a previously unissued blues-with-a-bridge with a modernist edge — is one of three appealing Garner compositions on Nightconcert, an album due out on Mack Avenue on July 13. One of the others is a languorous ballad called “No More Shadows,” which has its premiere here.
It’s a pleasant tune with a warmhearted melody — and while it lacks the inspired spark of Garner’s most memorable creations, the song has an intriguingly circuitous history.
Martha Glaser, Garner’s savvy manager and protector, was always on the lookout for another “Misty.” She saw this tune as a hopeful contender, and commissioned lyrics in the early-to-mid ‘60s.
They must have been poorly received, because by the early ‘70s there was a second set of lyrics by Edward Heyman, a pro best known for his work on “Body and Soul,” “When I Fall in Love,” “I Cover the Waterfront” and “Blame it On My Youth.” Heyman’s lyrics, which appears in The Erroll Garner Songbook Vol. 2, published by Cherry Lane Music in 1987, are not his finest hour:
No more shadowsThis may be one reason why no singer ever released a version of the song. (The Garner archive has an early demo of the first set of lyrics, sung by an unidentified male singer, and a 1973 tape of the second set, recorded by Teddi King.)
No more of hopeless dreams at night
Time for sunshine
Time to see a ray of light
Garner introduced the ballad as an instrumental called “Shadows,” on the 1961 LP Close Up in Swing (ABC Paramount). A live performance bearing the title “No More Shadows” was captured in London on video by the BBC, around the time of the Amsterdam concert.
But Garner makes the most persuasive case for the song on Nightconcert. The earlier versions sound overly starched and bland in comparison; in Amsterdam he opens with a free-associative introduction that even by Garner standards heads into whimsical harmonic territory. Finally, after 65 seconds, he settles into the tune, and the rest is a bit routine. The playing here offers a catalog of Garner tropes: tremolos, Lisztian runs, harp-like arpeggios, left-hand quarter notes, right-hand melodies carried in chords phrased behind the beat.
A vivacious concert recording from November 1964, Nightconcert captures an inspired Garner leading his trio with bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin in a midnight concert at the Royal Concertgebouw. (The late start was due to a classical concert earlier in the evening.)
It’s the third recording issued under the supervision of Garner’s estate and its Octave Music imprint since the Erroll Garner Jazz Project launched in 2015, with The Complete Concert By the Sea. The following year saw the arrival of Ready Take One, a compilation of studio tracks from 1967-71, many of them previously unissued. (Both of those albums were released on Sony Legacy.)
Of the 16 tracks on Nightconcert, eight have never been issued in any form. The others were released in the mid-‘60s on Philips in Europe and Australia, but with Garner’s rhapsodic introductions heavily edited. And as anyone familiar with Garner’s playing knows, those spontaneous leaps into the unknown contain some of his most astounding improvising. You never know what death-defying aerial twists and turns he’s going to try or how the hell he managed to stick the landing.
A good example of Garner’s approach can be found on the version of “On Green Dolphin Street” from Nightconcert.
Quirky parallel chords ascend the scale during the opening gambit, heading somewhere in a hurry. But where? He pauses for a look around, likes what he sees and explores the enigmatic landscape. A rising arpeggio at 28 seconds suggests the pianist’s eyebrows going up. Then four quick steps up and — bam! — the tune starts as if shot from a cannon. A dissonant interlude kicks of the piano solo, and Garner roars through his choruses with a splashy attack, dramatic dynamics and wild flights of fancy. (Dig the rumba-beat passages!) Somehow the disparate ideas cohere into unified whole.
An Underrated Composer
I wouldn’t call Garner a major composer, but I would call him an underrated one. His most inventive pieces explore a diverse pool of melodic, rhythmic and harmonic ideas and open a window on nuanced emotional states, beyond the sheer ebullience and dreamy romanticism for which he’s best known.
His songs aren’t especially complicated, typically relying on standard 12- and 32-bar forms. While some swingers and blues are cut from perfunctory riffs, and some slow numbers slip into gauzy sentimentality, songs like “Misty” (1954) and “Gaslight” (1944) strip away the filigree in favor of straightforward melodies and efficacious harmonies that land with the sureness of Cupid’s arrow. (The chord changes of “Misty” appear largely borrowed from Billy Eckstine’s “I Want to Talk About You,” which debuted in 1944, save some differences in the bridge.)
Garner, who famously did not read music, improvised a great many pieces in the studio. “Turquoise” (1949), a chromatically enriched slow blues, introduces itself with a brief written figure, before Garner solos spontaneously. Yet the effortless flow, internal melodic rhyme, harmonic signposts, dynamics and a deep strain of melancholia create a satisfying gestalt — a masterpiece by midnight, evocative of an Ellington mood piece.
Some of Garner’s most alluring pieces, like his best solos, deliver clever feints and parries. These unexpected turns misdirect attention, suspend animation or disguise the form. The lines between composition, arrangement and improvisation can blur in ways that suggest an aesthetic kinship with Ahmad Jamal — perhaps a surprising notion, until you remember that both pianists were born in Pittsburgh, seven years apart, and Garner was one of Jamal’s major influences.
Recorded for Mercury in 1955, “Afternoon of an Elf” is a tour de force of formal ingenuity. The core of the composition is a 32-bar A-A-B-A tune in A-flat with a charming melody decorated with jaunty triplets and to-the-moon upward leaps of a minor tenth. But preceding the tune is an expansive introduction that moves from a fanfare into an impressionistic mist created by an E-flat pedal and Debussy-like suspensions. As Garner glides into the tune, his left-hand dotted-quarter rhythms and syncopations suggest a polyrhythmic triple meter swirl inside the basic 4/4 swing that sometimes hides the beat.
Garner takes two laps through the 32-bar form, staying in touch with the melody, even as his left hand falls into stride rhythm and his right hand wanders. At the end of the second chorus, he turns another corner into a 10-bar tag that ends with a return to the E-flat pedal. Now the fun really begins: Garner wings through a third chorus — keeping the melody still in sight — but he skips the tag in favor of returning to the bridge and another half chorus. Then he launches into a massive coda worthy of Beethoven in which he synthesizes all the previous material and even includes — à la Jamal — false endings. It’s as confounding and irresistible as the magic of a master illusionist, and just as delightful.
“No More Shadows,” as heard on Nightconcert, doesn’t contain this level of ingenuity — but it’s still a welcome entry in the Garner canon. It also serves to remind us: There’s a wealth of his compositions that merit a second look, and many others in the archive still waiting to be liberated.
Nightconcert will be available on Mack Avenue on July 13; preorder here.
Mark Stryker is a longtime jazz and classical music critic and culture reporter in Detroit. His book Made in Detroit: Jazz from the Motor City will be published in summer 2019 by the University of Michigan Press.
Erroll Garner: Nightconcert review – dizzying jazz talent, live in 1964
29 July 2018
5 out of 5 stars
(Mack Avenue)
Genuine musical wit… Erroll Garner.
Photograph: Gilles Petard/Redferns
Looks like this is the season for discovering lost jazz masterpieces. Last month it was a 1963 studio session by John Coltrane; this time it’s a 1964 live concert by Erroll Garner. Of the two, Garner was the more popular during his lifetime, tirelessly touring the world’s major concert halls. This was recorded at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. A completely self-taught pianist, Garner had evolved a unique style which managed to combine over-the-top romanticism with the most ferocious swing. A favourite way of deploying these was to set up a great perfumed cloud of sound, covering the entire keyboard, out of which would suddenly emerge, tripping merrily along, a well-known tune. There’s a beauty here, introducing Cheek to Cheek, greeted by the invariable round of applause. That rare thing, genuine musical wit, it never failed. His accompanists, bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin, rarely knew quite what Garner was going to do next. Apart from his purely musical talents, he was ambidextrous, which meant that he could happily keep two rhythms going at once. There are some bewildering examples of that here, too. Oh, yes, and he also composed Misty.
 |
||
Erroll Garner:
No One Can Hear You Read
A film by Atticus Brady
53 minutes, documentary, color,
English, 2012
DVD packaged in a certified Green Forestry
eco pack
In a triumphant career that lasted forty years Erroll Garner pushed the playability of the piano to its limits, developed an international reputation, and made an indelible mark on the jazz world. And yet, his story has never been told. Until now.
Atticus Brady's new film uses an astonishing array of archival materials interwoven with interviews with friends, family, and fellow musicians, and features commentary from Woody Allen; Ahmad Jamal; Tonight Show host Steve Allen; Erroll's sister, Ruth Garner Moore; pianist and arranger Dick Hyman; Columbia Records executive George Avakian; Erroll's bass player Ernest McCarty; Erroll's biographer Jim Doran; jazz journalist John Murph; dancer/choreographer Maurice Hines; and Erroll's daughter Kim Garner, who goes on the record about her father for the first time.
The film explores Erroll's childhood in Pittsburgh; his meteoric rise in popularity while playing on 52nd street, New York's famed jazz epicenter; the origins of his most famous album (Concert By The Sea) and his most famous composition (Misty); his singular, virtuosic piano style; and his dynamic personality, both on and off the stage.
What the Critics are Saying
"If you don't recognize the name ‘Erroll Garner’ then we know two things about you: (1) You know nothing about the piano, and (2) you probably listen to music on your phone. For the rest of us, Garner spent 40 years exploring the piano, an instrument stifled by centuries of German classical traditions, turning it into an expressive tool for the masses. His freewheeling jazz found expression on the keyboard in ways that no other performer had ever dreamed of, profoundly enriching our generation's music and inspiring countless performers around the world. This doc explores his living legacy with great live performances." - Video Tapeworm
"Rich in fruits from the archival vaults. I’ve always counted Fats Domino and Thelonious Monk as the two pianists most fun simply to watch play, but Erroll Garner belongs on the list as well." - Mike Clark, Home Media Magazine
"Erroll Garner was a giant among jazz pianists. His ability to spontaneously create great musical works at the piano while performing for an audience was legendary. His music is melodic, rhythmic, rhapsodic, and original. As a musician he was one of a kind." -- Billy Taylor, Jazz Pianist & Composer
"Garner is the single most important piano stylist of the past 35 years. He epitomizes all that makes jazz the great music of our age. To put it simply, Erroll Garner is a great musical genius." - George Wein, Jazz Impresario
"The complete musician is what he was. He could make you cry and make you laugh and make you think. And that's what an artist is supposed to do." - Ahmad Jamal, Pianist & Composer
"I'll never forget that it was Sarah Vaughan that first introduced me to Erroll's ballads, and that introduction turned into a life-long love affair I've had with this man's music -- a man who has left his indelible mark on the world of music." - Johnny Mathis, Singer
"I don't think there is a jazz pianist, young or old, who hasn't been influenced by Erroll Garner." - Jimmy Rowles, Jazz Pianist & Composer
"If you don't recognize the name ‘Erroll Garner’ then we know two things about you: (1) You know nothing about the piano, and (2) you probably listen to music on your phone. For the rest of us, Garner spent 40 years exploring the piano, an instrument stifled by centuries of German classical traditions, turning it into an expressive tool for the masses. His freewheeling jazz found expression on the keyboard in ways that no other performer had ever dreamed of, profoundly enriching our generation's music and inspiring countless performers around the world. This doc explores his living legacy with great live performances." - Video Tapeworm
"Rich in fruits from the archival vaults. I’ve always counted Fats Domino and Thelonious Monk as the two pianists most fun simply to watch play, but Erroll Garner belongs on the list as well." - Mike Clark, Home Media Magazine
"Erroll Garner was a giant among jazz pianists. His ability to spontaneously create great musical works at the piano while performing for an audience was legendary. His music is melodic, rhythmic, rhapsodic, and original. As a musician he was one of a kind." -- Billy Taylor, Jazz Pianist & Composer
"Garner is the single most important piano stylist of the past 35 years. He epitomizes all that makes jazz the great music of our age. To put it simply, Erroll Garner is a great musical genius." - George Wein, Jazz Impresario
"The complete musician is what he was. He could make you cry and make you laugh and make you think. And that's what an artist is supposed to do." - Ahmad Jamal, Pianist & Composer
"I'll never forget that it was Sarah Vaughan that first introduced me to Erroll's ballads, and that introduction turned into a life-long love affair I've had with this man's music -- a man who has left his indelible mark on the world of music." - Johnny Mathis, Singer
"I don't think there is a jazz pianist, young or old, who hasn't been influenced by Erroll Garner." - Jimmy Rowles, Jazz Pianist & Composer
In
June, Mack Avenue Records released a never-before-heard version of “No
More Shadows” by Erroll Garner, in celebration of the pianist’s 97th
birthday. The song is included on the previously unissued live album Nightconcert, which was released July 13. Nightconcert was
originally recorded at a midnight concert at the Royal Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam, Holland, and presents the jazz great at the peak of his
musical genius.
“No More Shadows” is a
characteristically regal Garner tune, containing many of the pianist’s
trademark flourishes and techniques. The song begins with an
unaccompanied piano intro full of heavy left-hand chords and tumbling
right-hand lines. It’s stormy, percussive and harmonically dense. But
when the bass and drums enter a minute later, the mood lightens
dramatically, and suddenly, Garner is rippling across the keyboard as if
playing the harp. That contrast of moods comes to a head at the song’s
midpoint, when the group engages in a gently surging stop-time section.
Historically, the stop-time motif has been one of Garner’s most
well-known musical tactics. Here, it’s executed to perfection. Your
whole body anticipates the arrival of Garner’s next flawlessly timed
beat.
What a joy it must have been to see this jazz legend live. For those of us who haven’t, Nightconcert may be the next best thing.
Jazz at 100 Hour 53: The Piano Trios – Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal, & Bill Evans
March 16, 2018
by Russell Perry
WTJU.net
While there were influential piano trios in the 1940s (Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Lennie Tristano, or Nat King Cole, for example), the format reached new peaks in the 1950s. In particular, Ahmad Jamal and Bill Evans reconceived the format to stress the interplay of three artists, rather than a primary piano soloist with rhythm support. In this hour, we will hear from these pianists and from Erroll Garner, the work of each represented by a legendary live recording – Garner’s 1955 Concert By the Sea, Jamal’s 1958 At The Pershing – But Not For Me and Evans’s 1961 Waltz For Debbie/A Sunday At The Village Vanguard. The three recordings can be heard as a progression.
Erroll Garner
Before hearing from Jamal and Evans, it is worth noting that the best-selling piano trio of its time was by neither of these artists, but by Erroll Garner, who was a bit of a throwback stylistically. “In fact, it is difficult to pigeonhole Garner as a member of any school. His style was deeply personal, sometimes cranky, never pedestrian. He fought against the constraints of the instrument: at times making the piano sound like a guitar, with his trademark four-to-a-bar strumming chords, or like a drum, employing offbeat bombs in the manner of an Art Blakey, or even like a harp, unleashing Lisztian arpeggios accompanied by a counterpoint of grunts and groans from above. His introductions were pieces in themselves, likely to veer off in any number of directions before honing in on the song in question. – Ted Gioia
“John Coltrane’s line about Stan Getz (“We’d all like to sound like that if we could”) applies emphatically to Garner; no matter how dreamy, rhapsodic, or laggardly his playing may be, it always radiates contagious delight, gaiety, energy, exuberance. Imagine feeling as good for one hour of each day as Garner apparently felt every time he played piano.” – Gary Giddins
“Garner’s most famous album is one of the biggest-selling jazz records ever made. Concert By The Sea doesn’t advertise anything particularly special. It’s just a characteristic set by the trio in an amenable setting. It is full of typical Garner moments like the teasing introduction to ‘I’ll Remember April’ – Garner liked to keep audiences in suspense while he toyed with when to announce the melody –or the flippant blues of ‘Red Top’ and the pell-mell ‘Where Or When’. These find Garner at his most buoyant; but rather more interesting is his well-shaped treatment of ‘How Could You Do A Thing Like That To Me’.” – Brian Morton & Richard Cook
In this excerpt from an interview with the drummer Art Taylor, Garner describes how he wrote “Misty:”
I wrote “Misty” from a beautiful rainbow I saw when I was flying from San Francisco to Chicago. At that time, they didn’t have jets and we had to stop off in Denver. When we were coming down there was a beautiful rainbow. This rainbow was fascinating because it wasn’t long but very wide and in every color you can imagine. With the dew drops and the windows being misty, that fine rain, that’s how I named it “Misty.” I was playing on my knees like I had a piano, with my eyes shut. There was a little old lady sitting next to me and she thought I was sick because I was humming. She called the hostess, who came over, to find out I was writing “Misty” in my head. By the time I got off the plane, I had it. We were going to make a record date, so I put it right on that date. I always say that wherever she is today that old lady was the first one in on “Misty.”
https://digital.nepr.net/music/2013/10/23/erroll-garner-no-one-can-hear-you-read/
In the film, Steve Allen, who often hosted Garner on his television show, hails the “freakish degree of his superiority” over other pianists, and says, “Those of us who do this for a living know that some of what he did was impossible. But he did it.”
Here’s a good example of what Allen means. The 35-minute set is Garner at his greatest beginning with an intro to “Honeysuckle Rose” that includes stunning passages of boogie-woogie and stride. That’s Eddie Calhoun on bass and Kelly Martin on drums.
Woody Allen, another fan, says that Garner’s playing was imbued with a feeling of emotional uplift; as an example, Brady incorporates a scene from an Allen movie in which a newborn is being lowered into a stroller and all one hears is Erroll, no dialogue needed.
Maurice Hines, who recommends Garner’s music to tap dancers at every skill level, says “he was a genius who drew you to him.”
Garner was Johnny Carson’s favorite jazz pianist. In a scene from one of the dozens of appearances he made on the Tonight Show, Carson asks him, “What makes you so distinct and instantly recognizable?” As Erroll searches for something to say, Johnny turns and asks, “Ross, what would you say it is?” Tonight Show pianist Ross Tompkins replies, “Happiness.”
Happy is the overall mood of No One Can Hear You Read, but Garner’s story has its poignant elements. His sister Marion relates how she was working as a domestic and could hear a recording of Erroll playing in the background. The lady of the house came to her holding Concert By the Sea and asked if she knew of the pianist whose name she shared? It was the first time Sis had heard Erroll’s biggest-selling LP. And while Garner never married, he fathered a girl who admits that he didn’t pay much attention to her, but she’s sure that “In his heart, he loved me.”
In 1956, Garner, who was the sole client of his personal manager Martha Glaser, became the first jazz artist to be booked by the classical music impresario Sol Hurok. Jazz critic John Murph describes this as a “Jackie Robinson step” for blacks in show business.
Garner famously sat on a Manhattan phone directory to give himself a boost on the piano bench. Ahmad Jamal, who, like Erroll, is one of the piano greats born in Pittsburgh, says that his compatriot “was a giant even without the phone books.”
Garner has become something of a neglected figure since his death in 1977, but it doesn’t take more than a few bars of his music to feel its irresistible pull. (Note that nearly 300, 000 people have viewed the performance above.) Experience it for yourself on Tuesday at Amherst Cinema. Jeff Holmes, Director of the Afro-American/Jazz Studies major at UMass, will play a solo piano set at 7; the film follows at 7:30. Holmes told me last week that the first jazz LP he ever purchased was by Erroll Garner.
I’ll be there to introduce the film and host a Q&A afterwards. See you at the movies.
https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2015/06/15/Jazz-musician-Erroll-Garner-donates-materials-to-Pitt-library/stories/201506150062
While there were influential piano trios in the 1940s (Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Lennie Tristano, or Nat King Cole, for example), the format reached new peaks in the 1950s. In particular, Ahmad Jamal and Bill Evans reconceived the format to stress the interplay of three artists, rather than a primary piano soloist with rhythm support. In this hour, we will hear from these pianists and from Erroll Garner, the work of each represented by a legendary live recording – Garner’s 1955 Concert By the Sea, Jamal’s 1958 At The Pershing – But Not For Me and Evans’s 1961 Waltz For Debbie/A Sunday At The Village Vanguard. The three recordings can be heard as a progression.
Erroll Garner
Before hearing from Jamal and Evans, it is worth noting that the best-selling piano trio of its time was by neither of these artists, but by Erroll Garner, who was a bit of a throwback stylistically. “In fact, it is difficult to pigeonhole Garner as a member of any school. His style was deeply personal, sometimes cranky, never pedestrian. He fought against the constraints of the instrument: at times making the piano sound like a guitar, with his trademark four-to-a-bar strumming chords, or like a drum, employing offbeat bombs in the manner of an Art Blakey, or even like a harp, unleashing Lisztian arpeggios accompanied by a counterpoint of grunts and groans from above. His introductions were pieces in themselves, likely to veer off in any number of directions before honing in on the song in question. – Ted Gioia
“John Coltrane’s line about Stan Getz (“We’d all like to sound like that if we could”) applies emphatically to Garner; no matter how dreamy, rhapsodic, or laggardly his playing may be, it always radiates contagious delight, gaiety, energy, exuberance. Imagine feeling as good for one hour of each day as Garner apparently felt every time he played piano.” – Gary Giddins
“Garner’s most famous album is one of the biggest-selling jazz records ever made. Concert By The Sea doesn’t advertise anything particularly special. It’s just a characteristic set by the trio in an amenable setting. It is full of typical Garner moments like the teasing introduction to ‘I’ll Remember April’ – Garner liked to keep audiences in suspense while he toyed with when to announce the melody –or the flippant blues of ‘Red Top’ and the pell-mell ‘Where Or When’. These find Garner at his most buoyant; but rather more interesting is his well-shaped treatment of ‘How Could You Do A Thing Like That To Me’.” – Brian Morton & Richard Cook
I’ll Remember April. Erroll Garner Trio
(Erroll Garner-p, Eddie Calhoun-b, Denzil Best-d). From A Concert By The Sea. 9/19/1955
(Erroll Garner-p, Eddie Calhoun-b, Denzil Best-d). From A Concert By The Sea. 9/19/1955
Red Top. Erroll Garner Trio
(Erroll Garner-p, Eddie Calhoun-b, Denzil Best-d). From A Concert By The Sea. 9/19/1955
(Erroll Garner-p, Eddie Calhoun-b, Denzil Best-d). From A Concert By The Sea. 9/19/1955
Where or When. Erroll Garner Trio
(Erroll Garner-p, Eddie Calhoun-b, Denzil Best-d). From A Concert By The Sea. 9/19/1955
(Erroll Garner-p, Eddie Calhoun-b, Denzil Best-d). From A Concert By The Sea. 9/19/1955
How Could You Do A Thing Like That To Me. Erroll Garner Trio
(Erroll Garner-p, Eddie Calhoun-b, Denzil Best-d). From A Concert By The Sea. 9/19/1955
(Erroll Garner-p, Eddie Calhoun-b, Denzil Best-d). From A Concert By The Sea. 9/19/1955
Where Erroll Garner wrote “Misty”
November 16, 2017
Jerry Jazz Musician
Erroll Garner, 1954
_____
The legendary pianist Erroll Garner’s most famous composition,
“Misty,” was written as an instrumental in 1954 for his 1955 album Contrasts.
Lyrics were added in 1959 by Johnny Burke and it became the signature
song of Johnny Mathis, and was subsequently recorded by Sinatra, Sarah
Vaughan, Etta James, and countless others. Garner’s version was inducted
into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1991.In this excerpt from an interview with the drummer Art Taylor, Garner describes how he wrote “Misty:”
I wrote “Misty” from a beautiful rainbow I saw when I was flying from San Francisco to Chicago. At that time, they didn’t have jets and we had to stop off in Denver. When we were coming down there was a beautiful rainbow. This rainbow was fascinating because it wasn’t long but very wide and in every color you can imagine. With the dew drops and the windows being misty, that fine rain, that’s how I named it “Misty.” I was playing on my knees like I had a piano, with my eyes shut. There was a little old lady sitting next to me and she thought I was sick because I was humming. She called the hostess, who came over, to find out I was writing “Misty” in my head. By the time I got off the plane, I had it. We were going to make a record date, so I put it right on that date. I always say that wherever she is today that old lady was the first one in on “Misty.”
https://digital.nepr.net/music/2013/10/23/erroll-garner-no-one-can-hear-you-read/
Erroll Garner: No One Can Hear You Read
In the film, Steve Allen, who often hosted Garner on his television show, hails the “freakish degree of his superiority” over other pianists, and says, “Those of us who do this for a living know that some of what he did was impossible. But he did it.”
Here’s a good example of what Allen means. The 35-minute set is Garner at his greatest beginning with an intro to “Honeysuckle Rose” that includes stunning passages of boogie-woogie and stride. That’s Eddie Calhoun on bass and Kelly Martin on drums.
Woody Allen, another fan, says that Garner’s playing was imbued with a feeling of emotional uplift; as an example, Brady incorporates a scene from an Allen movie in which a newborn is being lowered into a stroller and all one hears is Erroll, no dialogue needed.
Maurice Hines, who recommends Garner’s music to tap dancers at every skill level, says “he was a genius who drew you to him.”
Garner was Johnny Carson’s favorite jazz pianist. In a scene from one of the dozens of appearances he made on the Tonight Show, Carson asks him, “What makes you so distinct and instantly recognizable?” As Erroll searches for something to say, Johnny turns and asks, “Ross, what would you say it is?” Tonight Show pianist Ross Tompkins replies, “Happiness.”
Happy is the overall mood of No One Can Hear You Read, but Garner’s story has its poignant elements. His sister Marion relates how she was working as a domestic and could hear a recording of Erroll playing in the background. The lady of the house came to her holding Concert By the Sea and asked if she knew of the pianist whose name she shared? It was the first time Sis had heard Erroll’s biggest-selling LP. And while Garner never married, he fathered a girl who admits that he didn’t pay much attention to her, but she’s sure that “In his heart, he loved me.”
In 1956, Garner, who was the sole client of his personal manager Martha Glaser, became the first jazz artist to be booked by the classical music impresario Sol Hurok. Jazz critic John Murph describes this as a “Jackie Robinson step” for blacks in show business.
Garner famously sat on a Manhattan phone directory to give himself a boost on the piano bench. Ahmad Jamal, who, like Erroll, is one of the piano greats born in Pittsburgh, says that his compatriot “was a giant even without the phone books.”
Garner has become something of a neglected figure since his death in 1977, but it doesn’t take more than a few bars of his music to feel its irresistible pull. (Note that nearly 300, 000 people have viewed the performance above.) Experience it for yourself on Tuesday at Amherst Cinema. Jeff Holmes, Director of the Afro-American/Jazz Studies major at UMass, will play a solo piano set at 7; the film follows at 7:30. Holmes told me last week that the first jazz LP he ever purchased was by Erroll Garner.
I’ll be there to introduce the film and host a Q&A afterwards. See you at the movies.
https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2015/06/15/Jazz-musician-Erroll-Garner-donates-materials-to-Pitt-library/stories/201506150062
Jazz musician Erroll Garner's materials donated to Pitt library
The man who wrote the music to the song “Misty” is long gone, but his legacy will live in his hometown.
The professional materials of internationally renowned jazz pianist Erroll Garner, an East Liberty native who died in 1977, have been donated to the University of Pittsburgh Library System by the estate of Martha Glaser, Mr. Garner’s longtime agent and manager and a civil-rights advocate who also grew up in Pittsburgh.
The announcement was made today, which would have been Mr. Garner’s 94th birthday. He died of lung cancer at age 55 and is buried in Homewood Cemetery.
“He was one of the major pianists in the history of jazz, and so by definition this is an important acquisition,” said Bill Kirchner, author of the “Oxford Companion to Jazz,” who noted that Mr. Garner was self-taught. “What is amazing is he couldn’t read a word of music. Everything he did was totally by ear.”
After graduating from Westinghouse High School, Mr. Garner left for New York City in 1944. Ten years later, he composed the music to “Misty,” his most well-known ballad, which was recorded by Johnny Mathis in 1954, becoming his signature song.
The donated materials include correspondence, performance and recording contracts, photographs, sheet music, awards and sound and video recordings. They also include such memorabilia as a cocktail napkin with a sketch of Mr. Garner made in a Paris jazz club and a telephone book. Under his contract with Sol Hurok, a fabled impresario and producer in the mid-20th century, Mr. Garner insisted on a telephone directory for the New York City borough of Manhattan that he could sit on while playing because of his short stature, Mr. Kirchner said.
Mr. Garner was 5 feet 2 inches tall, and his small hands meant he could barely span an octave on the keyboard.
Also to mark Mr. Garner’s birthday, Sony Legacy is expected to announce the release of a new Garner album called “The Complete Concert by the Sea,” which is co-produced by Pitt’s jazz studies director and pianist, Geri Allen. It will feature 11 unreleased tracks and interviews.
According to a release from the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Garner began playing piano at age 3 and played by ear all of his life. By age 7, he performed on KDKA radio with a group called the Kan-D-Kids, and by the time he was a teenager he played on Pittsburgh riverboats and with the Leroy Brown Orchestra.
After moving to New York City, he played at the Three Deuces with Slam Stewart, guitarist Johnny Collings and drummer Harold West.
A year after composing “Misty,” Mr. Garner released a live album in 1955, “Concert by the Sea,” which became one of the best-selling jazz releases.
He continued through two more decades of releasing albums, writing musical scores for film and stage productions and touring the country and world.
In the 1960s, he wrote the scores for films including “A New Kind of Love,” starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and released several successful albums.
In the 1970s, Mr. Garner continued touring and wrote scores for films, ballets and Broadway musicals. His song “Misty” was featured in the 1971 film “Play Misty for Me,” starring Clint Eastwood and Jessica Walter.
Steven Smallovitz, spokesman for the Glaser estate, said in the Pitt news release that the university is the appropriate place for the Erroll Garner Archive because both Mr. Garner and Ms. Glaser were from Pittsburgh and because of the “long and marvelous history of black music and jazz that originated in Pittsburgh.”
Mary Niederberger, mniederberger@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1590. Mackenzie Carpenter also contributed to this story.
The professional materials of internationally renowned jazz pianist Erroll Garner, an East Liberty native who died in 1977, have been donated to the University of Pittsburgh Library System by the estate of Martha Glaser, Mr. Garner’s longtime agent and manager and a civil-rights advocate who also grew up in Pittsburgh.
The announcement was made today, which would have been Mr. Garner’s 94th birthday. He died of lung cancer at age 55 and is buried in Homewood Cemetery.
“He was one of the major pianists in the history of jazz, and so by definition this is an important acquisition,” said Bill Kirchner, author of the “Oxford Companion to Jazz,” who noted that Mr. Garner was self-taught. “What is amazing is he couldn’t read a word of music. Everything he did was totally by ear.”
After graduating from Westinghouse High School, Mr. Garner left for New York City in 1944. Ten years later, he composed the music to “Misty,” his most well-known ballad, which was recorded by Johnny Mathis in 1954, becoming his signature song.
The donated materials include correspondence, performance and recording contracts, photographs, sheet music, awards and sound and video recordings. They also include such memorabilia as a cocktail napkin with a sketch of Mr. Garner made in a Paris jazz club and a telephone book. Under his contract with Sol Hurok, a fabled impresario and producer in the mid-20th century, Mr. Garner insisted on a telephone directory for the New York City borough of Manhattan that he could sit on while playing because of his short stature, Mr. Kirchner said.
Mr. Garner was 5 feet 2 inches tall, and his small hands meant he could barely span an octave on the keyboard.
Also to mark Mr. Garner’s birthday, Sony Legacy is expected to announce the release of a new Garner album called “The Complete Concert by the Sea,” which is co-produced by Pitt’s jazz studies director and pianist, Geri Allen. It will feature 11 unreleased tracks and interviews.
According to a release from the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Garner began playing piano at age 3 and played by ear all of his life. By age 7, he performed on KDKA radio with a group called the Kan-D-Kids, and by the time he was a teenager he played on Pittsburgh riverboats and with the Leroy Brown Orchestra.
After moving to New York City, he played at the Three Deuces with Slam Stewart, guitarist Johnny Collings and drummer Harold West.
A year after composing “Misty,” Mr. Garner released a live album in 1955, “Concert by the Sea,” which became one of the best-selling jazz releases.
He continued through two more decades of releasing albums, writing musical scores for film and stage productions and touring the country and world.
In the 1960s, he wrote the scores for films including “A New Kind of Love,” starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and released several successful albums.
In the 1970s, Mr. Garner continued touring and wrote scores for films, ballets and Broadway musicals. His song “Misty” was featured in the 1971 film “Play Misty for Me,” starring Clint Eastwood and Jessica Walter.
Steven Smallovitz, spokesman for the Glaser estate, said in the Pitt news release that the university is the appropriate place for the Erroll Garner Archive because both Mr. Garner and Ms. Glaser were from Pittsburgh and because of the “long and marvelous history of black music and jazz that originated in Pittsburgh.”
Mary Niederberger, mniederberger@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1590. Mackenzie Carpenter also contributed to this story.
http://www.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/erroll-garner-concert-by-the-sea/
Garner is not often mentioned these days in discussions of major pianists but, unquestionably, he was one. As when he was alive, the tendency among critics–but not among pianists–is to dismiss him as a naïf, an instinctual primitive who never learned to read music, as if reading music is more important than making it. He didn’t read because he didn’t have to. He didn’t learn the names of chords because the chords presented themselves to him before he knew they had names. In harmony, melody and rhythm, Garner was complete, and he was one of the few pianists who could improvise convincing variations based on melody lines alone. I don’t buy the argument that if he had learned to read it would have diluted his originality. Nothing could have done that. What would reading have done for him, brought him studio session work? He didn’t need it. He was a star before he was thirty, a huge popular success by the end of the 1950s, the only jazz musician the impresario Sol Hurok ever booked.
As a recording artist, Garner was remarkably consistent. I cannot recall one of his albums that was substandard, but it is easy to recommend one in which he has no moment that is less than inspired. It is his most famous, Concert by the Sea. The recorded sound is less than perfect, in fact notably less than perfect. The piano had not been visited by a tuner. It doesn’t matter. That night in 1955, Garner was a force of nature. Close second: Campus Concert, taped at Purdue University in 1964, also with his faithful sidekicks bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin. This one has a priceless back-to-back double-header “Lulu’s Back in Town” followed by “Almost Like Being in Love;” as much swing and joy as it is legal to pack into eight-and-a-half minutes.
To see Garner at work, visit this video clip from 1962, when he was at the height of his fame. Yes, that’s a telephone book he’s sitting on. He took the Manhattan directory on the road with him. It gave him just the right height. Watch Calhoun concentrating on Garner’s hands as he tries to anticipate what the boss is leading up to in his Rachmaninoffian introduction.
Have a good weekend.
https://www.npr.org/2007/09/19/14501602/erroll-garner-the-joy-of-a-genius
Erroll Garner’s ‘Concert by the Sea’ and the Importance of Historical Reissues
San
Francisco broadcaster Jimmy Lyons is best known for starting the
Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958 but, before that, he coordinated the
Summer Series in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. The series gets its name
from the Sunset School, where Lyons put on concerts in the Summer and
Fall of 1955. These shows were known for hosting enthusiastic and eager
crowds, comprised mostly of servicemen from the nearby Fort Ord military
base.
It was near the end of the Sunset Series that Lyons booked jazz pianist Erroll Garner to play alongside bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Denzil Best. The concert was intended to go unrecorded because the Sunset School’s acoustics were poor, their piano out of tune, and Calhoun’s bass and Best’s drums out of balance.
But then Garner’s manager, Martha Glaser, found a tape recorder running backstage. It belonged to an engineer working for the Armed Forces Radio Network who was recording the concert for his private collection. Glaser took the tape and, after playing it for the head of Columbia Records, released an abridged LP titled Concert by the Sea in 1956.
The LP earned over a million dollars by 1958 and is—to this day—considered to be the finest record that Erroll Garner ever made. Jazz critic Scott Yanow even went so far to say that Concert by the Sea made Garner “an immortal.”
In a room with poor acoustics, on a piano that was out of tune, during a concert that wasn’t supposed to be recorded, Erroll Garner made on of the most popular jazz records of all time.
I can’t believe I hadn’t heard it until last week.
Even if you’re like me, a passive jazz patron,Concert By The Sea, is instantly recognizable as the masterwork of a true genius. Garner’s pianos are happy without being shallow, complete with bouncing rhythms and a continuous rolling melody. The record goes back and forth between beating cross-rhythms and elastic trills that, at times, sound like they’re played by two different musicians instead of just two different hands.
While jazz is a genre marked by spontaneity, Garner performs so masterfully that it feels premeditated, if not predestined.
2016 marks the 60th anniversary of Concert by the Sea and in celebration Sony Legacy released an unabridged version of the recording, called The Complete Concert By The Sea, including 11 songs from the concert that were omitted from the original 1956 release.
The entire concert has been remastered from the original tapes. This is important to note because, when Columbia first published the LP, they did so with an altered version of the recording that was meant to replicate the sound of a concert recorded in stereo. The results were murky and deflated and, with each remastering thereafter, more inaccurate in speed.
It’s amazing to think that such an influential record could ever have been produced so poorly.
But that’s what makes the 2016 reissue so important. Thanks to modern technology, Sony Legacy’s release of The Complete Concert By The Sea offers a sound that’s parallel to the acoustics of the room in which it was recorded.
It should come as no surprise that The Complete Concert By The Sea has been nominated for a 2016 Grammy in the category of “Best Historical Album,” an award that, in recent years, has been awarded to Brian Wilson, Woody Guthrie, and Paul McCartney.
But why does it matter that The Complete Concert By The Sea is nominated, and why are we covering it here?
For an album that has received so much critical acclaim, so much notoriety, that has been so influential over the years and has spent its lifetime as an essential jazz standard, Concert by the Sea has yet to receive the recognition it deserves. While it is one of the best selling jazz records of all time, the Recording Industry Association of America has never recognized Concert by the Sea as a Gold album.
And, to be honest, it seems to be the case of clerical error. The RIAA was formed in 1952 but didn’t create the Gold standard until 1958, the year that Concert by the Sea made enough of a profit and sold enough copies to be considered a Gold album. It appears that the record was denied Gold certification because, well, it was simply overlooked.
Concert by the Sea’s lack of Gold recognition is the perfect example of why historical recordings are so important, and why the Historical Album Grammy is so significant. We have to build a bridge between music’s great albums and the world’s new listeners. Like the RIAA, I was completely unaware of Erroll Garner’s prolific piano career and of the sheer brilliance of his performance in Carmel-by-the-Sea over 60 years ago. Sony Legacy’s reissue of these recordings gives me the chance to finally experience this record and, even better, to do so with a more authentic remaster than has ever been offered.
https://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2007/01/erroll_garner.html
It was near the end of the Sunset Series that Lyons booked jazz pianist Erroll Garner to play alongside bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Denzil Best. The concert was intended to go unrecorded because the Sunset School’s acoustics were poor, their piano out of tune, and Calhoun’s bass and Best’s drums out of balance.
But then Garner’s manager, Martha Glaser, found a tape recorder running backstage. It belonged to an engineer working for the Armed Forces Radio Network who was recording the concert for his private collection. Glaser took the tape and, after playing it for the head of Columbia Records, released an abridged LP titled Concert by the Sea in 1956.
The LP earned over a million dollars by 1958 and is—to this day—considered to be the finest record that Erroll Garner ever made. Jazz critic Scott Yanow even went so far to say that Concert by the Sea made Garner “an immortal.”
In a room with poor acoustics, on a piano that was out of tune, during a concert that wasn’t supposed to be recorded, Erroll Garner made on of the most popular jazz records of all time.
I can’t believe I hadn’t heard it until last week.
Even if you’re like me, a passive jazz patron,Concert By The Sea, is instantly recognizable as the masterwork of a true genius. Garner’s pianos are happy without being shallow, complete with bouncing rhythms and a continuous rolling melody. The record goes back and forth between beating cross-rhythms and elastic trills that, at times, sound like they’re played by two different musicians instead of just two different hands.
While jazz is a genre marked by spontaneity, Garner performs so masterfully that it feels premeditated, if not predestined.
2016 marks the 60th anniversary of Concert by the Sea and in celebration Sony Legacy released an unabridged version of the recording, called The Complete Concert By The Sea, including 11 songs from the concert that were omitted from the original 1956 release.
The entire concert has been remastered from the original tapes. This is important to note because, when Columbia first published the LP, they did so with an altered version of the recording that was meant to replicate the sound of a concert recorded in stereo. The results were murky and deflated and, with each remastering thereafter, more inaccurate in speed.
It’s amazing to think that such an influential record could ever have been produced so poorly.
But that’s what makes the 2016 reissue so important. Thanks to modern technology, Sony Legacy’s release of The Complete Concert By The Sea offers a sound that’s parallel to the acoustics of the room in which it was recorded.
It should come as no surprise that The Complete Concert By The Sea has been nominated for a 2016 Grammy in the category of “Best Historical Album,” an award that, in recent years, has been awarded to Brian Wilson, Woody Guthrie, and Paul McCartney.
But why does it matter that The Complete Concert By The Sea is nominated, and why are we covering it here?
For an album that has received so much critical acclaim, so much notoriety, that has been so influential over the years and has spent its lifetime as an essential jazz standard, Concert by the Sea has yet to receive the recognition it deserves. While it is one of the best selling jazz records of all time, the Recording Industry Association of America has never recognized Concert by the Sea as a Gold album.
And, to be honest, it seems to be the case of clerical error. The RIAA was formed in 1952 but didn’t create the Gold standard until 1958, the year that Concert by the Sea made enough of a profit and sold enough copies to be considered a Gold album. It appears that the record was denied Gold certification because, well, it was simply overlooked.
Concert by the Sea’s lack of Gold recognition is the perfect example of why historical recordings are so important, and why the Historical Album Grammy is so significant. We have to build a bridge between music’s great albums and the world’s new listeners. Like the RIAA, I was completely unaware of Erroll Garner’s prolific piano career and of the sheer brilliance of his performance in Carmel-by-the-Sea over 60 years ago. Sony Legacy’s reissue of these recordings gives me the chance to finally experience this record and, even better, to do so with a more authentic remaster than has ever been offered.
https://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2007/01/erroll_garner.html
Erroll Garner
Garner is not often mentioned these days in discussions of major pianists but, unquestionably, he was one. As when he was alive, the tendency among critics–but not among pianists–is to dismiss him as a naïf, an instinctual primitive who never learned to read music, as if reading music is more important than making it. He didn’t read because he didn’t have to. He didn’t learn the names of chords because the chords presented themselves to him before he knew they had names. In harmony, melody and rhythm, Garner was complete, and he was one of the few pianists who could improvise convincing variations based on melody lines alone. I don’t buy the argument that if he had learned to read it would have diluted his originality. Nothing could have done that. What would reading have done for him, brought him studio session work? He didn’t need it. He was a star before he was thirty, a huge popular success by the end of the 1950s, the only jazz musician the impresario Sol Hurok ever booked.
As a recording artist, Garner was remarkably consistent. I cannot recall one of his albums that was substandard, but it is easy to recommend one in which he has no moment that is less than inspired. It is his most famous, Concert by the Sea. The recorded sound is less than perfect, in fact notably less than perfect. The piano had not been visited by a tuner. It doesn’t matter. That night in 1955, Garner was a force of nature. Close second: Campus Concert, taped at Purdue University in 1964, also with his faithful sidekicks bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin. This one has a priceless back-to-back double-header “Lulu’s Back in Town” followed by “Almost Like Being in Love;” as much swing and joy as it is legal to pack into eight-and-a-half minutes.
To see Garner at work, visit this video clip from 1962, when he was at the height of his fame. Yes, that’s a telephone book he’s sitting on. He took the Manhattan directory on the road with him. It gave him just the right height. Watch Calhoun concentrating on Garner’s hands as he tries to anticipate what the boss is leading up to in his Rachmaninoffian introduction.
Have a good weekend.
https://www.npr.org/2007/09/19/14501602/erroll-garner-the-joy-of-a-genius
Erroll Garner: 'The Joy of a Genius'
Erroll Garner in London.
Keystone/Getty Images
Keystone/Getty Images
Born on June 15, 1921 in Pittsburgh, Penn., Garner and his twin brother Ernest were the youngest of six children. Raised in a musical family, he was playing the piano by the age of three. A self-taught pianist, Garner never learned to read music. Childhood friend and bassist Wyatt “Bull” Ruther took piano lessons from Garner's sister and recalls how easily Garner picked up music. Garner's natural ability was recognized by his high school band teacher, who encouraged him not to take lessons for fear it would corrupt his extraordinary talents.
In 1950, with the help of manager Martha Glaser, Garner broke new ground with his performance at the prestigious Cleveland Music Hall, traditionally a classical concert venue. Later, he became the first and only jazz artist to perform under the auspices of classical impresario Sol Hurok. His first live recording, Concert By The Sea, captured nearly every aspect of Garner's artistry and helped him become the biggest-selling Columbia Records jazz artist of his day.
AUDIO: <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/14501602/14522493" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>
Pittsburgh Jazz Legends 8: Erroll Garner
14 June 2012
by
Rich Kienzle
He's one of the first people who comes to mind when anyone thinks
of Pittsburgh's jazz contributions, even though he died 39 years ago
when he was 55. Erroll Louis Garner, Jr., self-taught pianist, creator
of "Misty" and dozens of remarkable recordings that have lost none of
their kick despite the passing decades. As one of the most visible
Pittsburgh Jazz Legends, let's run it down.
Born in 1921 in East Liberty, Garner, named for the physician who
delivered him, Dr. Erroll Brown, was playing early in life. With him,
there are no grand tales of studying classical before turning to jazz.
Entirely self-taught, he never read music. He clearly enjoyed and
grabbed ideas from the great stride pianists, especially Fats Waller
(who he slipped into a Pittsburgh theater to see) and James P. Johnson.At 7 he was a member of the Kan-D-Kids, an all-youth combo that occasionally played on KQV (not KDKA as some say). Later, he attended Westinghouse High where band director Carl McVicker brought Garner into the band despite his inability to read music. He later told Garner biographer James Doran that Garner once told him other suggested he take piano lessons. McVicker advised him not to bother, but to rely on the talents he had. (Note: his son, Carl McVicker Jr. played bass with Johnny Costa on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood).
In an interview seen in one of the video clips here, Garner said he tried lessons and got along until the teacher finally discovered he played it all from memory. 1937 was the year he joined a local band led by saxophonist Leroy Brown. Garner qualified for the Musicians' Union (the African-American Local 471 in that segregated era) when he turned 18. Not reading music in those days was normally a disqualifier for joining the Union. But Brown told biographer Doran that "we made allowances," adding, "A man with so much talent. It didn't matter if he could read (music) because he could play anything."
He got his union card. Like his older brother Linton, Erroll was the second Garner brother to turn professional musician. At 21, in 1944, he moved to New York, where he started making impressions in the clubs of Swing Street (52nd Street) and made his first records, home recordings in the apartment of jazz fan Timme Rosenkrantz. This is "White Rose Bounce" from January, 1945 with Red Callender, bass, Doc West, drums.
In 1947 Garner and his trio accompanied Charlie Parker on a session that produced "Cool Blues," as well as "This Is Always" and "Dark Shadows" with vocals by Earl Coleman as well as this Parker favorite:"Bird's Nest." Bird is on alto, Red Callender, bass, Doc West, drums.
There were more records, for the Savoy label, that revealed him as fully self-contained.
A 1949 recording for Atlantic: "Pavanne Mood (The Lamp Is Low)." Leonard Gaskin, bass; Charlie Smith, drums
Mitch Miller signed him to Columbia in the early 50's, and despite his proclivity for producing schlock, Miller was a jazz fan who even with occasional infusions of strings, allowed Garner to be himself. It was there he first recorded Misty and another gorgeous original ballad "Dreamy." 1955 brought the live Concert by the Sea album, still a classic to many, revered in the same way as Miles Davis's Kind of Blue or John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. A personal favorite of mine: "Teach Me Tonight" from Concert By The Sea.
There were the weird, goofy, dissonant chords he sometimes opened with before tearing (the best word to describe) into a tune, his left hand creating rhythm guitar-like accompaniment as his right hand romped all over the keyboard. This is "Misty" from Belgian TV.
He was also a popular guest on American TV and radio variety and talk shows including The Mike Douglas Show, The Joey Bishop Show, Arthur Godfrey Time, The Tonight Show, where Johnny Carson featured him frequently. While some consider Steve Allen a great jazz pianist, all he ever really did was his version of Erroll.
A Latin spin on "I Get A Kick Out of You"
Talk about not wasting any time…"Where Or When" from Holland, 1962.
"Dreamy," circa 1964. By that time he was recording for Mercury
Erroll interviewed in Germany. Note his comments regarding jazz as "entertainment" and recalling his brief period of piano lessons.
"That's My Kick" from 1972.
By early 1975, Garner's health began to fail. Hospitalized, tests revealed lung cancer. He played his final gig at the well-known Chicago nightclub Mr. Kelly's that February. He enjoyed a remission but by late late 1976, however, went into rapid decline and died January 2, 1977. He's buried in Homewood Cemetery. His headstone reads, "He gave of himself unselfishly."
This new documentary film looks like it will tell the definitive story. The comments come from Ahmad Jamal, Woody Allen and Steve Allen (who pretty much makes clear his debt to Erroll) , clearly interviewed before he died in 2000.
In 1989, actor Dudley Moore, no slouch himself as a jazz pianist, wrote liner notes to a new CD of unreleased Garner material, part of a series. He summarized his appreciation for man and musician thusly.
"The optimism of life, of being alive, of feeling alive, of communication, of love. That's what Garner is and what he does for me and will always do for me."
My sentiments exactly. Amen to that, and to where it all began: right here.
Sources: Erroll Garner: The Most Happy Piano by James M. Doran. (Scarecrow Press, 1985)
https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/erroll-garner-discusses-music-and-his-career
https://www.wrti.org/post/erroll-garner-jazz-project-restores-profound-cultural-gift
The Erroll Garner Jazz Project Restores A 'Profound Cultural Gift'
by the editor
March 27, 2016
March 27, 2016
Originally published on March 29, 2016
In 1955, jazz pianist Erroll Garner
played a concert in Carmel, Calif. When his manager spotted a tape
recorder rolling backstage, she grabbed the reels and decided to release
them.
The sound was lousy, yet Concert by the Sea went on to become a huge hit. Pianist Geri Allen says that's because the playing is so exuberant.
"And so after that, what we're really getting, without any barriers, is a sense of the way this man viewed the world," Allen says. "And what he wanted to give to the world, which was this wonderful energy."
Garner, who died in 1977, was popular around the world in the 1950s and '60s for his energetic playing, his swinging rhythm and his ability to improvise. He recorded hundreds of records and composed the standard "Misty." Now, a new archive — and a reissue of his best-selling album — have revived interest in his life and career.
Allen is one of the producers of the expanded and remastered recording of the album, called The Complete Concert by the Sea. It includes 11 unreleased tunes that were discovered on tapes in a huge archive of Garner's memorabilia.
Garner's manager, Martha Glaser, was executor of the pianist's estate. When Glaser died two years ago, her niece, Susan Rosenberg, inherited the archive.
"This was like a gift," she says. "A profound cultural gift."
She used the royalties from Garner's most famous composition, "Misty," to fund The Erroll Garner Jazz Project. Garner himself grew up in Pittsburgh and was completely self-taught — but when he became hugely popular in the late 1950s, critics began to dismiss him as a sellout. Rosenberg says the project aims to rectify that view.
"We came together to invigorate Erroll's musical legacy," she says, "to try to put him back into the canon of great jazz pianists of the 20th century and to support community-based jazz projects."
Steve Rosenthal is the owner of The Magic Shop, the Soho recording studio where hundreds of Garner's newly discovered recordings are being digitized and remastered. He has recordings of dating back to the 1930s; one of the earliest, from 1937, features Garner in the band at Heid Studios in Pittsburgh. It's a cover of a very popular song from that era, "Exactly Like You."
Erroll Garner was only 16 years old on that session. It was found among tapes with thousands of items that sat for decades in nine storage containers in New York City. Ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Arem spent the last two years sorting through the material and preparing it for donation to the University of Pittsburgh.
"This archive is extremely unique for the fact that it spans his entire career," Arem says. "There's everything from photographs to original tapes to his clothing — like his ties. So it really gives you a sense of who he was, where he was and what he was performing at that time."
Garner never learned to read music, but he had an extraordinary ear and ability to improvise. In a 1962 interview found the archive and labeled simply "CBS Radio," a host tells Garner he's heard the pianist can compose tune at the drop of the hat. Garner replies, "I have tried, and I'm pretty sure I can. "
For all of his virtuosity, Garner also understood that being popular meant connecting with his audience. He said, "I like to play what people want to hear."
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
Pianist Erroll Garner is known as one of the great stylists of jazz. Praised for energetic playing and a swinging rhythm, he died in 1977 after recording hundreds of records and the hit song "Misty."
Now a reissue of his best-selling album and a new archive have revived interest in his life and career. From New York, Tom Vitale has the story.
TOM VITALE, BYLINE: In 1955, Erroll Garner played a concert in Carmel, Calif. When his manager spotted a tape recorder rolling backstage, she grabbed the reels and decided to release them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "I'LL REMEMBER APRIL")
VITALE: The sound was lousy, yet, the album went on to become a huge hit. Pianist Geri Allen says that's because the playing is so exuberant.
GERI ALLEN: You know, what we're really getting is, without any barriers, a sense of the way that this man viewed the world and what he wanted to give to the world, which was this wonderful energy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "I'LL REMEMBER APRIL")
VITALE: Allen is one of the producers of the expanded and remastered recording "The Complete Concert By The Sea."
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "LULLABY OF BIRDLAND")
VITALE: The reissue includes 11 unreleased tunes that were discovered on tapes in a huge archive of Garner's memorabilia.
SUSAN GREENBERG: This was, like, a gift. It was this profound, cultural gift. Susan Greenberg is the niece of Garner's manager, Martha Glaser, who was executor of the pianist's estate. When Glaser died two years ago, Greenberg inherited the archive. She used the royalties from Garner's most famous composition, "Misty," to fund the Erroll Garner Jazz Project.
GREENBERG: We came together to the invigorate Erroll's musical legacy - to try and put him back into the canon of great jazz pianists of the 20th century and to support community-based African-American jazz projects.
VITALE: Garner himself grew up in Pittsburgh and was completely self-taught. When he became hugely popular in the late 1950s, critics began to dismiss him as a sellout. The Erroll Garner Jazz Project aims to rectify that view.
STEVE ROSENTHAL: So what I can play for you right now is the earliest Erroll Garner recording that we've been able to uncover.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "EXACTLY LIKE YOU")
VITALE: Steve Rosenthal is the music owner of The Magic Shop, the SoHo recording studio were hundreds of Garner's newly discovered recordings are being digitized and remastered.
ROSENTHAL: It's from 1937 at Hyde Studios in Pittsburgh. This is a cover of "Exactly Like You," which was a very popular song from that era.
VITALE: Erroll Garner was only 16 years old on this session.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "EXACTLY LIKE YOU")
VITALE: It was among tapes with thousands of items that sat for decades in nine storage containers in New York City. Ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Arem spent the last two years sorting through the material and preparing it for donation to the University of Pittsburgh.
JOCELYN AREM: This archive is extremely unique for the fact that it spans his entire career. There's everything from photographs to original tapes to his clothing - like his ties. So it really gives you a sense of who he was and what he was performing at that time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "MISTY")
VITALE: Garner never learned to read music. But he had an extraordinary ear and ability to improvise.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TED: I've heard - now, maybe this is not so - but I've heard from several people that you're capable of composing a tune right at the drop of the hat. Are you?
ERROLL GARNER: Well, I have tried it. And I'm pretty sure I can.
VITALE: Among the hundreds of reel-to-reel tapes in the Garner archive is a 1962 interview labeled simply CBS Radio. The host, who Garner calls Ted (ph), asks the pianist to compose a melody on the spot.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TED: OK, Erroll, here we are at the big 88. Now, I'm going to give you four notes and then see what happens. Now, here are the four notes.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO NOTES, CHORDS)
GARNER: That right?
TED: Yeah. That's it. That's it.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO MELODY)
VITALE: For all of his virtuosity, Garner understood that being popular meant connecting with his audience.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GARNER: Even if it's a jazz number or one of them, as they call it, soul or (laughter) one of them way out ones, I still feel as though it has a melody to it. And I think the melody should always be developed.
VITALE: Erroll Garner said, I like to play what people want to hear.
For NPR News, I'm Tom Vitale in New York. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
The sound was lousy, yet Concert by the Sea went on to become a huge hit. Pianist Geri Allen says that's because the playing is so exuberant.
"And so after that, what we're really getting, without any barriers, is a sense of the way this man viewed the world," Allen says. "And what he wanted to give to the world, which was this wonderful energy."
Garner, who died in 1977, was popular around the world in the 1950s and '60s for his energetic playing, his swinging rhythm and his ability to improvise. He recorded hundreds of records and composed the standard "Misty." Now, a new archive — and a reissue of his best-selling album — have revived interest in his life and career.
Allen is one of the producers of the expanded and remastered recording of the album, called The Complete Concert by the Sea. It includes 11 unreleased tunes that were discovered on tapes in a huge archive of Garner's memorabilia.
Garner's manager, Martha Glaser, was executor of the pianist's estate. When Glaser died two years ago, her niece, Susan Rosenberg, inherited the archive.
"This was like a gift," she says. "A profound cultural gift."
She used the royalties from Garner's most famous composition, "Misty," to fund The Erroll Garner Jazz Project. Garner himself grew up in Pittsburgh and was completely self-taught — but when he became hugely popular in the late 1950s, critics began to dismiss him as a sellout. Rosenberg says the project aims to rectify that view.
"We came together to invigorate Erroll's musical legacy," she says, "to try to put him back into the canon of great jazz pianists of the 20th century and to support community-based jazz projects."
Steve Rosenthal is the owner of The Magic Shop, the Soho recording studio where hundreds of Garner's newly discovered recordings are being digitized and remastered. He has recordings of dating back to the 1930s; one of the earliest, from 1937, features Garner in the band at Heid Studios in Pittsburgh. It's a cover of a very popular song from that era, "Exactly Like You."
Erroll Garner was only 16 years old on that session. It was found among tapes with thousands of items that sat for decades in nine storage containers in New York City. Ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Arem spent the last two years sorting through the material and preparing it for donation to the University of Pittsburgh.
"This archive is extremely unique for the fact that it spans his entire career," Arem says. "There's everything from photographs to original tapes to his clothing — like his ties. So it really gives you a sense of who he was, where he was and what he was performing at that time."
Garner never learned to read music, but he had an extraordinary ear and ability to improvise. In a 1962 interview found the archive and labeled simply "CBS Radio," a host tells Garner he's heard the pianist can compose tune at the drop of the hat. Garner replies, "I have tried, and I'm pretty sure I can. "
For all of his virtuosity, Garner also understood that being popular meant connecting with his audience. He said, "I like to play what people want to hear."
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
9(MDA4MDc0NDkyMDEzMTQ4ODU0MTE0OGNiNg004))
Pianist Erroll Garner is known as one of the great stylists of jazz. Praised for energetic playing and a swinging rhythm, he died in 1977 after recording hundreds of records and the hit song "Misty."
Now a reissue of his best-selling album and a new archive have revived interest in his life and career. From New York, Tom Vitale has the story.
TOM VITALE, BYLINE: In 1955, Erroll Garner played a concert in Carmel, Calif. When his manager spotted a tape recorder rolling backstage, she grabbed the reels and decided to release them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "I'LL REMEMBER APRIL")
VITALE: The sound was lousy, yet, the album went on to become a huge hit. Pianist Geri Allen says that's because the playing is so exuberant.
GERI ALLEN: You know, what we're really getting is, without any barriers, a sense of the way that this man viewed the world and what he wanted to give to the world, which was this wonderful energy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "I'LL REMEMBER APRIL")
VITALE: Allen is one of the producers of the expanded and remastered recording "The Complete Concert By The Sea."
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "LULLABY OF BIRDLAND")
VITALE: The reissue includes 11 unreleased tunes that were discovered on tapes in a huge archive of Garner's memorabilia.
SUSAN GREENBERG: This was, like, a gift. It was this profound, cultural gift. Susan Greenberg is the niece of Garner's manager, Martha Glaser, who was executor of the pianist's estate. When Glaser died two years ago, Greenberg inherited the archive. She used the royalties from Garner's most famous composition, "Misty," to fund the Erroll Garner Jazz Project.
GREENBERG: We came together to the invigorate Erroll's musical legacy - to try and put him back into the canon of great jazz pianists of the 20th century and to support community-based African-American jazz projects.
VITALE: Garner himself grew up in Pittsburgh and was completely self-taught. When he became hugely popular in the late 1950s, critics began to dismiss him as a sellout. The Erroll Garner Jazz Project aims to rectify that view.
STEVE ROSENTHAL: So what I can play for you right now is the earliest Erroll Garner recording that we've been able to uncover.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "EXACTLY LIKE YOU")
VITALE: Steve Rosenthal is the music owner of The Magic Shop, the SoHo recording studio were hundreds of Garner's newly discovered recordings are being digitized and remastered.
ROSENTHAL: It's from 1937 at Hyde Studios in Pittsburgh. This is a cover of "Exactly Like You," which was a very popular song from that era.
VITALE: Erroll Garner was only 16 years old on this session.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "EXACTLY LIKE YOU")
VITALE: It was among tapes with thousands of items that sat for decades in nine storage containers in New York City. Ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Arem spent the last two years sorting through the material and preparing it for donation to the University of Pittsburgh.
JOCELYN AREM: This archive is extremely unique for the fact that it spans his entire career. There's everything from photographs to original tapes to his clothing - like his ties. So it really gives you a sense of who he was and what he was performing at that time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER SONG, "MISTY")
VITALE: Garner never learned to read music. But he had an extraordinary ear and ability to improvise.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TED: I've heard - now, maybe this is not so - but I've heard from several people that you're capable of composing a tune right at the drop of the hat. Are you?
ERROLL GARNER: Well, I have tried it. And I'm pretty sure I can.
VITALE: Among the hundreds of reel-to-reel tapes in the Garner archive is a 1962 interview labeled simply CBS Radio. The host, who Garner calls Ted (ph), asks the pianist to compose a melody on the spot.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TED: OK, Erroll, here we are at the big 88. Now, I'm going to give you four notes and then see what happens. Now, here are the four notes.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO NOTES, CHORDS)
GARNER: That right?
TED: Yeah. That's it. That's it.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO MELODY)
VITALE: For all of his virtuosity, Garner understood that being popular meant connecting with his audience.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GARNER: Even if it's a jazz number or one of them, as they call it, soul or (laughter) one of them way out ones, I still feel as though it has a melody to it. And I think the melody should always be developed.
VITALE: Erroll Garner said, I like to play what people want to hear.
For NPR News, I'm Tom Vitale in New York. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
August 15, 2018
Erroll Garner: Nightconcert
When Erroll Garner died in 1977, his business partner and manager Martha Glaser became executor of his estate. The position gave her full control over Garner's affairs and unissued recordings, which she kept under lock and key. After Glaser died in December 2014, her estate announced the formation of the Erroll Garner Jazz Project and the donation of the Erroll Garner Archive to the University of Pittsburgh. Recordings once salted away began to emerge, including the release of the complete Concert by the Sea and Ready Take One. The third album of new Garner material—Nightconcert—was recently released by Mack Avenue Records. I also review the new album today for The Wall Street Journal (go here). [Photo above of Erroll Garner and Martha Glaser]
First some background. In the 1950s and '60s, Glaser steered Garner through some tough times. A year after Columbia's release of Garner's Concert By the Sea in 1955, Garner signed a five-year contract with the label. But as sales of the live album surged, Glaser demanded that Columbia pay her client higher fees. Columbia stubbornly balked, and in 1958, the label released early Garner recordings without Garner's permission. Claiming that Columbia's move breached his contract, Garner stopped recording for the label. From August 1958 to June 1961, Garner made no new recordings.
Finally, in August 1962, two years after the parties sued each other, Columbia and Garner came to an out-of-court agreement. By then, Garner's contract with Columbia had expired and he formed his Octave Records, which would be distributed by MGM starting in 1964.
To make up the lost income from his recording standoff with Columbia between 1958 and '61, Garner embarked on a relentless touring schedule that often took him to Europe, where he built a huge fan base. In November 1964, he performed at midnight at Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw. Judging by the reception of the 2,000 attendees, Garner was beloved in the Netherlands, in part because his recordings were distributed in Europe by the Dutch Philips label and the audience was completely familiar with his work.
Now, Mack Avenue, in cooperation with the Garner project at the University of Pittsburgh, has released the concert's 16 tracks in full (1 hour and 20 minutes of music) on Nightconcert.
Years ago, an edited version of this material appeared on vinyl in Europe. The new release not only is straight off the tape, the analog recording has been painstakingly remastered for digital release. The resulting sound is spectacular, which is saying something since so many jazz recordings from the Concertgebouw tend to sound uneven due to poor miking.
The selections are Where or When, Easy to Love, On Greet Dolphin Street, Night and Day, Cheek to Cheek, My Funny Valentine, Gypsy in My Soul, That Amsterdam Swing, Over the Rainbow, What Is This Thing Called Love, Laura, When Your Lover Has Gone, No More Shadows, 'S Wonderful, and Thanks for the Memory.
Not that you'd recognize any of these songs from Garner's mischievous solo introductions. As always with Garner, these musical puzzles leave everyone in the hall guessing—including bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin, who had to enter in the right key as soon as a song's melody finally emerged from Garner's playful opening fog. [Photo above of Erroll Garner at the Concertgebouw in November 1964 courtesy of Octave/Mack Avenue Records]
The high point on the album for me is Garner's All Yours, a theme he wrote for the 1963 movie, A New Kind of Love, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. The love ballad is in the same league as Garner's embracing Misty. For those curious about All Yours, Garner recorded the song a year earlier on his album, Erroll Garner With Full Orchestra Conducted By Leith Stevens – Playing Music From the Paramount Motion Picture "A New Kind Of Love." The gorgeous album includes four new Garner originals, including the theme.
What's especially gratifying is how prudently the University of Pittsburgh is moving to release new Garner recordings and the high bar Mack Avenue has set for the remastering and packaging of this glorious music. Whether Garner's lengthy legal standoff with Columbia was prudent in the end given how much he would have earned in record sales had he been recording for the label is unknown. But ultimately he did gain control of his artistic output and we're the beneficiaries of that slow unveiling now. Listening to the new music from 1964, you can almost hear Martha Glaser smiling.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Erroll Garner: Nightconcert (Mack Avenue) here.
The album also is available at Spotify.
JazzWax clip: Here's All Yours, the theme from the film A New Kind of Love...
Here's Garner a year earlier in the studio, playing his gorgeous theme for the movie, A New Kind of Love...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erroll_Garner
Erroll Garner
ERROLL GARNER c. 1947
Life and career
Born with his twin brother Ernest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to an African-American family on June 15, 1923, Erroll began playing piano at the age of three. His elder siblings were taught piano by Miss Bowman. From an early age, Erroll would sit down and play anything she had demonstrated, just like Miss Bowman, his eldest sister Martha said.[8] He attended George Westinghouse High School, as did fellow pianists Billy Strayhorn and Ahmad Jamal. Garner was self-taught and remained an "ear player" all his life, never learning to read music.[2] At age seven, he began appearing on the radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh with a group called the Candy Kids. By age 11, he was playing on the Allegheny riverboats. At 14 in 1937, he joined local saxophonist Leroy Brown.
He played locally in the shadow of his older pianist brother Linton Garner and moved to New York City in 1944. He briefly worked with the bassist Slam Stewart, and though not a bebop musician per se, in 1947 played with Charlie Parker on the "Cool Blues" session. Although his admission to the Pittsburgh music union was initially refused because of his inability to read music, it relented in 1956 and made him an honorary member.[2] Garner is credited with a superb memory of music. After attending a concert by the Russian classical pianist Emil Gilels, Garner returned to his apartment and was able to play a large portion of the performed music by recall.[2]
Short in stature (5 ft 2 in), Garner performed sitting on multiple telephone directories.[2][9] He was also known for his vocalizations while playing, which can be heard on many of his recordings. He helped to bridge the gap for jazz musicians between nightclubs and the concert hall.
Garner made many tours both at home and abroad, and regularly recorded. He was, reportedly, The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson's favorite jazz musician, appearing on Carson's show many times over the years.
Garner died of cardiac arrest related to emphysema on January 2, 1977.[2] He is buried in Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery.
In 2016, Downtown Music Publishing entered an exclusive worldwide administration agreement with Octave Music Publishing Corp. The deal covers all of Garner’s works including “Misty”, as well as Garner’s extensive archive of master recordings, many of which remain unreleased.[10]
Playing style
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Erroll Garner headlining with Oscar Pettiford and J.C. Heard at Three Deuces nightclub on 52nd Street, May 1948
Called "one of the most distinctive of all pianists" by jazz writer Scott Yanow, Garner showed that a "creative jazz musician can be very popular without watering down his music" or changing his personal style.[7] He has been described as a "brilliant virtuoso who sounded unlike anyone else", using an "orchestral approach straight from the swing era but ... open to the innovations of bop."[7] His distinctive style could swing like no other, but some of his best recordings are ballads, such as his best-known composition, "Misty", which rapidly became a jazz standard – and was featured in Clint Eastwood's film Play Misty for Me (1971).
Garner may have been inspired by the example of Earl Hines, a fellow Pittsburgh resident but 18 years his senior, and there were resemblances in their elastic approach to timing and use of right-hand octaves. Garner's early recordings also display the influence of the stride piano style of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. He developed a signature style that involved his right hand playing behind the beat while his left strummed a steady rhythm and punctuation, creating insouciance and tension. The independence of his hands also was evidenced by his masterful use of three-against-four and more complicated cross-rhythms between the hands. Garner would also improvise whimsical introductions to pieces that left listeners in suspense as to what the tune would be. His melodic improvisations generally stayed close to the theme while employing novel chord voicings.
Works
Garner's first recordings were made in late 1944 at the apartment of Timme Rosenkrantz; these were subsequently issued as the five-volume Overture to Dawn series on Blue Note Records. His recording career advanced in the late 1940s when several sides such as "Fine and Dandy", "Skylark" and "Summertime" were cut. His 1955 live album Concert by the Sea was a best-selling jazz album in its day and features Eddie Calhoun on bass and Denzil Best on drums. This recording of a performance at the Sunset Center, a former school in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, was made using relatively primitive sound equipment, but for George Avakian the decision to release the recording was easy.
One World Concert was recorded at the 1962 Seattle World Fair (and in 1959 stretching out in the studios) and features Eddie Calhoun on bass and Kelly Martin on drums.[11] Other works include 1951's Long Ago and Far Away, 1953's Erroll Garner at the Piano with Wyatt Ruther and Fats Heard,[12] 1957's The Most Happy Piano, 1970's Feeling Is Believing and 1974's Magician, which see Garner perform a number of classic standards. Often the trio was expanded to add Latin percussion, usually a conga.
In 1964, Garner appeared in the UK on the music series Jazz 625 broadcast on the BBC's new second channel. The programme was hosted by Steve Race, who introduced Garner's trio with Eddie Calhoun on bass and Kelly Martin on drums.[13]
Because Garner could not write down his musical ideas, he used to record them on tape, to be later transcribed by others.[14]
The Erroll Garner Club was founded in 1982 in Aberlady, Scotland. On September 26, 1992 Garnerphiles from England, Scotland, Germany and the US met in London for a unique and historic get-together. The guests of honour were Eddie Calhoun (bassist) and Kelly Martin (drummer), Erroll's rhythm section from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. On June 15, 1996 many of the UK's keenest Garnerphiles converged in Cheltenham for an afternoon of food, music and fun on what would have been Erroll's 75th birthday. That evening they were saddened to hear of the death of another jazz legend: Ella Fitzgerald.[15]
Archive and newly discovered material
In 2012 a film on Garner was released by Atticus Brady called No One Can Hear You Read, which Garner used to say when asked why he had never learned to read music. Footage of the piano prodigy playing and speaking was intercut with interviews: with admirers (including Woody Allen, Steve Allen and his fellow musicians Ahmad Jamal, also from Pittsburgh and Ernest McCarty, his bassist for many years); with family members, including his big sister Ruth Garner Moore and daughter Kim Garner; with George Avakian, the producer of Concert by the Sea; and with Jim Doran his biographer. The film attempts to address Garner's fall from prominence after his death, reminding viewers how popular and original he was in his day as well as why he is considered in many quarters a legend, one of the true greats of jazz.
On June 15, 2015, the estate of Martha Glaser, Garner's longtime manager, announced the formation of the Erroll Garner Jazz Project, a major new archival and musical celebration of Garner. The project includes the donation of the Erroll Garner Archive—a huge trove of newly discovered historical material from Garner's life—to the University of Pittsburgh.[16][17]
On September 18, 2015, Concert by the Sea was re-released by Sony Legacy in an expanded, three-CD edition that adds 11 previously unreleased tracks.
On September 30, 2016, 'Ready Take One' was released on Sony Legacy/Octave featuring 14 previously unreleased tracks.[18]
On July 13, 2018, a live concert recording of Garner playing in 1964 at the Concertgebouw in the Netherlands was released by Mack Avenue Records with the title Nightconcert.[19]
Discography
- Serenade To Laura (1945) Savoy MG-12003
- Giants of the Piano (back to back with Art Tatum) (1947 Hollywood recordings with Red Callender and Hal West), Vogue LP LAE 12209
- Early in Paris (1948), Blue Music Group
- Penthouse Serenade (1949)
- Erroll Garner (August 1949), Los Angeles recordings with John Simmons, Alvin Stoller (2 vols Joker LP BM 3718-3719)
- Erroll Garner (no date, c. 1951), with Wyatt Ruther and Fats Heard Philips B 07015 L
- Erroll Garner plays for dancing (no date, c. 1951), Philips B 07622 R
- Solo flight (no date, c. 1951), Philips B 07602 R
- Erroll Garner (AKA Erroll Garner at the Piano) (1951–53 material), with Wyatt Ruther and Fats Heard, Columbia CL535, CBS reissue LP 62311
- Mambo Moves Garner (1954), Mercury MG20055
- Plays Misty (1954), Mercury SR60662
- Gems (1954), Columbia CL583
- Music for Tired Lovers, with Woody Herman singing (!) (1954), Columbia CL651
- Concert by the Sea (1955), Columbia CL883
- Contrasts (EmArcy, 1955)
- Garnering (EmArcy, 1955)
- Solitaire (1955)
- Afternoon of an Elf (1955), Mercury MG20090
- The One and Only Erroll Garner (1956)
- The Most Happy Piano (1956), Columbia CL939 (Italian CBS reissue, Il magico pianoforte di Erroll Garner, CBS Serie Rubino, 52065, 1967)
- He's Here! He's Gone! He's Garner! (1956)
- Gone Garner Gonest (1956)
- The Greatest Garner (1956), Atlantic 1227
- Other Voices, with Mitch Miller and orchestra (1957), Columbia CL1014
- Soliloquy (1957), Columbia CL1060
- Erroll Garner – Encores in Hi Fi (1958), Columbia CL 1141
- Paris Impressions Vol.#1 (1958), Columbia CL 1212
- Paris Impressions (1958), Columbia #1216, double album
- Erroll Garner One World Concert (1961), Reprise R9-6080 B
- Informal Piano Improvisations (1962), Baronet B-109
- A New Kind Of Love (1963), Erroll Garner with Full Orchestra, Conducted by Leith Stevens Phillips BL7595
- Erroll Garner/Maxwell Davis Trio: Mr. Erroll Garner and the Maxwell Davis Trio (1964), Crown Records CLP-5404
- Erroll Garner Plays Gershwin and Kern (1964), Mercury 826 224-2
- Serenade in Blue (1964), Clarion 610[20]
- Erroll Garner Amsterdam Concert (concert November 7, 1964), Philips LP BL7717/632 204 BL
- Erroll Garner Plays (1965), Ember LP FA 2011
- Campus Concert (1966), MGM SE-4361
- That's my Kick (1967), MGM SE-4463
- Up in Erroll's Room – featuring the Brass Bed (1968), Vanguard NSLP 28123
- Feeling is Believing (1970), Mercury SR61308
- Gemini (1972), London XPS617
- Magician (1974), London APS640
- Play it Again Erroll (reissued 1974), Columbia CL33424 double album
- The Elf – The Savoy Sessions (1976), Savoy SJL 2207 double album
- Long Ago and Far Away (1987)
- Body and Soul (1991), Columbia CK47035
- The Complete Concert By the Sea (2015), Sony Music Cmg B00ZJ5QXDO
- Ready Take One (2016) Octave Music/Legacy Music 536331
- Nightconcert (2018) Mack Avenue Records
References
- "Erroll Garner – Serenade In Blue (Vinyl, LP)". Discogs.com. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
External links
THE
MUSIC OF ERROLL GARNER: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH ERROLL GARNER:
