By Rob Mariani
It was another one of those sticky, half-sunny end-of-summer New York
Sunday afternoons at The Village Vanguard. Down in the tiny, odd-shaped
cellar space on lower Seventh Avenue, it wasn't the usual mid-sixties,
wall-to-wall crowd of jazz fans. Most of the people weren't there to hear
jazz, they were there to see comedian, Lenny Bruce. Bruce was at the height
of his irreverent, edge-pushing popularity. A lot of jazz lovers enjoyed him
because instead of set routines, he riffed. He improvised like a jazz
musician. And he talked the hip language. So there were some jazz/Lenny
Bruce fans in the room. A couple of my friends and I were among them.
The Vanguard was full and the crowd was noticeably less subdued than usual.
They were there to laugh and to hear Lenny kick some establishment ass. They
were drinking and being boisterous. And when, about a half-hour before Lenny
was supposed to hit, a shy, studious looking young man in a pale gray suit
and tie slipped onto the bandstand, nobody really paid much attention. The
whiteness of his face stood out in the shadowy ambiance of the Vanguard.
He hunched over the keyboard and started to play very quietly, almost as if
he were testing the piano. The crowd kept on being loud. Nobody paid much
attention. Gradually, snatches of familiar melodies started to seep out into
the atmosphere. "Funny Valentine." "Tenderly." And that corny old love song,
"Young and Foolish," played with heart-rending sincerity. Shear beauty.
I found myself straining to listen over the crowd noise. He segued into a
medium tempo "Minority" and I began to notice how his left hand seemed to be
finding the sounds between the notes--sound that resonated not just with
your ear, but with your brain and your heart. The melody lines he created
were full of tiny, subtle tensions and shimmering releases. And it became at
times like a choir singing, very softly. Four and eight-bar phrases occurred
that could have become whole songs.
The music went softly out into the room and there were pauses in the
conversations. Then voices lowered. Then people were looking over at the
bandstand, focusing on this frail looking guy with the pale face and the
stringy hair. The pianist never looked up or seemed to notice. He sank
deeper into his singing melodies and now the entire room was listening
intently. Somebody had the good sense to lower the house lights. Now we were
really all in this together, listening in the darkness to young Bill Evans.
People exchanged glances but no one seemed to know what to say. There was
just something about his playing that said you'd better listen carefully or
it would disappear and you will have missed it.
Evans finished his solo set with a version of "Autumn Leaves" that took the
old standard places I'd never dreamed it could go, but where it seemed to
have always belonged.
He looked up at the audience for the first time realizing that he actually
had an audience. He seemed ill at ease. Somebody close to the piano started
to clap and the rest of the people joined in. It wasn't the kind of
cheerleading, yelling, "yeah, baby!" kind of applause that Lenny Bruce would
evoke a bit later. It was sincere, and reverent and in keeping with what we
had all just heard just witnessed.
The beginning of something.
