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Bill Evans Trio: At The Village Vanguard 1961 Revisited
by Mark Corroto
Imagine yourself in Greenwich Village June 25, 1961. You are in attendance at a small pie shaped club called the Village Vanguard run by Max Gordon. This is before it was to be crowned as a jazz holy ground. Sonny Rollins had recorded his famous A Night At The “Village Vanguard" (Blue Note, 1957). John Coltrane would record there in November of 1961 and again in 1966. The spot is a shrine with sessions from legends such as Albert Ayler, ...
Continue ReadingBill Evans Trio: At The Village Vanguard 1961 Revisited
by Chris May
Liner notes generally avoid referencing current affairs, for the good reason that what is front page news when the notes are being written may be gone and forgotten by the time the album is released. But there are exceptional circumstances, and here is one of them. On his father's side, Bill Evans was of Welsh heritage, and on his mother's side, Russian, or rather Ukrainian, the two countries during his lifetime often being conflated as a result ...
Continue ReadingBill Evans: Waltz For Debby
by Mark Corroto
In a very unscientific survey, 9 out of 10 jazz connoisseurs listed Waltz For Debby by the Bill Evans Trio as one of their desert island picks. For more than sixty years it has been a best seller and this reissue, like its companion release Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Craft Recordings, 2023), is part of a newly relaunched Original Jazz Classic series. From the original tapes, both are all-analog masters by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, pressed on 180-gram ...
Continue ReadingSolid. Life and Death of a Jazz Genius: Scott LaFaro
by Richard J Salvucci
Solid. Life and Death of a Jazz Genius: Scott LaFaro Vincenzo Staiano 180 Pages ISBN: 9781470 LuLu2023 It may be an exaggeration to claim there was double bass before Scott LaFaro, and double bass after Scott LaFaro. A modern jazz bassist may say, well, not exactly. Yet reading Vincenzo Staiano's respectful account of LaFaro's art may lead one to conclude just that. In an astonishingly short period of time, LaFaro (and to ...
Continue ReadingEvans / LaFaro / Motian: Complete Trio Recordings
by Chris May
Christmas is coming early for Bill Evans aficionados this April 2023 with the release of two box-sets. Hard on the heels of Elemental's 2-CD / 3-LP Treasures: Solo, Trio & Orchestra Recordings From Denmark 1965-1969 (reviewed here), comes this 5-CD Complete Trio Recordings set. The aptly titled Treasures is essential listening, containing as it does 30 high-end previously unreleased tracks which were professionally recorded for radio broadcast. Complete Trio Recordings has value but is less than essential, ...
Continue ReadingBill Evans: Everybody Still Digs Bill Evans: A Career Retrospective (1956 - 1980)
by Chris May
Only occasionally do classy looking limited-edition box sets prove to be a triumph of style and substance. Too often they are undermined by cheapskate packaging, over elaborate design, poorly written and researched booklets, inadequate session details or, most egregiously, bizarre (in a bad way) track selections. So it is a more than pleasant surprise when something comes along which succeeds, and succeeds magnificently, on all those fronts. Such an item is Concord Records' Craft imprint's Everybody Still Digs Bill Evans: ...
Continue ReadingScott LaFaro: Pieces of Jade
by Stuart Broomer
In his brief career between 1959 and 1961, Scott LaFaro may have done as much to revolutionize the way the bass is played in jazz as Jimmy Blanton, another gifted and tragic figure, had with Duke Ellington 20 years before him. Like Blanton, LaFaro only took up the bass when he entered college and also died very young: Blanton of tuberculosis at 23 in 1942; LaFaro at 25 in a car accident in 1961. LaFaro recognized no ...
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