Bill Evans: Classic or Dud?

My "Smalltown Boy C/D" thread had about 7 posts and all classic. 50 more, and I would have actually felt proud of myslef!

Others I like that aren't mentioned here: Moonbeams, Portrait in Jazz, and (gasp!) Bill Evans and Tony Bennett (I forget if that's the right title).

Very under-rated, i think. At least, I hardly hear anyone I know talk about him.

just got thru reading "Lost Chords," the great book about white jazz musicians 1915-40 (ish). And listening to those supposedly secondary guys like Bud Freeman, Jack Purvis, etc. Bill Evans was incredible--and so, for ex., is Keith Jarrett today. I particularly like Evans on Miles's '58 "Love for Sale"--that's about as good as it gets.

But I can see the objections--he can be a bit pastel, you know. Still, his playing swings real hard, his touch is immaculate, his ideas first-rate. If he doesn't provide the thrills that someone like Bud Powell or Monk does, well, he's doing his own thing and that's cool.

i also really like the montreux live album from '68 (i think) w/ jack dejohnette and eddie gomez. much harder-edged, more coked-out bill evans. his last couple of albums with marc johnson and joe labarbera are also pretty interesting -- you can hear that they would've been a really interesting group.

Has anyone heard Things Remembered? Saw it today and was curious. No LaFaro, though. I do love Watltz For Debby and Sunday At The Vanguard...

LaFaro's great but he's hardly a yardstick, there's loads of great non-LaFaro stuff. I don't know Things Remembered though

A prof us showed this film when I was briefly in jazz school. It's great. (links to parts 2-5 in the sidebar)

Oh right, embeds. I forgot.

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Uh, I seem to have done something wrong. Anyway, search "The Universal Mind of Bill Evans" on youtube.

A prof us showed this film when I was briefly in jazz school. It's great. (links to parts 2-5 in the sidebar)

this is kind of why i like but don't like bill evans: just in my own experience -- i have a friend who is so into the mechanics of this (and how it came up on the spot) that it turns into boring schematics. or boring theory-explanations i guess? that's why from the same time period, def. not the same area, i'm like: "andrew hill." because he's so far away from that, at least in my mind.

then again i just need to listen to gil w/ fresh ears. because in all honesty i know i'd fckin love it, that's the type of thing i like, just not the theory about it.

I'm not sure what you mean by that -- the fact that you can explain Bill Evans in music theory terms makes you like him less? Because it's not like you couldn't do the same thing with Andrew Hill.

Listening to Moon Beams again for the first time in a while. Such a perfect record.

I think this is one of my favorites because it's almost all slow and understated and doesn't have as much of his jauntier playing.

every year I love Bill Evans more

i actually like some of evans' jauntier stuff -- occasionally it gets a little too lugubrious for me! though obviously he is is the master of the meditative. but as far as "jaunty" goes, i love the version of "solar" on the village vanguard sessions -- some highwire tension there.

yeah that is a good track

I also love Milestones, although I wouldn't quite call it "jaunty"

I also find it helpful to remind myself sometimes that the way his trio is improvising is actually quite deliberately experimental and in that way it might sometimes produce mildly awkward sounding moments. Like there just weren't really piano trios before him, or at least not many, that played in that loose, multi-directional way where no member of the trio is forming a bedrock and all are instead kind of orbiting around an invisible point at different speeds.

yeah it's definitely a different conception of the piano trio -- unlike say, ahmad jamal's trios of the same period, where everyone's working in pretty close tandem. evans' trios seem to be all about pulling things in different directions and seeing where that lands them.

The beginning of his solo on "Flamenco Sketches" are the most beautiful nine notes in all of music.

Flamenco Sketches has an interesting history actually. The germ for it came from Bill Evans's intro to Some Other Time on Everybody Digs Bill Evans. The engineer recorded Bill doing extended improvising on the two-chord figure he used for the intro, and that became Peace Piece, which is also on Everybody Digs Bill Evans. Then Bill Evans and Miles co-wrote Flamenco Sketches based on Peace Piece (to what degree each contributed who knows) and Flamenco Sketches loosely refers to some of the changes in Some Other Time.

some other time is a leonard bernstein song, right? both that and piece peace are so beautiful -- and yeah, lead straight into flamenco sketches. i guess evans gets credit on KoB for that song and blue in green?

i barely play, but it is very relaxing to play the opening to flamenco sketches on the piano.

ah yeah it is Bernstein, and it's from On the Town. For some reason I was thinking it was from South Pacific, but I was mixing it up with This Nearly Was Mine.

this one from the tony bennett album is nice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBrOkNg2iNI

i've been listening to 'the bill evans album' because i happen to have it on vinyl, and although it seems like he took some heat for it, i really like him on fender rhodes.

anyone heard this newish live release. the world is not hurting for live bill evans, i suppose, but it is sounding great this morning
https://search.mog.com/v2/albums/67134671/image.jpeg?size=800
from 1968, a semi-pro recording, but the quality is pretty astounding, like you're in the front row.

I just remembered back in college when I talked shit about how Bill Evans was unswinging to a jazzbo friend, he was like "Nah, that's not the point. You gotta listen to Bill Evans alone in your room with the lights off." OTM.

anyway, been listening to this lately, hadn't heard of it before:

http://blog-imgs-44.fc2.com/j/a/c/jacketjazz/201011121058218e9.jpg

I just remembered back in college when I talked shit about how Bill Evans was unswinging to a jazzbo friend, he was like "Nah, that's not the point. You gotta listen to Bill Evans alone in your room with the lights off." OTM.

― i wish i had a skateboard i could skate away on (Hurting 2),

I think that sense of space is why some players especially Miles Davis liked to play with Bill Evans. He stayed the heck out of the way when we they were soloing but the minimal comp he would be doing would often be quite fitting. It gave the ensemble a bit of air to their sound and not so dense. It's dropping out chord parts then playing the extensions up an octave is part of it.

I think that's actually a good explanation for why Miles stuck with Herbie so long - he combined Evans-style chord voicings and spare comping with an ability to swing much harder (fwiw Evans' comping isn't very spare when he's soloing himself, for whatever reason. Sometimes it borders on cluttered imo).

Feel bad saying it, but while I like Paul Motian fine on the Bill Evans records I don't really in lots of other contexts.

nah I pretty much agree. The only exception I can think of is when he plays with Paul Bley.

Yes! That trio session with Philly Joe and PC is definitely an overlooked one in the larger scope of Bill Evans.

I like to play Living Time for the people that think Bill is predictable and safe.

That's a good review, and I have that album sitting at home, but these two sentences perfectly encapsulate why Evans has never done anything for me as a leader:

His first studio date as a leader, in 1956, was just a year after Charlie Parker's death, with bebop very much still au courant; his last, in 1979, the year before his death, was the year Chuck Mangione was nominated for a Grammy for the discofied light jazz funk of "Feels So Good." In both of those years, Evans recorded small-group acoustic jazz albums featuring his standard trio, playing a mix of standards and a few originals.

If you judge someone solely on how many decades they pushed forward the boundaries of what their genre can do then a lot of excellent musicians are going to come up short.

Firstly, a lot of his stuff is just flat out gorgeous - I don't care who wrote it or whether it was part of the zeitgeist - there'll always be a place for someone who can take a cover or a standard and make it their own in such a way that it becomes *the* version.

Secondly - yeah by around 63-64 the bulk of his very best work was behind him and he treaded water a bit in the years leading up to his death, but to say, "well, he was only amazing for 7 or 8 years" is hardly a criticism.

Thirdly he was innovative in his own way, obviously he didn't do anything as jarringly new as Ornette Coleman but he did:
* bring a whole new set of harmonic possibilities to jazz via his classical/impressionist influences
* become the bridge between George Russell and Miles Davis that brought modal jazz to the mainstream, including being the uncredited writer for two Kind of Blue songs
* change the concept of the piano trio, making it much more a union of equals rather than piano plus backing rhythm section

looking forward to hearing this new one ... i thought everybody digs bill evans?
i did think leading w/ the idea that evans isn't famous was weird (he's gotta be among the top 5 most well known jazz pianists ever, right?), but it was a good review otherwise.

I mean he's like 50x as famous as Wynton Kelly, the other pianist on that jazz record everyone owns. And it's just a weirdly apologetic thing to do in a music review. It's hard to imagine them doing the same thing with a minor cult rock figure.

I'd figure Bill Evans is more known now for playing on Kind of Blue now than say Stan Getz who probably sold quite a few more records than Evans in their 1950-60s heyday.

It has been around 50 years since that generation of jazz players was at their peak. Time has passed.

regardless! bill evans is great. I find it amazing that this was recorded in 1958.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv2GgV34qIg

I dig NYC Is No Lark. That track is haunted sounding. Pretty unique as it was Evans improvising on top of his own take.

I never checked back in RE: Some Other Time. It's fucking amazing, but everybody already knew that.

Getting back into the Kronos album where they do all Evans tunes. It's completely predictable, but nice. Definitely appreciate hearing Eddie Gomez anytime.

Would have been 91 today. The Stork Club show on WFMU's Drummer stream did a 5.5 hour all-Evans show today (https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/95669) including some chat with Peter Keepnews. I've never done a deep dive into his discography so I didn't know until today that Jack DeJohnette was briefly in his trio, 1968.

indeed!

RE: jack's tenure. he actually was only on one album that was released at the time: at montreux. couple years ago, some previously unissued recordings were released for record store day and i'd honestly say that stuff is way better for the dejohnette band. that stuff completely slays; has a way different feel in comparison to other evans trio stuff of the time.

Decided to spend some time with later Evans recordings - so many I've never explored. Right now focusing on the trio with Eddie Gomez and Marty Morrell, roughly 69-74.

This is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6T5y9APZuI

Love late period Evans.

It's some of my favorite recorded music ever.

man live, I highly recommend this live album from 1973. On some days, there is nothing that can top it for me. Easily the equal of the `61 Village Vanguard stuff — it's just that nobody cared straight ahead about piano trios anymore by that point.

*about straight ahead

Gomez and Morrell were both fantastic. I think they lived in the shadows of LaFaro and Motian, unfortunately, and also the fact that, as you said, they became prominent when no one cared about straight ahead piano trios.

When it comes to Bill Evans I'm more Riverside Recordings 56-63 till the death! Although from that later trio the live in Italy 1969 - Autumn Leaves album is a really good set, probably should check out some more at some point.

I always have been too, but got curious about the later stuff.

man, been listening to that Tokyo set all afternoon and it is a+++, thanks for the rec Austin

it is really nice

awesome. glad you guys are digging it.

One of my problems with Bill Evans (and I mean in the sense of "my problems" not a problem I have with *him*) is that I tend to really sink into and get lost in his music and that's not always ideal when I have work and family responsibilities. Something about it really sucks me under.

he has that effect at times, yes.

fwiw I've also been dabbling around in The Last Waltz - The Final Recordings at Keystone Korner 1980. Even those are excellent, maybe not breaking new ground for Evans but in no way phoning it in either, full of wonderful energy.

that's mostly second sets, as he was playing two per evening. here's the other half. it's just as good.

Just read this today. It's a really nice interview. Bill Evans is not only a wonderful musician but incredibly eloquent and insighftul about music.
https://jazz.fm/rare-interview-with-bill-evans-recounts-the-story-of-miles-davis-and-kind-of-blue/

the live set set from argentina 1973 made it to streaming recently, so listening today. nothing revelatory of course, but it's the morrell+gomez band, so you know it's good. all the calling cards are here: "re:person i knew", "waltz for debby", "my romance", etc etc. the bobbie gentry tune it's titled after was still in the setlist, so that shows up as well. just ... big sigh. always such a pleasure to hear this band.

But Beautiful is still in my regular rotation (never left since it arrived), so i am super pumped for this. thanking you austin

"two lonely people" is a monster loneliness jam, glad to see it on this set as well

eddie gomez takes a bowed solo on that one.♥

Thanks Austin, enjoying this one!

The last Bill Evans thing that blew my mind was Symbiosis, his 1974 third stream suite with lightly funky grooves and long, snakelike horn lines. Nothing else sounds quite like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwlG4OciNm4

https://i.imgur.com/H5yFP6l.png

"hey baby, ya like minor sevenths?"

you know what? i will not apologize for being a total cliche but i think it would be in everyone's best interest if we could all just cool the fuck down for a minute. please and thank you.

that being said: FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY.

tl;dr- affinity, co-billed to bill + toots thielsmans from 1979, is wonderful music and highly recommended for the season.

thank you for listening.

it's getting to be that time of year where i start hearing christmas music around and about. again.

i know i've kind of memed myself in the past over it and i would like to make absolutely clear here: i do not like holiday music for reasons that have to do with mental health issues. i am a person living with a mindfuck of a psychiatric disorder so severe that i am ashamed to say by this point, however: yes i am clinically "triggered" by the song santa claus is coming to town.

and when i say "triggered" it means i'll probably physically remove myself from the immediate area without communicating anything. please do not try to stop me. i need to gtfo basically. i'll probably be babbling incoherently the whole way. i'm not proud of this and it's extremely distressing while it's happening. but it's a part of life for me.

and it's only *one* of the "holiday classics" to inspire that sort of involuntary (but necessary) reaction. that's just the heaviest hitter.

(no, i do not want to see christmas music banned or only allowed in certain spaces or whatever else. it's my issue and i need to acknowledge it and cope. just keep going.)

did you know bill evans--

--the guy who inspired me to start using the term "therapy through music"--

--the guy who played so gorgeously, but with such ingenuity, that even miles davis put up with him for a while--

--the initial person who inspired me to seek refuge in a world i'm ill-equipped to understand or deal with by diving into music and following one's own heart as enthusiastically as possible--

--only ever played one christmas tune?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbnF-xyQInc

"santa claus is coming to town" (1964)

despite the overbearing plastic facade of most christmas music not really blending well into bill's idea of music, this one made it into the setlist for a while. he is basically like the musical buddha or dalai lama to me. how did this happen? alas, so be it.

but anyway.

there's two (wrong) cliches about bill evans: 1. he played sad music and 2. by the 70s all he ever played in was the trio, so it all sounds the same.

1 is subjective, so i'll get to it.

2, otoh, is only true if you're listening to live stuff exclusively - and, even then, there's a few things in there that are not just the trio. i mean first of all, the multiple duets albums with eddie gomez. smirk

but seriously: most of his 70s studio albums expand the band or find him playing with a different group entirely. he used the studio in the 70s to do things he either wasn't able to or didn't feel comfortable with live, collaborate, or just try different ideas.

i want to have music on in most situations. when i was employed at an elementary school, i played music in my room as much as possible. other staff relied on work internet for music, so when the district decided to block streaming sites i was already running my own setup. it just happened to be december and i was playing this album and one of the older staff who made me extremely uncomfortable happened into the room and asked how i was able to get christmas music playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW7ohttsfng

"the other side of midnight (noelle's theme)" (1979)

"sorry. . .what??" was all i could muster.

i guess they heard the combination of sappy chords and a wistful mood and assumed it was holiday music? idk. it was weird. i was flustered but doing my best. subsequently, it was a totally frustrating boomer moment for them- not understanding what a personal digital music player i brought from home is, how it works, and, most importantly, sorry idk how to put it but this isn't even christmas music.

"well it sounds like it could be!"

does it? idk. what does christmas music sound like if you can't hear the words or there aren't any words? if all you have is a title and that's the only identifier that it's christmas music - well, what if it doesn't sound like it otherwise? and what about this case? nothing to do with a holiday theme whatsoever, and yet.

i don't know. all i know is that similar things have happened with affinity on more than one occasion.* recorded in new york city in the fall of 1978 with toots thielsmans and larry schneider sitting in with the working trio of the time, it is a damned gorgeous album. sometimes bill plays this fender rhodes run through a very bubbly phaser and he duets with toots' heavily reverbed harmonica; it's easy to love i suppose. "tomato kiss" is a bit of an outlier, but otherwise they just cool tf down and play some seriously mellow music, with some seriously good vibes. heck, they even do a harmonica rendition of "blue in green."

it helps me.

can't recommend it enough. play it year round, but fool yourself into thinking you're a normal person who likes "christmas music" by listening to it in december.👍🏻

*this has also happened once with björk's vespertine

Found this buried in a 'to-read' list and damn it's good: Steve Silberman writing about his obsession with 'Nardis' https://www.thebeliever.net/broken-time/

A mild warning that it Leans pretty heavily into the 'tragedy of Bill' narrative*, including a pretty graphic description of his death (*pretty hard not to if you're going to tell his story, I guess).

read this on the train today and really enjoyed it, thanks for sharing, also made me miss The Believer in a big way

https://i.imgur.com/GqmEUZ5.jpeg

man. ahmad jamal rocked tf outta similar-looking plaid suits around the same time.

not something just anybody can pull off. maybe it's a piano player thing?