096: Bill Evans (solo), ‘Easy To Love’
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Bill Evans, ‘Easy to Love’, 1962 (solo):
In SoTW 060, I talked about one of the very finest pieces of music I know, the 1961 live performance of Bill Evans’ first trio, “Live at the Village Vanguard”, with Scottie LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums. I wrote there that ‘this is as beautiful as music gets, and no words can rival that’. This album is also widely acknowledged as being the touchstone of the modern piano trio. The recording was made on June 25, 1961. Ten days later, on July 5, LaFaro ran his car into a tree and was killed instantly.
He and Evans hadn’t been buddies. LaFaro harped at Evans frequently to give up his voracious heroin habit, to no avail. But LaFaro’s death had a debilitating effect on Evans. He lost interest in playing for half a year. Evans: “Musically everything seemed to stop. I didn’t even play at home.” His only recording sessions were unenthusiastic efforts, done only to earn a few bucks to support his habit. Bill’s brother remembers him wandering around NYC wearing some of LaFaro’s clothes. It was a bleak time.
On April 4, 1962, Evans made his first attempt to record a solo album. He recorded four cuts and aborted the session. The recordings were shelved until they were released in 1981without fanfare on a posthumous hodgepodge album of outtakes, “Conception”.
The four cuts–the Irish standard ‘Danny Boy‘; a Dave Brubeck original ‘In Your Own Sweet Way‘; and two standards, ‘Easy to Love‘ and ‘Like Someone in Love‘, have been considered Evans eulogy to Scott LaFaro. They’re uneven, unfinished, unpolished. But they are performances in which the man’s soul is speaking directly. Without mediation, without technical obstacles. Evans, his pain, and the music. Evans’ liner notes to his first official solo album, “Alone”, 1968:
Perhaps the hours of greatest pleasure in my life have come about as a result of the capacity of the piano to be in itself a complete expressive musical medium. In retrospect, I think that these countless hours of aloneness with music unified the directive energy of my life. At those times when I have achieved this sense of oneness while playing alone, the many technical or analytic aspects of the music happened of themselves with positive Tightness which always served to remind me that to understand music most profoundly one only has to be listening well. Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience. This has nothing to do with my desire to communicate or not, but rather I think just a problem of personal self-consciousness which had to be conquered through discipline and concentration. Yet, to know one is truly alone with one’s instrument and music has always been an attractive and conducive situation for me to find my best playing level. Therefore, what I desired to present in a solo piano recording was especially this unique feeling.
When I wrote about Brad Mehldau’s very fine solo album, “Live in Marciac” I discussed how differently he performs as a soloist versus his usual trio setting. I also expressed the opinion that I admire his solo works more, across the board. Could it be that I’m saying I like solo piano jazz?
Bill Evans towers over the last 50 years of jazz piano. He recorded from 1960 till his death in 1980. Three major jazz pianists emerged in the decades that followed, all immeasurably influenced by him – Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and especially Keith Jarrett. And the three of them still exert a great influence over the newer generation of jazz pianists, Brad Mehldau being by far the leader of the pack. The musical affinity between Granddaddy Bill, Pa Keith and Li’l Brad is unmistakable.
I know it’s not fair to compare musicians, but I spend most of my waking hours doing so. And these three do encourage the comparison–all of them frequently play tunes ostensibly unsuited to quiet, introspective solo piano, usually medium tempo, light love song Standards. It’s a practice Bill Evans started, I believe. The bottom line is that I listen to Bill Evans four or five times as much as I listen to Brad, and to Jarrett hardly at all. I’d like to demonstrate why.
Bill Evans, ‘Danny Boy’, 1962 (solo):
Here’s Bill Evans’ version of ‘Danny Boy’ from that aborted 1962 solo session. And here’s Keith Jarrett solo from 2002, clearly echoing Evans’ treatment. You listen and tell me which of the two men does a respectable, lovely job, and which is expressing a world view of pain, profound insight and gravitas. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I prefer to listen to Bill Evans playing with one arm tied behind his back (or paralyzed by the needle) to Jarrett at the top of his game.
And here’s Brad Mehldau doing ‘My Favorite Things‘ solo. I find it very admirable. But why do I feel that, in comparison to Bill Evans, I’m watching a kid? Mehldau was 41 at the time of this recording, 10 years older than Evans was in his 1962 solo recordings.
I think Keith Jarrett’s a competent but rather superficial jazz pianist, not a drop more. And Brad Mehldau isn’t Bill Evans. That’s okay. No one is. Well, enough with the comparisons. We haven’t come to bury Keith Jarrett or to minimize Brad Mehldau, but to praise Bill Evans.
Bill Evans, ‘In Your Own Sweet Way’, 1962 (solo):
Here’s Dave Brubeck’s original (live) ‘In Your Own Sweet Way‘. A lovely tune, indeed. Here’s Miles’ especially lovely treatment of it with his first quintet (and as discussed in SoTW 041). Here’s a rare video of Bill playing the tune with his first trio! And then there’s Bill Evans playing his pain alone in a studio at night, mourning Scott LaFaro.
Bill Evans, ‘Like Someone in Love’, 1962 (solo):
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