© -Steven Cerra , copyright protected; all rights reserved.
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“Erroll Garner was one of a kind. He was as outré as the great beboppers, yet bop was alien to him, even though he recorded with Charlie Parker. He swung mightily, yet he stood outside the swing tradition; he played orchestrally, and his style was swooningly romantic, yet he could be as merciless on a tune as Fats Waller. He never read music, but he could play a piece in any key, and delighted in deceiving his rhythm sections from night to night. His tumbling, percussive, humorous style was entirely his own.”
Richard Cook and Brian Morton , The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.
“Sixty years! Hard to believe for this Garner fan, who grabbed the LP [Concerts by the Sea] when it was "hot off the press" - to coin a phrase. And what a treat it was to listen to that live performance by the master in top form. Though, come to think of it, he never was in less than that. No matter where - within the confines of a nightclub, in a concert hall, at an open-air festival, in a recording studio - you encountered "The Little Man" (as Art Tatum fondly dubbed him - he was 5'4") in action, he would hold you spellbound with the musical magic he could coax from a piano, an instrument he made sound like no player ever had before - or would again.
That sound, that conception, was strictly his own creation. Undeterred by teachers, he made his hands realize what he heard in his head, and that was the sounds and rhythm of a big jazz band. A child of the Swing Era, Garner conceived of the keyboard as a combination of a band's horn and rhythm sections, rolled into a single voice. And his uncanny sense of time, his marvelous touch, and wide-open ears made that conception come alive. Once Garner had taught his fingers to do his bidding, he found such joy in making music that it became contagious. His was, as an album title proclaimed, the most happy piano.”
- Dan Morgenstern, Jazz author, critic and essayist, retired Director of the Jazz Institute at Rutgers University
- Dan Morgenstern, Jazz author, critic and essayist, retired Director of the Jazz Institute at Rutgers University
“Artists look to find a connection; a way in, something that matters. This elusive feeling of belonging, of connecting or not, is the friction that helps us navigate the creative map. Acceptance or the lack thereof is a part of everyday life on and off stage.
“Erroll Garner found acceptance from people who loved great music, including his icons Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Count Basie, George Shearing, and Ahmad Jamal. He was a sure creative and emotional bet for his audience as well. His audience understood this and showed up to hear him night after night the world over.
In a rare interview recorded directly after his Concert by the Sea performance, Erroll Garner said, "They made me feel like playing.'"
Perhaps he meant his magnificent trio with drummer Denzil DeCosta Best and bassist Eddie Calhoun, or perhaps he meant his audience who witnessed one of the greatest concerts of all time. Either way Garner seemed to be saying it was the collaborative exchange that made the moment possible - that blending between the audience and the musicians. Garner's music is a direct and uncensored experience, honest and immediate, free flowing, clearly delivered, focused with fearless projection. The newly mastered version of Concert by the Sea with 11 new performances (22 performances in all), gives us more than a glimpse into what it might have been like to witness this great artist night after night. "You could never tell what he might do next" were the kinds of responses you heard from his musical collaborators.
- Geri Allen, Jazz pianist
- Geri Allen, Jazz pianist
“Erroll Garner was a true original in the history of Jazz piano. For reasons I do not understand, considering the high respect other contemporaries had for him, Garner seems to have been forgotten by younger Jazz critics and Jazz pianists alike. There was only one Erroll Garner and it would help every Jazz pianist if they paid a little more attention to his talent and creativity."
These sage words from the impresario and pianist George Wein beg the question: why has Erroll Garner, universally regarded as one of the most important pianists in jazz history, attracted so little attention? Teddy Wilson called Garner, "one of the greatest talents there was.... His harmonies were as modern as tomorrow and his conception of jazz exquisite." George Shearing, who admittedly copped his style, wrote in his autobiography, "Nobody else can play the way Erroll Garner did." Ahmad Jamal once said, "anyone that has not been influenced by Erroll has not been in our field.... Fd say he's from the impressionistic school and of the rank of Ravel and Debussy." One of the most venerated and commercially successful jazz musicians of his generation, Garner performed before sold-out concert halls, won nearly every major jazz magazine poll, appeared frequently on TV talk shows, and was featured in The Saturday Evening Post.
Garner's popularity was due in no small part to his intrepid manager and life-long friend, Martha Glaser. ….”
- Robin Kelley, insert notes to The Complete Concert By The Sea
- Robin Kelley, insert notes to The Complete Concert By The Sea
These days, it sometimes seems to me that “unique,” “peerless,” “one-and-only” and other, similar words and phrases are indiscriminately bandied about.
But they are appropriate in their use and meaning when applied to the music of Erroll Garner.
He was sui generis.
One of my earliest recollections of Jazz piano being played in an orchestral and percussive manner was on the 10” Columbia House Party EP entitled Here’s Here, He’s Gone, He’s Garner! It contains an 8+ minute version of Erroll playing The Man I Love that moves from a stately Brahmsian introduction, to a majestically slow representation of the melody before devolving into chorus after chorus of up-tempo, pulsating and original improvisations whose conclusion always leaves me exhausted from the excitement they generate in my emotions.
Erroll plays his usual four-beats-to-the-bar left hand self-accompaniment, but his right hand is all over the middle and upper register of the piano with block chord phrases, rhythmic riffs interchanged with drum fills and single lines that weave a powerful elucidation of bop phrases.
Pianist Dick Katz, in his splendidly instructive essay entitled “Pianists of the 1940s and 1950s” that appears in editor Bill Kirchner’s The Oxford Companion to Jazz [New York
“Unique is an inadequate word to describe Erroll Garner. He was a musical phenomenon unlike any other. One of the most appealing performers in Jazz history, he influenced almost every pianist who played in his era, and even beyond. Self-taught, he could not read music, yet he did things that trained pianists could not play or even imagine. Garner was a one-man swing band, and indeed often acknowledged that his main inspiration was the big bands of the thirties – Duke, Basie, Lunceford, et al. He developed a self-sufficient, extremely full style that was characterized by a rock-steady left-hand that also sounded like a strumming rhythm guitar. Juxtaposed against this was a river of chordal or single note ideas, frequently stated in a lagging, behind-the-beat way that generated terrific swing.” [P. 365]”
And in Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters, Len Lyons had this to say about Erroll:
“An idiosyncratic improviser with a fertile imagination, Garner could be an effervescent, whimsical, bombastic, and always emotional—sometimes within the same song. He made hundreds of recordings, most of them spontaneously, barely pausing between selections. Garner's style was unmistakable: lush tremolo chords in the right hand, "strummed" left-hand block chords that kept precise time, elaborately embellished melodies, and a beat so polyrhythmic that the music seemed to be played in two distinct time signatures.
Influenced by Earl "Fatha" Hines, Teddy Wilson, the beat of the big bands, and later by the harmonies and phrasing of bebop, Garner carved a niche for himself that was too unique and specialized to leave room for followers. At the piano bench, he perched his diminutive frame on a telephone book to improve his reach, and he sang to himself in audible grunts and growls as he played. His impish humor came through in his music and his demeanor. …
Johnny Burke added the lyrics to Erroll’s Misty in 1959 and Johnny Mathis recording of it that year really served to enhance Garner’s popularity with both Jazz fans and the general public. Erroll wrote the tune while on a flight from San Francisco Denver
In 1956, Columbia
A “behind-the-scenes” look at how this recording came about in provided in the following excerpt by Will Friedwald.
© -Will Friedwald, copyright protected; all rights reserved. Copyright 2009 Dow Jones and Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Erroll Garner's Serendipitous Hit
The Wall Street Journal, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009
The pianist Erroll Garner was one of the great improvisers of all time -- and not exclusively in his music. As writer John Murphy notes, a New York Times profile of Garner in 1959 by John S. Wilson observed that the musician refused to make any kind of plan until the very last minute; he cooked elaborate dishes without the aid of a recipe book by simply throwing different ingredients together and tasting; he taught himself to play golf without instruction. He also played thousands of songs entirely by ear, without ever bothering to learn to read music, and composed many original tunes that way, including the standard "Misty." Therefore it shouldn't be surprising that Garner (1921-1977) made his best album -- the legendary "Concert by the Sea" -- practically by accident.
On Sept. 19, 1955, Garner (who is also represented on a wonderful new DVD of two concerts from Europe eight years later, "Live in '63 and '64," as part of the Jazz Icons series produced by Reelin' in the Years and available at www.reelinintheyears.com) performed at Fort Ord, an army base near Carmel, Calif., at the behest of disc jockey and impresario Jimmy Lyons. Martha Glaser, who served as Garner's personal manager for nearly his entire career, happened to be backstage when she noticed a tape recorder running. As she recalled for the Journal last week, it turned out that the show was being taped -- without Garner's knowledge -- by a jazz fan and scholar named Will Thornbury, strictly for the enjoyment of himself and his fellow servicemen. Ms. Glaser told him, "I'll give you copies of every record Erroll ever made, but I can't let you keep that tape." She took it back to New York Columbia
When Columbia
"Concert" begins with one of Garner's characteristic left-field introductions -- even his bassist and drummer, in this case Eddie Calhoun and Denzil Best, rarely had an idea where he was going to go. This intro is particularly dark, heavy and serious -- so much the better to heighten the impact of the "punchline," when Garner tears into "I'll Remember April." Originally written as a romantic love song, Garner swings it so relentlessly fast that you can practically feel the surf and breeze of the windswept beach image from the album's famous cover.
The sheer exhilaration of Garner's playing never lets up; even when he slows down the tempo on "How Could You Do a Thing Like That to Me" (a tune also known as Duke Ellington's "Sultry Serenade"), the pianist shows that he's just as adroit at playing spaces as he is at playing notes. The bulk of the album showcases his brilliant flair for dressing up classic standards such as "Where or When" (when Garner plays it, he leaves the question mark out -- you know exactly where and precisely when), but "Red Top" illustrates what he can do with a 12-bar blues and "Mambo Carmel" comes out of his fascination with Latin polyrhythms.
"Concert by the Sea" has never been off my iPod. Sadly, it's also one of the few classic jazz albums that has never been properly reissued. If any album's audio could use a little tender loving care, this is it; the original tape was barely a professional recording, and the bass, for instance, is barely audible. Sony issued a compact disc in 1991, but it's just a straight transfer of the 1955 master, and the digital medium makes it sound worse rather than better. …”
We also located this review of Telarc’s issuance of a multi-disc set of Erroll’s music by Mike Hennessey on the Garner Archives:
The Great Erroll Garner Legacy
By Mike Hennessey
Copyright © 1999-2002 Erroll Garner Archives
George Wein regarded him as "a great musical genius".
Hugues Panassié said of him, "He is not only the greatest pianist to emerge in jazz since World War II, but he is also the only one who has created a new style which is in the true jazz tradition, one which constitutes the essence of this music."
Mary Lou Williams revered him as "an asset and inspiration to the jazz world."
Steve Allen said he was "the greatest popular pianist of our century."
And Art Tatum called him, "My little boy."
They were talking about Erroll Louis Garner, the formidably accomplished and incredibly prolific self-taught pianist who first began exploring the piano keyboard at the age of three and went on to become a genuine jazz legend. His professional career spanned almost four decades and, in that time, he recorded for dozens of different labels, sometimes solo, mostly with his own trio. His recorded output occupies 33 pages in Tom Lord's The Jazz Discography. He made altogether more than 200 albums.
Garner was an amazingly energetic and resourceful musician with a phenomenal ear, remarkable memory and an astonishing independence of right and left hands. He was completely ambidextrous and could write and play tennis right or left handed with equal facility. He was also a sensitive, intelligent and rather shy man with a sunny disposition and an impish humour and he never took himself or his art too seriously.
A Telarc six-CD set of recordings made by Erroll Garner between December 1959 and October 1973 -- simply entitled Erroll Garner -- offers an abundant and representative sample of the prodigious and incomparable Garner legacy. The set comprises 12 original albums, now available for the first time in digital CD format -- altogether a selection of 118 numbers, the vast majority of which come from the great American popular song repertoire.”
George Shearing on Erroll Garner
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
- “Young Garner's father was a singer who played several instruments, as did his older brother, Linton. Erroll was an entirely self-taught musician who hit the keys when he was three years old and never did learn how to read music. But he played like no other pianist, and his flamboyant style was a delight to the ears. He would start a ballad with a long, discordant introduction that didn't even hint at the melody to come. At last when he swung into it, his left hand lay down chords like a guitar, keeping up a steady pulse, while his right hand never seemed to catch up, improvising chords or playing octaves that lagged way behind the beat for the rest of the number. Just a pinch of Fats Waller added spice.
I was fascinated by this fellow's joyously swinging piano, and I sought him out while Louis Prima was on. Erroll was anything but happy. He didn't know many people in New York and was downhearted. No one was interested in listening to him—Louis Prima was the showman attraction. And Erroll was only making forty dollars a week!
He told me he thought he'd go home soon, as it seemed nothing was going to happen for him in New York. Somehow, I had to stop him. I invited him home to 7 West 46th Street, showed him my rented Krakaur grand, and once he got started, it was impossible to pry him off the bench. Little did I know at the outset that he had a bad case of asthma and couldn't sleep lying down!” [p. 176]-
Fradley Garner’s superb English adaptation of Timme Rosenkrantz’s Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969
Fradley Garner’s superb English adaptation of Timme Rosenkrantz’s Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969
“None of my prior experience with recording artists- Erroll Garner included- had prepared me for what happened when Erroll came in to record the session from which this album is produced.
In a business where the hoped-for standard is to complete four three-minute sides in three hours (with innumerable re-takes), and a recording director is ready to break out the champagne and caviar if he's finished half an hour ahead of schedule, Erroll smashed precedent with a performance that can be compared only to running a hundred yards in eight seconds- and with perfect form.
In other words: something that just can't happen. But this time it did. Erroll came into the studio a few minutes after his accompanists had arrived, took off his coat and had a cup of coffee, sat at the piano and noodled a bit, got up and removed his jacket, lit a cigarette, loosened his tie, and one minute past the hour announced he was ready. We hadn't discussed repertoire specifically; I had only told him that I wanted him to record some double-length numbers for long-play release. To give the engineers a chance to check balance, I asked Erroll to play something; anything. He played for a minute or so; the balance was fine, so when he stopped I asked Erroll through the control-room talk-back if he'd like to get started on the first number.
"Ready!" Erroll called.
"Fine," I said. "What's it going to be?"
"I don't know yet," said Erroll. "Just start that tape going."
The saucer-eyed engineers were no more startled than I, but I held back my surprise long enough to ask if Erroll would like me to signal him when he got around the six-minute mark.
"I might not remember to look," he said. "Let's just feel the time; OK?" Wondering what Dr. Einstein might have to say about that concept, I agreed; Erroll struck a couple of chords, nodded a tempo to bassist Wyatt Ruther and drummer Eugene “Fats” Heard, threw me a wink, and pointed to the recording light. I snapped it on, and he swung into an introduction which baffled all of us; what was it going to be? By what telepathy Ruther and Heard knew, I will never understand, but they followed Erroll unerringly into the chorus of Will You Still Be Mine?- a tune which, Erroll explained six minutes and twenty seconds later, they had never played together before.
But we didn't even have to play it back to know that it was a perfect master.
That's how the session went; with complete relaxation and informality, Erroll rattled off 13 numbers, averaging over six minutes each in length, with no rehearsal and no re-takes. Even with a half-hour pause for coffee, we were finished twenty-seven minutes ahead of the three hours of normal studio time-but Erroll had recorded over eighty minutes of music instead of the usual ten or twelve, and with no re-takes or breakdowns. And every minute of his performance was not only usable, but could not have been improved upon. He asked to hear playbacks on two of the numbers, but only listened to a chorus or so of each, before he waved his hand, said "Fine."
As for myself, I was happy with everything the first time 'round and repeated listenings to tests since then has confirmed that my first opinion was right.”
- George Avakian, Liner notes to Columbia 12" LP CL 53
- George Avakian, Liner notes to Columbia 12" LP CL 53
“I never had an influence, for the simple reason that I loved big bands. I think this is where part of my style came from, because I love fullness in the piano. I want to make it sound like a big band if I can. I wasn't influenced by any pianist, because when I came up, I didn't hear too many. We used to have places like the Apollo Theater where you could go and hear big bands. They used to come to Pittsburgh and play at the Stanley Theater. I saw all the great bands. I knew Mary Lou Williams when I was a kid. When Fats Waller came, the piano was so sad that he played organ. I'll never forget how he took that organ, blended in with the band and made it sound like forty-four pieces. That sound was the most fantastic thing! I thought, oh my goodness, how can he do that? That's something new to me. I love Jimmy Lunceford, and I love Duke. Jimmy Lunceford and Count Basie taught me how to keep time. Those two bands really laid that on me, and it was a thrill. I think [Basie’s guitarist] Freddie Green is one of the greatest timekeepers in the world.”
- Erroll Garner to Art Taylor, Notes- and-Tones, Musicians-to-Musicians Interview
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- Erroll Garner to Art Taylor, Notes- and-Tones, Musicians-to-Musicians Interview
Erroll Garner didn’t talk about Jazz very much. He just played it. And could he ever bring it.
He wasn’t a particularly good interview. You can go through the Jazz literature, but you are more-than-likely to come away empty-handed if you are looking for an expository about Jazz piano by him as told to a Jazz essayist. Fortunately, he did talk on occasion with other musicians and one of these musician-to-musician interviews can be found in drummer Arthur Taylor’s Notes- and-Tones.
In many ways, Erroll Garner was an odd fellow, but “odd” in the unconventional sense of the word - unusual, peculiar, bizarre, eccentric, unusual. And not in the more outlandish definition of the term such as quirky, zany, wacky, kooky, screwy, and freaky.
You get the sense of his uniqueness from the quotations that precede this introduction and also from the following assessment of his talent by fellow pianist, George Shearing, which is contained in his autobiography - Lullaby of Birdland.
“I first heard Erroll Garner on record in about 1945, and my thoughts about him have never really changed from that moment. I said to myself, "This is an astoundingly original style!"
From the outset, Erroll had a very personalized and highly unusual approach. In many ways, he was the most un-pianistic of all jazz pianists because he treated the instrument as if it were an orchestra, which made him one of a kind. If you're used to hearing records by Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, or Hank Jones, all of whom treat the piano very legitimately as a piano, you won't hear very much of that in Erroll's playing. It's true that he did use a lot of single-note solos, but they were more than equaled by what I call his "shout" playing, the technique that he used after he'd finished such a solo. Rather than his fingers just cascading up and down the keys, he'd play these big, massive chords, which he used as what big band arrangers call a "shout," just like a huge ensemble of brass and saxophones. He would do that for four or eight bars followed by another four-bar single-note solo, all the time keeping a steady four to the bar with his left hand. It was almost as if he had Basic's guitarist Freddie Green, with his perfect time, kept prisoner inside his left hand. Regardless of how much his right hand lagged behind the beat, that left hand was always the time governor. There's never been another pianist quite like him, and I don't think there ever will be.
I first met Erroll in person after I'd moved to the United States, when he came back to New York from the West Coast, and I was playing opposite him at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street in 1948—a gig which lasted for quite some time. He was leading the Erroll Garner Trio, which was no less a line-up than Erroll on piano, Oscar Pettiford on bass, and J. C. Heard on drums. It was just ridiculous what they did, they were such a tight group.
Perhaps the best estimation of anyone's talent is, firstly, originality, which Erroll had in spades, and secondly, the musical and technical ability to put that originality into practice. His talent wasn't about being able to play everybody else off the stage by mastering their style and then some, but about being himself. It didn't matter to him what kind of piano he was playing — good, bad, indifferent, they were all the same to him — nor did it seem to affect him if the audience was talking. He would just play up a storm.
Nobody else can play the way Erroll Garner did. I try to get close to it from time to time, and I received a nice compliment from Erroll's manager Martha Glaser, when she said that I'm probably the closest. That's good enough for me, because that's all I want to do—be as close as I can when I'm representing his style. I sometimes used to kid my audience by saying that Erroll and I were always being mistaken for each other, which is ludicrous, really, because he was much shorter than I am. But I loved Erroll.
Dudley Moore On Why Erroll Garner is "So Easy to Love"
“Passion . . . that's what he had . . . passion. And that's what all great artists have. A sprinkling of the demonic, a yearning for the tender, and a straight line to joy.”
The above and following enthusiastic remarks by the actor (and sometime pianist) Dudley Moore appeared as liner notes for Easy to Love [Emarcy 832 994-2], a 1988 collection of previously unreleased cuts - all recorded in the early sixties — by Erroll Garner.
Moore, a long-time Garner devotee who died in 2002, was renowned as an actor in film, theater, and television. Dudley was also an accomplished musician and composer, at home in both the classical and jazz genres. London-born, Moore began his piano studies at the age of six, and went on to advanced classical studies on piano, organ and violin, and composition and arranging, at Oxford's Magdalen College, where he earned degrees in 1957 and 1958. He later performed with Johnny Dankworth's orchestra, and with his own trio. In the closing years of his life, he appeared as a guest soloist with major symphony orchestras, during breaks in his film schedule.
“Listening to this selection of Garner's recordings was a chilling experience - chilling in the sense that one knows one is listening to an exception — one is listening to a phenomenon. No matter what the rational opinions are, one comes to the conclusion that here is a uniqueness that is almost unbearably strong. They say that certain types of genius are the result of untiring practice and application — terms which of course double to mean enthusiasm or passion — but what exactly Garner had to do to acquire this unique tonal vocabulary is hard to understand completely. Suffice it to say that his persona is streaked in bold and subtle flashes across his music. You didn't have to know the man to feel, what is certainly for one very brief moment in history, a unique singing voice. To achieve this at all on a piano is no mean feat, but it is not the technical aspect of his playing that astonishes, although that is one thing to knock one off one's feet. It is the fact that the technical aspect evaporates in this spectacular contact that is made through a music that is entirely Garner's own.
Mind you, there are parts of Garner that I don't appreciate at all or find particularly remarkable. I don't think his wayward introductions are necessarily an extraordinary feature of his work. Or, that the sentimentality he sometimes allows himself in unabashed ballads is particularly interesting. However, when he plays a ballad with that combination of deep feeling and caressing rhythm, I sag with the burden of gratitude. I may be getting purple with my prose at this point, but what can one do in the face of this gift that is extended to us all. Not everyone knows, realizes, or understands the importance of Erroll Garner. He understood it, I'm sure, but also would probably have been too reticent to admit it. Criticism was sometimes blind to it, although his public acceptance was always gigantic. He once said, "Some people know what life's about and some people don't." The spontaneity and relaxed growth in his music pleads a knowledge of life and I guess if you don't get it, you don't get it.
This does not imply membership in some darkly exclusive club, but merely the futility of describing a feeling. I love music that lives and breathes and encourages life. I hate music that conjures up an apparition of death. That doesn't mean to say that I don't love music that is inspired by requiems or death itself. However, the outcome of even such potentially morbid music has to be joy. 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. That's why I love to try and play like him. His music has got into my veins and I wish that everyone could be as drugged as I am with this particular non-chemical. Long live Garner. I bless that day in 1957 when I heard him for the first time. I shall always treasure the experience and I am able to relive it, listening to this music today. I never met the man to say hello and thank you. I didn't have the nerve to do that, even though I did spend a couple of times in a club close to his arm and at several of his concerts in London. One day he came into a club where I was playing and I was so nervous, - I so wanted to share my love for him and how he had affected me — that my panic allowed me to spill a bottle of Coca-Cola on the middle of the keyboard to the point where all the keys stuck together and I could only play on either side of this sticky log.
Garner brought to the piano an element which I don't think anyone else had previously provided - the element ol sensuality. It was engendered by a true rubato in the sense that Chopin understood - that is, a left hand which is ostensibly regular and a right hand that moves freely against it, "the result of momentary impulse," as the great pianist Josef Hofmann said. (He also maintained, rightfully I think, that . . . "Perfect expression is possibly only under perfect freedom.")
This rubato is a rarity in any music and finds its true fruition in Garner's playing, a smooth, undulating arm that floats and caresses sweetly above a gently pulsing bass. Garner must be one of the very few who can soothe our souls with this most elusive of arts. There's no doubt in my mind that his unique and enlivening rhythmic approach is an irrefutable addition to musical language, nourished as it is by the poignant, passionate, or pagan palette (!) if you'll once again excuse my purple prose ol his harmony.
It is interesting to note that often after a passage or phrase of considerable rubato where the melody notes hit just behind the basic beat, Garner will, in the last couple of bars (generally of an eight-bar phrase), get right on to the beat again not to steady himself like a tightrope walker using the bar, but just because it feels good in the style. I've never known Garner to not to put out a hand to steady himself, as it were. There's never a moment when one says, "Whoops!"
It is extraordinary that this man, who did not read or write music, could have produced such richness of rhythm and harmony, even a latent counterpoint - for his two hands enjoyed the sweetest, cooperative marriage. Jazz can, in one way, resemble painting by numbers. The chordal system that emerged from its roots, which was then enriched by the advent of impressionist harmony, has been organized into a figured bass concept like that of former times (the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). The result is a system that is relatively easy to learn wherein chordal inversions are left to the individual taste of the pianist, who has the advantage of being able to play more than one note at once. All I can say is, thank God Garner chose the piano as his means of expression, since he would not have been perhaps quite as remarkable on a one-line instrument. We would not have had the glory of the interplay between his two hands or the piquant structure of his chords and textures.
Although Garner seemed to hit a few clankers now and then in terms of melody, these are never really wrong notes so much as moments of intense creativity that have spiralled off. Rhythmically he never fails us and that is probably the most remarkable thing. He really doesn't, not even when he seems to be even remotely strapped by the sheer physical stuff that one encounters on a piano from time to time. Relaxation was of total importance to him. Lesser artists like to mystify us with claims of difficulty. When Garner decides to combine his many colors we are most nobly fed — an infectious notion of rhythm and sensual swing with a flirtatious and coquettish melodic gift, an ability to take us with him into areas of sweet contentment where our heads all bob gently and thankfully like mesmerized turkeys.
It is more than great octave work that he indulged in. It succeeds without apparent effort and he even seems to be trying new things as he plays without being at all perturbed at the prospect of keeping things in rhythm.
Everything is always within the style even when the actual notes may not perhaps be exactly what he wanted. But, then again, everything sounds right because it swings and because his spirit leaps out to us.
His endings almost seem nonchalant, as if to say "I've done this one - let's get to the next." This spontaneity is paralleled in his almost exclusive love of the first take; his enthusiasm ran hot and he knew he would not be able to give the same spirit out again, whatever notes had hit the floor. This did not mean of course that he was unwilling to play the same tune more than once in quick succession, he could do so, but often chose to do so in different styles and tempos, refreshing the tune each time with new invention.
Garner often seems to bend notes, sliding, as he does, with his right hand from black to white keys. Thus he favors the kevs based on flats, where such opportunities abound, notably the keys of D flat,, E flat,, G flat, A flat,, and B flat, as appear in these selections. The result is melody which has the liquidity of a singer's portamento [sliding from one note to another]. He gives us much succulent ornamentation and gentle repetition of little motifs to gladden the heart. Sometimes, as in "Somebody Loves Me," he slows the tempo down as he digs in with more voluptuous rhythm as the choruses continue. He often jokes with us, as in the staccato-octave opening chorus of "Taking a Chance on Love" with its typical midkeyboard sax-section-like accompanying "woofs." He often plays his own Garner riff, as in "Lover Come Back" or "Easy to Love"; there are quotations from other melodies and often, dotted eighth-notes in the bass which bestride the beat merrily like a child, plonking about in seven-league boots, tugging gaily-fluttering kites gently and playfully in his right hand. And sometimes, he will delay the emergence of the melody as in the reckless beginning of the third chorus of "Somebody Stole My Gal" and then make us grin with his wonderful octave work in the last chorus. These are all expressions of a humor that pervades his work almost constantly - a humor that is often so much more telling than graver utterances of other jazz performers. Humor is intrinsic to Garner's nature and is a companion to his feeling tor life, to the joy and sensuality of his playing. Humor resides in the flesh of his music in both perky and witty guise.
To my mind, Erroll Garner is probably the most important pianist that I have ever heard and that includes classical pianists. The problems in his music are different from those facing a classical pianist; the answers are complex. He may sort of know what he's going to play to a greater or lesser degree from a vocabulary that expands gently and continuously. But we are always delighted with the freshness and the originality of approach, a desire to communicate. He cultivated his garden wonderfully, completely, roundly. For those people who don't hear or feel his soul, I am sorry. I don't know how one could explain the feeling to anyone. However, I think he speaks to the heart of all of us, even to those who only feel what he says, subconsciously.
In the long run, who cares it his right hand was always lagging at just the perfect point behind the left. In the long run, who cares if his right hand runs were always structurally impeccable; they actually were an infallible feature of his relaxation, plunging us into happiness and wild enthusiasms. The feeling that that particular technique exuded was one of being alive.
In the long run, who cares that his sense of texture was extraordinarily original; it was, more importantly, rich. Who cares that his hands were big and could cover this or that interval with ease; they delighted us with unparalleled, unchangeable octave work. Ultimately all these "things" gave us more pleasure. The technique cannot be separated from the music, but the music is infinitely more important. Passion . . . that's what he had . . . passion. And that's what all great artists have. A sprinkling of the demonic, a yearning for the tender, and a straight line to joy.”