Babs, Mark and Bill

Another guest post from Babs. I have to confess that I know very little about the subject, so I'm looking forward very much to exploring new territory.

 

At the age of six in Brooklyn Heights, I started taking piano lessons, with Mrs. Giordano, a local middle-aged Italian-American woman, who taught music to children. Teaching children was a funny business for her to go into, as she hated children. The lessons were not private, so every Saturday morning, I was with three other kids: identical twin sisters, and a strange boy whose name was Jacob, who always wore a bow tie, and when you looked at him, became agitated, and would scream “WHAT?” at the top of his lungs. The twins were named Ava and Grace, and wore the exact same clothes. They also played this game where they would switch identities, so when Mrs. Giordano told Ava it was her turn to play, she’d say, “I’m not Ava, I’m Grace” and Grace would follow suit. This usually caused Mrs. Giordano to go red in the face, and curse to herself in Italian.

After six or so years, and several teachers later, I could sight-read sheet music, and play things I heard on the radio by ear. The last of those teachers was Miss Eckert, who was retiring to Florida, and recommend a piano teacher named Mark, whom she described to my mother as “A colorful character”.

So I started taking lessons with Mark, who was an early 60s hipster complete with goatee, who had a very cool apartment, and owned hundreds upon hundreds of records that were scattered all over his apartment. The first time I was around people smoking weed, I recognized the smell from Mark’s apartment, where it always seemed to be lingering in the air, along with Camel cigarettes that he chain-smoked. My Mother thought Mark was a creep, I thought he was “dreamy”.

During one lesson, Mark told me “Don’t play the melody as written, instead, play a variation of it, improvise, play what you feel and don’t worry if it doesn’t sound good”. So I did my best with mixed results. Mark told me it was good for a first try, and said my light touch reminded him of Jazz pianist Bill Evans. With that, Mark searched through plies of records, and finally found the Bill Evans LP “Sunday at the Village Vanguard”, put it on his turntable, and it blew my mind. 

 Bill Evans

 

Bill Evans records led me to Miles Davis, which led me to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. One record led to another, so on and so on, all of which led to my lifelong love affair with Jazz.

 

Years later, in 1968 and 69, during summer breaks from Caltech, my husband Jerry (then boyfriend) and I spent our days on Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles County, surfing, smoking Michoacán, drinking Olympia beer, and dropping acid called “Orange Sunshine”. Our nights were spent in the cocktail lounge of the Casa del Mar hotel in Santa Monica, where I played piano (with an oversized brandy snifter on the piano for tips), while Jerry mixed cocktails. Every set I played opened and closed with “Gloria's Step”, the first track on “Sunday at the Village Vanguard”.

The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings

 

 Bill Evans’ “The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings” was released as a 3 CD boxed set in 2005. It was recorded on June 25, 1961, and documents each of their five sets from the final day of a summer gig at the Village Vanguard. Its influence has spanned several generations of musicians. 

 

The Trio - what a great sketch!

The Bill Evans Trio’s rhythm section was Scott LaFaro on bass, who, as you will hear, was a phenomenal bassist and writer, who played with an amazing fluidity, velocity, and melodic inventiveness on his instrument. Tragically, Scott would die in a car accident ten days after this gig. He was just twenty-three-years old. On drums, and equally phenomenal, was the legendary Paul Motian, who had a style that challenged your idea of traditional timekeeping, but could lay it down simply and solidly with the best of them. He often blended both approaches within one song, showing that traditional and avant-garde jazz could co-exist. He would continue recording until 2010, and passed in 2011 from Myelodysplastic syndrome. Paul and I lived in the same building for many years, and we were close friends.

Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian

Bill Evans is one of my favorite musicians, and one of the most influential and tragic figures of the post-bop jazz piano. He was known for his highly nuanced touch, the clarity of the feeling content of his music and his reform of the chord voicing system pianists used. Bill recorded over fifty albums as leader, received five Grammy Awards, and played on Miles Davis’ breakthrough album “Kind of Blue”.

Bill Evans passed on September 15, 1980, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He was 51 years old.

Babs will be along shortly to take notes and ask questions...