Five-Star Collection... Erroll Garner

Erroll Garner

That's My Kick

This was Erroll Garner's first traditional studio album in five years and perhaps his most ambitious album ever as a composer. The selections were surely inspired by the new array of musicians assembled for the sessions, including percussionist José Mangual, who would go on to play with Garner for the rest of his career. The electric atmosphere captured on tape here is at times raucous and always palpably joyful.

The Erroll Garner Octave Remastered Series represents the heart of Erroll Garner's recorded catalog. Spanning 12 albums and the last 18 years of Garner's career, this collection of music is among the most important in the history of jazz. It represents an artist in his prime, with full creative and commercial control of his output following his break with Columbia Records. *mackavenue.com*

Actually, this isn't a recording. It's live music in your living room — and it's a ball. It romps with a lack of inhibitions and tenseness rarely captured in the uptight and businesslike sterility of a recording studio. The feeling is one of now and close. The musicians were playing for the fun of it right then and not for some vague and unknown listener someplace and sometime else.

Immediacy and presence: Empathy and joy. The life hasn't been programmed out of the human beings here, as it so often is in our "advanced" society, in favor of that glossy God Technology, which will soon program the life out of all of us if we are not careful. It takes a man with the energy of Erroll Garner to achieve audio-fidelity with humanity, not at the sacrifice of it.

Erroll is the only guy around who can sound like two different instruments playing at two different tempos at the same time, and still swing. His left hand is a guitar pushing the beat, his right a pianist lagging. They meet, somehow, and where they do is right where the rhythm section is — the right place to be. Erroll's time is here extended; extended to and meshed perfectly with the rhythm section. The bongos and the balance reflect a more important role for the accompaniment than in Erroll's past. They nest together like lovers in a haystack, five people making music together — as one. (...)

Primarily, though, we owe him thanks for the happy energy his music gives to us and to that extent this record adds to his vital body of recorded works. It is the same joy, even more so.

*Michael Zwerin (from the liner notes)*

Garner's first album in many years without his custom-tailored rhythm section (and with the addition of bongos and guitar) finds him in excellent form, and top-drawer Garner is as good as they come.

A peculiar snobbishness has kept a number of jazz critics from giving Garner his due. Partly, it's the old claptrap: can a musician become a star attraction and remain a creative artist, and variants of this jive question; and partly, it's the ease with which Garner makes music, and the joy he takes in his work — there just isn't enough Sturm und Drang to satisfy those who insist that an artist must suffer to be great.

This distorted perspective (which fortunately has not affected Garner's career one whit) has brought about an absurd situation: though he has been proving it for more than 20 years, one still feels compelled to repeat that Garner is one of the few truly great and original figures to emerge in jazz since the mid-40s; a unique and astonishing musician whose work brings beauty and happiness to the world.

There are no fewer than six Garner originals on this record, all of them substantial. My favorite, as far as interpretation is concerned, is the latin-tinged Afinidad, on which the pianist really gets into something, and the rhythm section achieves a floating feeling, not least due to Ryerson's first-class support, and the late George Jenkins' excellent drumming (these two players are present only on this and the lilting, melodic title track).

Of the other Garner pieces, Gaslight is a vintage ballad in the romantic Misty mold, tastefully played — and if you want to hear full-bodied piano-sound at its fullest, watch for Garner's climax.

Nervous Waltz is a delightful piece, its melody akin to Kick (not the bridge, though). Garner's marvelous ability to produce a lagging swing (his time, generally speaking, is out of sight) is displayed to perfection here. Passing Through, a catchy up-tempo piece, has some - fine single note passages and never stops flowing, while the gospel-flavored Like It Is indicates that Garner could really get Ramsey Lewis and his ilk in bad trouble.

Garner has an amazing ability to revitalize material that others have wrung dry. Who would think that Autumn Leaves could still sound fresh? It does under Garner's fingers, moving at a brisk, unsentimental clip, with his orchestral conception of the piano to the fore.

Contemporary harmonies are in evidence here, and even more so on Necessarily, perhaps the most brilliant single performance in the set. The voicings in the exposition are marvelous, and the ensuing improvisation full of surprises.

The other standards — Smile, Moon, More — are more "routine" Garner, but that, too, means superior music. Besides, whenever you begin to anticipate Garner, he pulls you up with a startling idea. On More, it's a fascinating contrapuntal break; on Smile, the transitional chords linking the exposition and second chorus (speaking of "freedom"...) and on Moon, the surprise introduction.

Of the rhythm players not mentioned above, Mangual has the greatest empathy with Garner. He became a regular in the new Garner quartet organized after this session. Hinton is solid, as expected, and Lovelle a bit reticent. The guitar has been dispensed with, and with Garner's left hand in action, it won't be missed. The new group has been received with enthusiasm, and the next Garner album should be something to look forward to. But aren't they all?

*Dan Morgenstern (Down Beat, August 24, 1967 [5 stars])*

 

1 - That's My Kick

(Erroll Garner)

2 - The Shadow Of Your Smile

(Johnny Mandel, Paul Francis Webster)

3 - Like It Is

(Erroll Garner)

4 - It Ain't Necessarily So

(George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin)

5 - Autumn Leaves

(Jacques Prévert, Johnny Mercer, Joseph Cosma)

6 - Blue Moon

(Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart)

7 - More

(Nino Oliviero, Norman Newell, Riziero Ortolani)

8 - Gaslight

(Erroll Garner)

9 - Nervous Waltz

(Erroll Garner)

10 - Passing Through

(Erroll Garner)

11 - Afinidad

(Erroll Garner)

12 - She Walked on

(Erroll Garner)

#1, #11, #12:

Erroll Garner (piano), Milt Hinton (bass), Art Ryerson (guitar),

George Jenkins (drums), Johnny Pacheco (bongos).

Recorded at RCA Studios, New York City, April 13, 1966

#2 to #10:

Erroll Garner (piano), Milt Hinton (bass), Wally Richardson (guitar),

Herbert Lovelle (drums), José Mangual (bongos).

Recorded at RCA Studios, New York City, November 19, 1966