Erroll Garner died thirty years ago, almost to the day. I don’t know whether the National Public Radio station I listen to was aware of that, but the past few days during morning news programming, the producers cued up a few seconds of Garner’s piano as transitions between local and national segments. The news was mostly grim, but Garner was full of cheer and optimism, as he was in life. Even in fifteen-second bursts, he got the day off to a good start. I cannot think of another jazz pianist after Fats Waller who made serious music with so much happiness.
Garner is not often mentioned these days in discussions of major pianists but, unquestionably, he was one. As when he was alive, the tendency among critics–but not among pianists–is to dismiss him as a naïf, an instinctual primitive who never learned to read music, as if reading music is more important than making it. He didn’t read because he didn’t have to. He didn’t learn the names of chords because the chords presented themselves to him before he knew they had names. In harmony, melody and rhythm, Garner was complete, and he was one of the few pianists who could improvise convincing variations based on melody lines alone. I don’t buy the argument that if he had learned to read it would have diluted his originality. Nothing could have done that. What would reading have done for him, brought him studio session work? He didn’t need it. He was a star before he was thirty, a huge popular success by the end of the 1950s, the only jazz musician the impresario Sol Hurok ever booked.
As a recording artist, Garner was remarkably consistent. I cannot recall one of his albums that was substandard, but it is easy to recommend one in which he has no moment that is less than inspired. It is his most famous, Concert by the Sea. The recorded sound is less than perfect, in fact notably less than perfect. The piano had not been visited by a tuner. It doesn’t matter. That night in 1955, Garner was a force of nature. Close second: Campus Concert, taped at Purdue University in 1964, also with his faithful sidekicks bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin. This one has a priceless back-to-back double-header “Lulu’s Back in Town” followed by “Almost Like Being in Love;” as much swing and joy as it is legal to pack into eight-and-a-half minutes.
To see Garner at work, visit this video clip from 1962, when he was at the height of his fame. Yes, that’s a telephone book he’s sitting on. He took the Manhattan directory on the road with him. It gave him just the right height. Watch Calhoun concentrating on Garner’s hands as he tries to anticipate what the boss is leading up to in his Rachmaninoffian introduction.
Have a good weekend.
Erroll Garner
January 6, 2007 By
what stupid comments -as
if being booked by Hurok meant anything except making money..Liberace was a star also – big deal about stars ……….
Erroll Garner’s “Concert by the Sea” is on my Top Ten list. I had the opportunity to hear him live with his trio one time in his home town of Pittsburgh (and meet him). The power, musicality and virtuosity of that concert is still stamped on my brain.
Much thanks for this item. I grew up listening to Concert by the Sea and am grateful to be reminded of it.
I want to thank you once again for bringing another stellar column to us about a musical genius who many of us may have overlooked in the past. It has been many years since I have listened to Concert by the Sea. You are right, it is simply brilliant. The grace, bounce, and joy evident in this music is seldom heard today.
I look forward to being enlightened by your profiles again in 2007.
Re: Erroll Garner, one of the best solo jazz piano records ever is SOLILOQUY, recorded in two hours at Columbia studios in 1957. Available on CD only as a French import.
Here’s a link to an article on Erroll written in connection with a 1996 Jazz Profiles documentary I produced for NPR. The writing’s a little shaky, but the article contains some nice quotes by Steve Allen, Billy Taylor, George Avakian and Dan Morgenstern. http://errollgarner.com/intro.html
Thank you, Doug, and thank you,too, Paul for a couple of very nice pieces on Erroll.
Doug, I agree 100% with everything you wrote.
These moments will live forever. Garner’s gift are so formidable as to seem almost magical, touched by a force so powerful, yet so sweetly tender that one can only marvel and be thankful that he existed.
To think he that he may never have existed is to deny God’s shining brightness and playful, joyful innocence.
To say the he was a giant is to reduce the man to our paltry human terms. He was a gift.
So thankful for your great entry on Erroll Garner and also for Enrique S.’s poetic tribute to this glorious natural musician!!! My very first live jazz concert was in upstate NY, when my Dad took me to an E.G.concert that just lifted me into the realm of angels because of the overwhelming joy that emanated from that dear sweet man and his piano!!!
Too true Doug, too true. Erroll was one of my earliest influences, and even though I ended up on the “classical” side of life I still consider him one of the most interesting and original pianists ever. His amazing one-take performance of “Will You Still Be Mine?” I still have in my top 10 list of Great Piano Rides of All Time.
(For Mr. Eddins’s biography, photo and links to his work, see: http://www.omicronarts.com/html/eddins1.htm –DR)
Garner was something special, of course. There was something in his music (the joy, probably) that spread him far beyond the jazz audience. I can recall that as a grade schooler in the very early ’50s I knew who he was and loved his music. It wasn’t until later when I started paying attention to ‘jazz’ that I learned he was considered to be a ‘jazz musician’.
I think great credit should be given to the very industrious Bob Erwig, who has contributed so may great clips to the Youtube site. Now semi-retired in Vancouver, the Dutch-born Erwig was a long-time member of the Toronto jazz scene as the cornetist in the traditional Climax Jazz Band. Though I’ve known him for more than three decades, I had no idea of the stash of great jazz videos he’s been sharing with the world.
I picked up your website whilst browsing for some biographical info on Erroll Garner and your article of January 6th was one of the best I have read on this truly outstanding musician. I have been a fan and collecting his LP’s and CD’s for over 50 years, and I am happy to have heard him in person in NYC in 1956 at I think Basin Street East. Sadly not too many people today have heard of him but those to whom I have introduced his playing have become fans immediately – but then how could it be otherwise – his gift and his sheer joy in playing the piano is infectious, true genius indeed.
Nice article. I had the pleasure of interviewing by phone, about three years ago, the gentleman in Carmel, CA who did all the piano tunings for Sunset Center, where Erroll’s “Concert by the Sea” was taped that evening by someone, on an old Wollensock tape recorder. My tuner friend did in fact tune the piano that day before Erroll’s arrival, and mentioned that the instrument was a very fine Steinway grand, which was virtually brand new to Sunset Center at the time. This gentleman still tunes for many of Carmel’s citizens today, some of whom are “household” names. But rest assured the piano was in tune, at least at the start of Erroll’s concert!
While there are lots of great Garner CD’s available, it’s tragic that Eroll’s manager does not feel it important to share more of the tons of unissued Garner material she is hoarding–like refusing to share a huge sheaf of Mozart manuscripts the world has not yet seen. Erroll was one of
the great giants of jazz, though this is not recognized in many quarters.
PS—favorite Garner anecdote–after a 1960s concert in London, a woman in the audience rushed up to Erroll and said breathlessly, “Mr. Garner, Mr. Garner, what you’re doing just can’t be done!” As a pianist myself, I can
attest that she was right on with that statement, too.
If you haven’t yet had a chance to read my friend Jim
Doran’s excellent Garner bio, “The Most Happy Piano,” please treat yourself, though copies can be hard to locate, as it’s been out of print for a while.