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I\u2019m going to say it was 1993 because who\u2019s going to tell me it wasn\u2019t, right? It was, in any case, one of those blessed years when a good chunk of my weekly salary was earned talking regularly to jazz musicians and I was having an especially jovial and illuminating conversation with McCoy Tyner about, mostly, the big band he sometimes, though not often enough, drove onto concert stages. Somewhere, the talk took a slight veer into the tricky issue of progenitors and I asked Tyner what he thought of Erroll Garner.<\/p>\n
Why? This is where it gets hazy, because I\u2019m not altogether sure how it came up unless Garner came to my packrat mind as an example of a jazz pianist who rarely (if ever) fronted or accompanied large ensembles, owing to a sprawling, multi-layered attack that telegraphed plenty of orchestration on its own. I also think that I was hearing much of the same lavish, often rousing ornamentation in Tyner\u2019s late style \u2013 though I thought it prudent not to frame the question in this fashion.<\/p>\n
Tatum, Monk, Bud Powell\u2026these were the names Tyner was willing, even eager to claim as influences. But Erroll Garner? Not so much and, though I never used his remarks on this topic till now, I distinctly remember him saying of Garner, not unkindly, that unlike the others in his pantheon, \u201che never made the piano sound like anything other than a piano.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought, back then, I knew what Tyner meant; that Garner, whatever his many attributes, wasn\u2019t considered one of those innovators who transformed the landscape around them, and not just jazz, or the piano. As I say, I didn\u2019t use the material in my piece, in large part because I thought Tyner\u2019s estimation was a kinder, gentler variation of the ways in which Garner\u2019s once-glowing reputation had dimmed along jazz\u2019s upper reaches.<\/p>\n
Not that plenty of people weren\u2019t trying hard twenty-something years ago to stoke those fires again; esoteric classicists such as Dick Hyman would talk Garner up any chance he got. Always there were the inexhaustible efforts of Garner\u2019s manager Martha Glaser, whose devotion to her client\u2019s best interests endured well beyond her client\u2019s death in 1977. She was always ready to talk on the phone about Garner and promote an event celebrating his legacy \u2013 and on those occasions when I obliged her, I routinely insisted to my readers that Erroll Garner deserved to remembered as much more than the man who wrote \u201cMisty.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My readers, I like to think, may have been smarter about such things than musicians since Garner\u2019s crowd-pleasing, readily accessible swing left them feeling very happy. Glaser herself died a year ago next month at 93. What\u2019s happened since would make her<\/em> very happy.<\/p>\n For this has been the year that Erroll Garner\u2019s reputation has been rejuvenated by the release in September of The Complete Concert by the Sea<\/em> (Sony Legacy), a three-disc package that presents in unedited form on the first two discs the live performance on September 19, 1955 (yes, if you\u2019re scoring, 60 years ago) by Garner, drummer Denzil Best and bassist Eddie Calhoun in what is now the Sunset Arts Center in Carmel, California. The third disc offers the same edited version of the concert that, along with Time Out <\/em>and Kind of Blue<\/em>, became one of Columbia\u2019s evergreen jazz LPs of the decade.<\/p>\n Not everybody loved it, though I never quite understood the beefs since they seemed to have little if anything to do with the music. After I finally bought my own copy of the original LP in the mid-1970s \u00a0having heard so much about it for years, a perpetually grouchy friend of mine sneered that it wasn\u2019t an album so much as a mood-setting accessory for \u201cswinging\u201d bachelors. This jaundiced view, I\u2019m embarrassed to say, held unjust dominion over my own; when at first, I was captivated by Garner\u2019s high spirits, jaunty humor, and infectious cleverness, I would instead see these qualities as happy hour ruffles and flourishes intended to get a rise out of the Carmel crowd, which seemed cued to applaud every ornate lick and at every point when a familiar melody made its presence known. Then and now, I wondered what they were really clapping for: Garner\u2019s prefatory inventions or their own ability to, so to speak, Name That Tune when it materialized.<\/p>\n And yet, my inner crank was at war with my even younger self, who was enchanted with Garner\u2019s witty, crafty 1947 solo, \u201cFrankie and Johnny Fantasy\u201d <\/a>or immersed myself in my parents\u2019 1967 LP, That\u2019s My Kick<\/em>, with its double conga drums and hooky original compositions, \u201cNervous Waltz\u201d<\/a> and \u201cLike It Is.\u201d A self-taught, ambidextrous pianist who couldn\u2019t help growling at the keyboard seemed eccentric enough to avoid being diminished as lightweight. Yet as with such sui generis pianists as Ahmad Jamal and Keith Jarrett (who also makes strange noises while he plays), Garner\u2019s popularity with the public seemed something of an indictment to jazz snobs.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n