Album Reviews

Chances are, if there's an Errol Garner record on your shelves it's 1955's Concert By the Sea (Columbia CL833). It was a not particularly well-recorded live set saved by a fiery trio performance at a Carmel-by-the Sea venue. By 1958 a million dollar's worth had sold, which was unexpected gold for Columbia Records, which hadn't bothered to send an engineering team to record it..

An Armed Forces Radio Network recording engineer was there to capture the event but Garner's manager Martha Glaser saw the machine backstage and took the tape, which she assembled into LP sides and brought to George Avakian, then head of Columbia's jazz division.

The tapes for this remarkable two LP set sat for decades on the shelves somewhere not disclosed in either the liner notes or the press blurb, nor was the impetus for the release explained but no matter: here it is on two LPs filled with previously unreleased studio performances of originals and covers recorded during three sessions spread over four years beginning in 1967 at Universal Recording in Chicago, followed by a 1969 set at Capitol Studios in New York, with the final one in 1971 at RCA Studios, New York, all with Garner backed by road-tested trios.

The audiophile fetish for pianist Bill Evans is understandable: he was a thoughtful, moody, colorful impressionist and of course he played on Kind of Blue and on the two legendary Village Vanguard sessions audiophiles revere.

Errol Garner's approach to the piano was quite the opposite: high energy, exuberant and mercurial. He didn't plan or strategize what he was going to play. It just came out, guided in part by his manager/muse Martha Glaser who can occasionally be heard here before or after takes. While he wasn't a piano pounder, Garner hit the keys with an unusually deliberate style and he seemingly never missed.

If your toes don't tap and your head doesn't bob as you listen to these intense performances wherein Garner gives an exhibition of 20th century piano stylings, well, something's not right with you.

Garner vocalizes throughout in his trademarked buzzing, sometimes gutturral vocal accompaniment that takes some getting used to but otherwise its smooth sailing on pleasingly choppy waters. In his own way, Garner was a rock and roller.

Given where these sessions were recorded you'd expect them to sound great and they do thanks to an all-star assembly and restoration team beginning with the analog to digital tape transfers done at the late, very much lamented The Magic Shop owned by Steve Rosenthal, one of the producers here along with the pianist Geri Allen. The transferred three track originals were then mixed at studio in Brooklyn and mastered by Vic Anesini at Battery Studios in NYC.

Despite the "too many cooks" scenario, they did not spoil the musical broth nor did cutting house SST in Frankfurt, Germany or MPO, which pressed in France. These sessions originally engineered by Bob Simpson, Jerry De Clerc and John Cue sound very good, with Garner immediate and center stage throughout. The overall tonality is on the warm side and perhaps a bit too soft in the upper octaves but you'll definitely like and enjoy the seemingly unrestrained dynamic contrasts.

Add attractive gatefold packaging and a full sized well-annotated booklet and what's there not to like? So pull up a telephone book, sit down and enjoy Errol Garner's Ready Take One, and believe me, you will.