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THIS WORLD, May 15, 1960 SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CHRONICLE Page 19
The Paradox of Jazz Is His Own Rhythm Section
By Ralph J. Gleason
ERROLL LOUIS GARNER, the jazz pianist who opens a three-week engagement this Thursday at the Venetian Room of the Fairmont Hotel, is a paradox even in that paradox of music, jazz.
Although he cannot read a note of music, Garner is the composer of one of the biggest hit songs in recent years.
Although his influence can be heard in a majority of the jazz pianists of the past 10 years, he himself has been challenged as non-jazz.
Although jazz is supposedly a minority music, Garner is one of the best-selling recording artists in the business.
Although Sol Hurok last month declared over the British television network that jazz was "terrible music" Garner is the first and only jazz artist ever signed by Hurok and presented by him in concert performances through the country. the Hurok sponsorship is now in its third concert season.
A multiple winner of jazz polls (Garner has been victorious as a composer, a pianist and a leader of a trio in polls in the U. S. and Europe for almost a decade), Garner is rated very highly by jazz musicians s well as by fans.
And the reason is clear after even a cursory examination
[[image - photograph]]
ERROLL GARNER
of his work for the past 15 years. Garner is one of the few talents to come to prominence in jazz full-blown, with a thoroughly worked out concept of playing. Garner's concept, tempered in his early days as a pianist in Pittsburgh, Pa., his home town, was that of playing the piano orchestrally. He was then-and still is-his own rhythm section (regardless of who is with him) and when he plays numbers that were originally orchestral specialties, the resemblance to a full orchestra in his playing is remarkable.
The chunky, ebullient pianist has always put it simply: "I want to play like an orchestra" he says. And with this concept, he returned to the idea of jazz piano as expounded by Jelly Roll Morton and eschewed that of Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Art Tatum and Bud Powell. Not that these pianists are not important in jazz (with Garner, they are the royalty of jazz piano); Garner has been influenced by them himself.
But his is an original talent and it is his luck that this original talent finds favor not only with artists in his own field, but also with the public-a blessing he shares in recent times with a few creative artists, among them Picasso.
Garner, who is a great mimic, is possessed of a nature that bubbles good humor. This is evident throughout his playing. His work combines all the positive aspects of jazz-the romanticism, the pure joy and the sprightly swing. His work is characterized by melody and rhythm in almost equal parts and his melodies are constructed in rhythmic terms. He has the dramatist's gift for the raising and lowering of tension and an architect's instinct for structural design. With a sly, elfin humor, he weaves impossibly complicated introductions to his tunes as a sort of hide-and-go-seek game with his audience and his fellow musicians before launching the melody proper.
He has great interpretive powers and loves to resurrect pretty melodies from the past. But in recent years, perhaps, his greatest reputation has been for his won compositions.
"Misty," a tune he wrote several years ago in San Francisco, is one of the biggest hits in years and already a standard part of the repertoire of every singer and musician. "Solitaire," another of his compositions, is currently getting the same treatment, and "Dreamy," still a third Garner original, is to be released in vocal form soon.
[[graphic]] The Rhythm Section [[graphic]]
In addition to his musical career, Garner, whether he expected it or not, is a major social symbol both for musicians and for the Negro race. He is one of the few topflight entertainment personalities who has consistently refused to work in the Jim Crow towns, such as Las Vegas has been in the past, regardless of the money. And he is the first instrumental jazz artist to break through to the top ranks of the concert field as well as the major hotel room circuit, thus escaping from the second class citizenship of the average jazz room.
Because of the serious ingroupiness of the jazz critics these days, there exists a pattern of disenchantment with an artist in direct proportion to his success. Garner's success has been so pronounced that some have come to maintain he is not jazz. To that one need only apply in reverse the classic formula of Mrs. Hart to her son Moss' claim to be a Captain ("By captains are you a captain?").
By jazz musicians, Erroll Garner IS a jazz musician and Milt Jackson of the Modern Jazz Quartet once expressed it succinctly when told someone didn't think Garner played jazz. "What kind of music do they think he plays?" Jackson said disgustedly. What indeed?
Album of The Week
POLL BARNEY KESSEL
WINNERS SHELLY MANNE
THREE! & RAY BROWN
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HIGH FIDELITY CONTEMPORARY
POLL WINNERS THREE: Kessel-Manne-Brown (Contemporary S 7576). This is the third in the series of LPs by Barney Kessel (guitar), Ray Brown (bass) and Shelly Manne (drums) in which they play as if they had been working together for 10 years. Each of them is a virtuoso musician and it happens that they are able to meld together into a fine unit (not always the case with great talents). I am particularly fond of "Mack the Knife," "Soft Winds" and "Easy Living" on this LP, but in point of fact almost anything they might decide to do would have been rewarding listening. They have enough of a gift for working together that they should really make some personal appearances together.
-R. J. G.
The Rhythm Albums
AD LIB, Jimmy Giuffre (Verve MGVS 6130). Clarinet and tenor in some more substantial blowing than other recent efforts and on which he has the help of Red Mitchell, Lawrence Marable and Jimmy Rowles.
DICK CARY (Columbia CL 1425). The group is called "Dixieland Doodlers" and it might as well be the Hoosier Hot Shots. There's not a great deal more than occasional fun moments here, though it is certainly less offensive than some of the dedicated revivalist Dixieland of recent years.
-R. J. G.
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On and Off the Record
JOHN COLTRANE'S new group includes Pete La Rocca, drums; and Steve Kuhn, piano ...
... Walter Benton, tenor, and Booker Little, trumpet, are now with the Max Roach Quintet replacing the Turrentine Brothers, Tommy and Stanley ...
... Curtis Fuller has left The Jazztet (which is not the surprise it might have been) and his replacement is Willie Wilson, a trombonist from Atlanta who played with Dizzy Gillespie's big band ...
... Frankie Carle recorded an LP last week end for RCA Victor. It was done at the Mark Hopkins Peacock Court and such men as Cappy Lewis, Howard Roberts, Herb Ellis, Ronnie Lang and Larry Bunker were featured in it ...
... An inter-collegiate jazz competition is being held at Monterey Peninsula College on May 30 with dance bands and combos entered from San Diego, Los Angeles, Van Nuys, San Mateo and other points in California ...
... Herbie Barman has written the music for "The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi," the Actor's Workshop production ...
... Pony Poindexter took a sabbatical from the Coffee Gallery last week to fly to New York and record with Jon Hendricks ...
... Looks as if Red Norve will return to Outside at the Inside in Palo Alto ...
... Pat Henry is working for Jimmy Lyons at the latter's club, The Pied Piper, in Monterey. That's Pat Henry, the singer ...
... Saxophonist Bob Ferreira takes a quartet into the 2-C's, a new jazz club at 30th and Mission on May 20 ...
... Ahmad Jamal, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Witherspon, The Four Freshmen, Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Ben Webster, Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge and Horace Silver and Virgil Gonsalves are announced as appearing at the Los Angeles Jazz Festival June 17 and 18 ... -R. J. G.
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