A Short History of Jazz Piano
The recent crop of reissues and new CDs trace the history of jazz' defining insturment
By Tom Chandler

I feel a little overwhelmed lately. As someone who fanatically loves the sound of jazz piano trio, there’s a lot going on these days, both from the historical reissue perspective and also from the present day. I often wonder how modern musicians can compete with the weight of recorded history, but that really seems to be a moot point. What’s happening in 2005 right now is a veritable history of jazz piano, all being released on CD currently. It’s a history lesson, a journey through time, and an absolute joy to witness.

Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? Who else but Jelly Roll Morton! Rounder has put out the complete Library of Congress recordings, done by Alan Lomax in 1938. This is basically Lomax gently guiding Morton in conversation, talking about the milieu and people of New Orleans at the dawn of jazz. Periodically, Morton plays one of his tunes unaccompanied. The sound is about what you’d expect, cleaned up by modern methods but not up to modern standards. This all takes up seven discs, and while much of it has been available in one form or another over the years, it’s never been completely unabridged like this. Morton is a natural-born talker, and (as you might expect he toots his own horn quite persuasively) is consistently funny and engaging and really seems to bring his contemporaries alive. At times I had to stop and listen again, just to catch myself daydreaming about the New Orleans of old. And when he demonstrates an Indian dance, it’s amazing the way he recreates a crowd of people doing a dance and song. There’s also a bonus disc of Lomax interviews with some of Morton’s contemporaries. This set may not be something you listen to that much, but every serious jazz fan should hear it at least once. And the damn thing is shaped like a piano, complete with fold-out sound board.

Moving magically through time, we get to the holy grail of jazz history, the recently unearthed tapes of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane live at Carnegie Hall in 1957. I’m sure many people could wax more eloquently than I about how wonderful this disc is, but you pretty much have to hear it to believe it. The sound quality is crystal clear, and the rapport between Coltrane and Monk is really incredible. Shadow Wilson and Ahmed Abdul Malik round out the quartet, which of course was a regular if short-lived group at the Five Spot at the time.

Things start out very mellowly with Monk’s Mood becoming a relaxed free-form duet between the two front men. “Evidence” then takes us into something that is more clearly Monk territory. But what’s beautiful about hearing Coltrane with Monk is that, while Charlie Rouse got so thoroughly inside of Monk’s idiom, Coltrane inhabits it and then breaks out to do his own thing. Coltrane truly rages on every tune. Monk is also in peak form, aided by a wonderfully in tune piano. And Shadow Wilson steps up his game as well, reacting dynamically to the elasticity that Coltrane brought to Monk’s music. It’s easy to get lost, in the best possible way, in this world of Monk, the high priest of bop, and Coltrane, the spiritual guide of jazz yet to come.

Advancing a few years to 1961 is the box set, if you can call it that, of the seminal Village Vanguard recordings of the Bill Evans Trio, the Sunday afternoon that produced the classic Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby albums. The thing about this is that there’s only one track that hasn’t been released before, and it’s an incomplete take of ?. So it’s not like you’re going to find the gold mine of unheard Scott LaFaro material (although there are two “European pressings” that I know of that are worth seeking out on E-Bay).
But the set is sequenced in the exact order that it was performed and it sounds incredible. Not really a step up from the SACD versions of the original albums, but incredible nonetheless. It truly makes me step back and reassess this music, appreciating it all over again. Super producer Orrin Keepnews contributes a charming essay in the liner notes, of which two things stand out. One is that Evans readily said OK to record the date, which was something unusual for him, famous as he was for not feeling ready. This implies to me that he knew, as Keepnews asserts, that he and his friends were onto something special. Thing number two is that attendance was pretty sparce at the Vanguard that day. These records, which pretty much everybody acknowledges as bona fide masterpieces of jazz (five stars, penguine guide! Etc) as well as being perennial best sellers even after all these years, took place in a half empty room. And the Vanguard wasn’t a big place to begin with.

But in spite of the downer that sparse attendance must surely be, Keepnews claims that everyone involved in the recording knew on the spot that it was special. It’s just too bad that there weren’t more photographers present, because there seems to be only actual picture of the band at the Vanguard, and they’re not even playing. So, aside from the essay and the track sequencing, the only other thing to consider about this box is the price. It’s dirt cheap for a three CD set, and worth every penny.

Poof! We’re suddenly in 1964, at an allstar Blue Note date for pianist Andrew Hill. The title is Judgement, and it’s truly an unsung classic. Reissued this summer, finally, after being available only on a Japanese pressing for some time, I would say this one is indispensible. I actually would say that about many of Hill’s early Blue Notes, but I have a particular affection for this one, even over Point of Departure (but perhaps not over Black Fire). What a band: Hill, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Elvin Jones! The lack of horns brings a different element to Hill’s music, more of a openness, even a floaty quality. Hutcherson is awesome, but, true to form, Elvin steals the spotlight. This is truly magnificent Elvin, playing against Hill’s enigmatic lines and melding with Davis’ solid, strange bass lines. Like Elvin’s main gig with Coltrane, Hill’s business was taking bop into the future, toward freedom. Even though Hill was always a Composer (with a capital C), his conception allowed the players to take it out, and the sense of groove was never a tight kind of swing, but more like exactly what Elvin excels at.
Moving up to the present day (because nothing important happened between 1965 and now anyway), Brad Mehldau is breaking in a new drummer with his newest trio disc, Day is Done. Jeff Ballard definitely brings a different dynamic to the group than his predecessor Jorge Rossy (reportedly spending time in Spain with his family and working on turning himself into a pianist). If anything, the rhythmic aspect of this new trio’s music is tighter and less apt to explode than in the past. Of course, part of that might be that this is a studio album, whereas primarily the trio with Rossy recorded in live settings (not always, but surely the most successful discs were live).

The other thing that Day is Done represents is a continuation into the “New Standard” territory that Mehldau has been developing over the last few years. He seems increasingly obsessed with the possibilities of modern (or at least semi-modern) pop tunes as the vehicles for his improvisations. Which is fine, as so much of the standards catalog has been done to death. Initially, some of the choices Mehldau makes tune-wise seem scary: “She’s Leaving Home” and “Martha My Dear” by the Beatles, or “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon. There’s also the now-obligatory Radiohead song, this time it’s “Knives Out”. But Mehldau and his mates make everything so uniquely their own that any fears evaporate. That’s not to say that the tunes are unrecognizable, in fact they’re very strongly identifiable.

Mehldau’s own compostional contributions are limited to two songs, both very good songs and both very Mehldau. “Artis” swings like a motherf___, providing one of the more upbeat and open moments on this largely introspective and mysterious album. “Turtle Town” is a bossa nova, another example of how the rhythmic aspect of this group has tightened. And Chris Cheek’s “Granada” is a nice nod to a peer’s compositional strengths.

Lastly, we have what amounts to a master class in jazz history, courtesy of Jessica Williams, Live at Yoshi’s Vol. 2. While Volume one was marred by an icky bass sound, Volume two doesn’t suffer from any technical deficiency at all. Again accompanied by Ray Drummond and Victor Lewis, Williams opens with a quietly monstrous version of Miles’ “Flamenco Sketches”. And it only gets better. Over the course of the disc, she takes us through an almost stride introduction to “Why Do I Love You” and a very stride intro to “Lulu’s Back in Town”, which eventually develops into a medium tempo swinger. Elsewhere she clocks in with some impressive post bop, a few Monk-isms and everything else.

That’s what’s so awe-inspiring about Williams is that she commands such a stylistic breadth without it ever sounding like anyone but herself. And unlike the deep darkness of Mehldau, Williams’ muse is mostly irreverant and upbeat, capable of mystery but apt to break it up with some earthy blues. However, I’ve wished this before, and I’ll wish it again: I’d like to see her play with some slightly more aggressive players. Her chosen rhythm sections almost always seem to be masters of understatement, which works just fine, but throw someone like Larry Grenadier into the mix and who knows what would happen.

Live at Yoshi’s 2 is truly a stunning album. In the process of listening to it, I went to Williams’ web site and discovered that she has at least six other current CDs for sale, none of which are available anywhere but from her. That’s pretty incredible, and the possibilities are astounding.