Emulating Bill Evans - By Doug Ramsey

Emulating Bill Evans
By Doug Ramsey
Wall Street Journal - September 14, 2010

Regardless of style, era or instrument, the greatest jazz artists share an essential attribute: recognizability. Individualists like Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Artie Shaw, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans announce themselves. Their tone, phrasing, touch, harmonic choices and rhythmic turns are calling cards.
Generations of pianists have tried to copy the jazz legend's style.
Among pianists, Evans, who died 30 years ago Wednesday at age 51, is as immediately identifiable as Tatum, Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson and Bud Powell. In artistry and influence, he is their inheritor and successor. With the exception of those who specialize in stride or boogie woogie, virtually all jazz pianists who developed from the early 1960s on learned from Evans and, if they could, adapted aspects of his playing. In the second volume of "The Harmony of Bill Evans" (Hal Leonard Corp.), pianist and composer Jack Reilly writes that "he changed the approach to the sound of jazz piano by his touch and his attention to pedaling, phrasing and dynamics." He emphasizes Evans's "remarkable way of handling the possibilities of interplay within the piano-bass-drums trio." Mr. Reilly's books are how-to manuals for musicians with the chops and ears to employ Evans's innovations.
Evans's invention of melodies puts him in a league with Chopin, Schubert and Gershwin, his wizardry with chords in a league by himself. He admired harmonic aspects of Lennie Tristano and Dave Brubeck, but no one in jazz before Evans voiced chords and moved through harmonies as he did.
Thirty years after his death on Sept. 15, 1980, Evans is omnipresent in a range of pianists that includes Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Fred Hersch, Jessica Williams, Billy Childs, Bill Mays, Denny Zeitlin, Larry Willis and—this is not a stretch—hundreds of others. His uses of chords influence not only players of every instrument but also the work of composers and arrangers. They were a major factor when Evans collaborated with Miles Davis in the celebrated "Kind of Blue" album in 1959.
Evans pioneered a way of opening up harmonies—his so-called "rootless" chords—that freed his bassists to interact above, below, in and around his piano playing. A CD called "Tenderly: An Informal Session" (Milestone) includes a snippet of conversation in the mid-'50s following Evans's spontaneous duet with the multi-instrumentalist Don Elliott.
Evans: "I like to blow free like that, with no 'four' going, but you know where you're at. It's crazy. If everybody could do that, if the bass could be playing that way—why not?—drums could just . . ." (He vocalizes in imitation of a drummer playing free.)
Elliott: "That's right; doesn't have to help you."
Evans: "Not if everybody feels it, man."
Finally, in 1959 Evans formed a trio with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, who felt what Evans had been hearing in his mind for years. Their albums, notably "Portrait in Jazz," "Explorations" and "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" (all for the Riverside label), set new levels of aspiration for pianists and new standards for interaction in jazz-piano trios.
Regiments of young bassists imitate LaFaro's ability to play high and fast, but most do not or cannot begin to approximate his lyricism, timing or depth of tone, which Evans likened to the sound of an organ. Many new bassists emulate the technique they hear from LaFaro on the Evans recordings without understanding how it fits into the complex relationship among Evans, LaFaro and Mr. Motian. They miss how LaFaro's note choices relate to the impressionistic chord voicings that give Evans's playing so much of its character. Worse, they overlook at least half of what made LaFaro a great bassist: the power of his straight-ahead swing, which meshed with Evans's own rhythmic concept.
In July 1961, less than two weeks after the trio recorded at the Village Vanguard, LaFaro died in a car crash at the age of 25. His death sent Evans into depression so deep that, according to Mr. Motian, he did not perform for six months. Gene Lees, a close friend of Evans, wrote in his book "Meet Me at Jim & Andy's" (Oxford), "After LaFaro's death, Bill was like a man with a lost love, always looking to find its replacement." Evans's bereavement over LaFaro affected him the rest of his life, but he went back to work with Mr. Motian and a new bassist, Chuck Israels. In succeeding trios, Eddie Gomez and Marc Johnson—virtuosi heavily influenced by LaFaro—had the bass chair. Evans recorded, unaccompanied and with others, for nearly two more decades.
Pegging Evans as an introspective, withdrawn musician is a cliché of jazz criticism, but from the beginning there was muscle and grit in his playing. That is evident in recordings early in his career with George Russell's sextet on "Concerto for Billy the Kid" (The George Russell Smalltet, Bluebird) and a large Russell band on "All About Rosie" (Brandeis Jazz Festival, Gambit).
The loss of his beloved brother Harry in 1979 sent Evans into another period of depression, but toward the end his assertive qualities intensified. In "Consecration" (Milestone), a set of eight CDs recorded at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco, his playing with Mr. Johnson and the remarkable drummer Joe LaBarbera is full of fire. Suffering from illness complicated by his long, dogged affair with drugs, he may have known that he was dying. Evans's final recorded piece, from Sept. 9, 1980, is Rodgers and Hart's "My Romance," a staple of his repertoire. With his breathtaking introduction, the playful accompaniment of Messrs. LaBarbera and Johnson, and the group's spirited three-way conversation, it is not a death rattle, but a life-affirming shout.
In New York six days later, Bill Evans was gone.
Mr. Ramsey is a winner of the Jazz Journalists Association Lifetime Achievement Award. He blogs about jazz and other matters at www.dougramsey.com