You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Do You Need Bebop To Swing?

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

In this unique solo episode, Adam guides us through the seamless mastery of Erroll Garner, showcasing his ability to swing with incredible intensity, all while skillfully avoiding reliance on the bebop scale.↓ Links from the pod ↓Erroll Garner LIVEHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Is it time for my solo? Yes. I'm Madam Manus, and Peter Martin is out on the jazz cruise this week, so I am Roland Solo here at the You'll Hear at podcast. Welcome in, everybody. This podcast is brought to you by Open Studio. Go to Open Studiojadjazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs. Today, we're talking about a pianist that has become very near and dear to my heart. I am criminally late to the game with the great Errol Garner, but I find him endlessly fascinating, and Erl Garner has made his way into a regular rotation of music

that I listen to with pure joy. And I think it's because of just the sheer force of swing that Errol Garner plays with. He's got an incredibly sophisticated touch on the piano. He sits super high. You'll see here we're about to watch a video in 1964. He sits incredibly high at the piano and to where his elbows are above the keyboard. It looks kind of funky, but it works for him, especially with his style.

And his style is what I really am the most interested in. I think having grown up in the era of music that I've grown up in, bebop is like this critical, crucial tool for all of us to learn how to play music. And Earl Garner doesn't have a ton of bebop in his playing. He was about the same age as Charlie Parker, but has an incredibly different approach to a lot of his quote-unquote jazz contemporaries. And some people at the time didn't even consider him, you know, a jazz pianist. He's much more of a swing pianist than an entertainer, it seems, than a lot of his contemporaries. But his music is still incredibly deep to me anyway.

And I think it just goes to the show you the power of swing. having like a sophisticated swing vocabulary with loads of rhythmic vocabulary, loads of melodic vocabulary. His harmonic depth on the keyboard is kind of off the charts. He's a one-man big band, sometimes a one-man orchestra. And it's a real joy. It's real joy. Everything swings like crazy.

You can hear a lot of a lot of Ahmad Jamal-ish kinds of things here with Errol Garner's playing. And like I said, it's just kind of a different paradigm. than sort of the bebop first approach. Let's check out this live recording from 1964. This is Janine, I dream of lilac, and watch what happens at the beginning of this. The rhythm section, Eddie Calhoun on bass, and Kelly Martin on drums.

They don't know what's about to happen, and Errol's kind of teasing on it first, seeing if they can get it. This is all unlike, you know, being recorded. Look at how high up he's sitting there. Look, I mean, the elbows are like six inches, maybe, above the keys. At least six inches above the keys. It's very, very exaggerated.

The rhythm section has no idea what's going on. But with his style of right hand, which is very chordal, like I said, like a big band, like an orchestra, I think being that high up provides, it must provide some kind of advantage because he's so fluid with it, as we'll hear. All of these trio recordings, by the way, filled with these great arrangements. Look at the left hand. Low baritone voicings filling up every beat, but very, very quietly. The melody is in the soprano range. It's not an alto melody that is high.

It's just like a style of left-hand comping. You just don't see that often for modern players, but it sounds great. playing the guitarist role in a big band. And his language in the right hand, very swing-oriented. Big octaves come in. This is a signature of arrow garner, these big chords, these big right-hand octaves. Everything swings so hard, so joyful. Use of the range.

Why not? Let's go up. Why not? Let's do it. So relaxed. Note that. A lot of us, when we're playing octaves, we tend to, like, go all out. Oscar Peterson. We're going a big, big big he does it so much that it's so relaxed singing so swinging this why not let's go again come on oh let's go back okay shout out to Eddie Calhoun on bass and Kelly Martin on drums friend of the show how great is this Caleb's gonna put a link to this video it's on YouTube you can watch the full 35

minutes there's also a bunch of hour-long concerts as well let's listen to one more track here after this. Everybody's dressed so hip in 1964. This is on the street where you live melodied with or medleyed with I should say. I could have danced all that. It's all about these moments. It's a that's what I'm saying it's like a very similar vibe to the Imajima Trio. So good at creating these little moments with the arrangements. The solos don't feel like and now it's my turn to blow it feels like part of the song telling you the older I get it's the more attractive style of playing becomes crucial for life again the swing undeniable one thing to notice too is the variety of those right-hand octaves so he'll do straight octaves he'll do

chords he'll be rolling it in one direction he'll be rolling it you know bottom up or top down He'll be tremoloing it a lot. He has so many textures to that right-hand thing that he does. And he's like, he's like a, he's like a, he's like a, it's like a swordsman with that right-hand octave. You know what I mean? He's like a fencing champion. He's so light and quick with it. It's like attacks so easily and effortlessly.

It's amazing. Tand is mind-blowing, right? Again, all in that sort of low-ten. high baritone range, lower than you might think, filling up the space, but ever so quietly. And then dropping those bombs on the front foot here. He's always, back to the melody. There's melody, he's never like, you could listen to a whole Errol Garner record. He's never 10 seconds away from playing some version of melody.

Seems like he'd be a fun hang, too, doesn't he? It seems like he'd be a good time to hang out with. That's Errol Garner. If you don't know any, Errol Garner, check out Concert by the Sea. That's like the big famous record. It's a live recordings trio.

It's amazing. But it's all worth checking out. It's all very, very good. And, you know, again, like, there's no bebop in there

to speak of, even though he's a year younger, or roughly a year younger than Charlie Parker, you know, like, there's nothing, he's not in that vein.

And yet, it still feels very compelling and familiar and artful. and accessible and super fun and super, super swinging. So definitely worth your time if you haven't spent much time with it, no matter what kind of musician you are. I think there's loads of lessons in there. All right, that's my episode, my solo episode. Again, go to openstudiojazz.com if you want to go on a deeper dive. We actually do listening sessions. We did Errol Garner a couple months ago. We did an Errol Garner

LP. We listened to the whole thing. Join our community and you can get in on those and all of our classes, whatever it is. Until next time, you'll hear it.