BLP 5007

Erroll Garner - Overture To Dawn - Volume 1

Released - 1952

Recording and Session Information

Timme Rosenkrantz apartment, West 46th Street, NYC, December 10-12, 1944
Erroll Garner, piano.

Overture To Dawn

Timme Rosenkrantz apartment, West 46th Street, NYC, December 14, 1944
Erroll Garner, piano.

215A 12A I Hear A Rhapsody, Part 1
215A 12B I Hear A Rhapsody, Part 2
You Were Born To Be Kissed

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
I Hear A Rhapsody	Gershin, Fragos, Baker	December 14 1944
You Were Born To Be Kissed	Erroll Garner	December 14 1944
Side Two
Overture To Dawn	Erroll Garner	December 10-12 1944

Liner Notes

In the past few years Erroll Garner has enjoyed international acclaim as one of the truly original stylists in jazz. Many, many records have been released, featuring his puckish piano personality on the fast tunes and his romantic, spread-chord style on the ballads. Almost all these records have been devoted to standard popular songs.

That is why the two LP discs now being released on Blue Note have a special interest for the jazz lover. They are unlike the flood of Garner sides released on major labels in the past year or two; first, in that they do not suffer from the three-minute time limitation that has often restricted Erroll's imagination, second, in that they were recorded without any planned attempt to please the general public - in fact, without the realization that they would ever be released at all.

The story of how they were recorded makes them unique in a third respect, for these are the first records Garner ever made. Soon after he came to New York from Pittsburgh in the fall of 1944 to make his living as a denizen of 52nd Street, Erroll started dropping in at the nearby home of Baron Timme Rosenkrantz, the Danish nobleman who has long been know and liked in the jazz world as a fan, writer and promoter. Timme, with Inez Cavanaugh, set up his apartment as a recording studio and often played back the improvisations of visiting musicians for their own amusement.

When Erroll played Timme's piano and Timme put the cutting needle to work, it was the first time Erroll ever had a chance to hear himself. Night after night he came back, playing long, rambling ad lib concertos. On these discs they have titles - Overture to Dawn, because it was recorded in the small hours; Floating On A Cloud, Autumn Mood, Erroll's Concerto and You Were Born To Be Kissed; but in fact they were being composed while they we played, and the next morning Erroll could not have repeated any of them. They had no titles, no set form, yet they have a greater variety and continuity of mood, a truer ring of artistry, than almost any of the commercially recorded sides of later years. The Overture and Autumn Mood, in particular, show facets of Erroll's style that are rarely heard nowadays.

Sure, the recording is by no means perfect, and the technical aspects reflect the informality of the conditions under which they were made; but by the same token, they reflect the complete freedom Erroll enjoyed from self-consciousness, from the knowledge that he was playing for an audience.

Here is a man sitting down at a piano and, to all intents and purposes, playing to and for himself; quietly, contemplatively and with a serene beauty. It is the kind of music that can be captured all too rarely in the extrovert world of jazz.

LEONARD FEATHER
Associate Editor, Down Beat

1995 Charly CD Reissue Liner Notes

Pianist Mary Lou Williams remembered a visit she made to her home town of Pittsburgh in the Thirties and being told about a young man then attending Westinghouse High School with Mary Lou's niece and his expertise at the piano. "I arranged to visit a friend's house to hear Erroll and was surprised to find such a little guy playing so much. And he did not even read music. The next few days were spent just listening to him. He was original then, sounding like no one in the world but Erroll Garner." Miss Williams tried to teach him some of the basic, technical rudiments about music. "I soon found he didn't want to bother" she recalled, "so I skipped it....I realised he was born with more than most musicians could accomplish in a lifetime".

Erroll was born in Pittsburgh on June 15, 1921 and made a name for himself quite early, playing with local bands and with visiting groups which arrived in Pittsburgh temporarily short of a pianist. On the one occasion Erroll and I met, an unforgettable evening which came about quite accidentally when he had some spare time and we both happened to be in the EMI headquarters together, he regaled me with very amusing stories from his early days. On one occasion he appeared at the William Penn Hotel with violinist Blue Barron's "Mickey Mouse" band, a unit which contained a number of jazzmen studiously playing polkas and waltzes right up to the time Barron left to socialise with some prestigious customers, leaving the band in charge of the lead trumpeter. As soon as the doors closed behind Barron the "illegal" swing charts came out but Blue found out and took the offenders to the union for failing to carry out his orders. "They were all fined" Erroll told me "and some of the guys had to hock their doubling instruments to pay the union fines. But it didn't affect me." In fact Garner had had a refusal from the Pittsburgh local of the AFM because they found he couldn't read music!

He made his first trip to New York with a girl singer, Ann Lewis, as her accompanist. On his second visit to The Apple he met Lucky Roberts, the pianist who had written a number of tunes including Moonlight Cocktail. At that time Roberts was running the "Rendezvous" club in Harlem and Garner worked for him. This led to other club gigs at locations such as the "Melody Bar" on Broadway and "Jimmy's Chicken Shack" which was actually next door to the "Rendezvous". During the intervals, and on his off-nights, Garner went straight to 52nd Street to hear the new experimental music being played by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. It was around this time that he got to know singer Inez Cavanaugh who introduced him to the Danish baronet and ardent jazz fan, Timme Rosenkrantz. At the time Rosenkrantz had an apartment at 7 West 46th Street which contained, amongst other things, a disc recorder which used 16 inch acetates. It was here that all of the music on this compact disc was recorded during November and December, 1944. World War Two was still on and the supply of acetates was probably uncertain but Rosenkrantz always seemed to have discs on hand whenever Erroll turned up. Timme learned his jazz appreciation craft at locations such as Milt Gabler's Commodore Music Shop and in May, 1938 he produced a session for RCA Victor (featuring men such as Rex Stewart, Russell Procope and Don Byas) under the amusing title Timme Rosenkrantz And His Barrelhouse Barons. Timme was a kindly, affable man, often to be found in Doug Dobell's shop at 77 Charing Cross Road in the Sixties and Seventies, which was where I got to know him. But it was his perspicacity in spotting Garner's talents back in 1944 which marked him as a man of exceptional foresight. Most of those "Apartment Sessions" took place with just Erroll sitting alone at the Baron's piano but occasionally the room would also contain men such as Vic Dickenson, Charlie Shavers, Barney Bigard and Slam Stewart. If drums were required, and George Wettling was not around, then Timme would add some discreet percussion effects himself.

Over the years several of the "Apartment" titles appeared on a variety of labels (Timme was always generous in leasing his material) including Selmer, Dial, Vogue and Dobells' "77" series then, in 1953, Blue Note released two solo sets as ten-inch LPs titled "Overture To Dawn" Volumes One and Two. These proved to be popular so Volumes Three, Four and Five followed suit but these were never reissued by Blue Note as twelve-inch LPs and those early ten-inch albums are prized collector's items. This present CD contains the whole of the original Blue Note Volumes One and Two and the "A" side of Three; a second Le Jazz issue will comprise the remainder of the Blue Note tracks.

At this time Garner was pleased to be able to display his admiration for both Art Tatum (as a pianist) and Claude Debussy (as a composer). It was from the latter that he got his "Impressionist" approach to original ballads and, ultimately, found fame and fortune with Misty. But these early "Apartment" discs provide more than a hint of what was to come. This is abstract painting translated to the keyboard, the colours coagulating and merging to form magic sounds. Mimi Clar wrote one of the best and most perceptive pieces on Erroll's style in an early issue of the late, lamented "Jazz Review" (edited by Nat Hentoff and Martin Williams). "Three main influences or roots are discernible in Garner's style" wrote Mimi "namely ragtime, Impressionism and Harlem stride piano like that of Fats Waller. The lush harmonica and dreamy meanderings of Erroll's slow ballads come from Impressionism. The bounce and gaiety of his up-tempo tunes come from ragtime. The robust vitality and sly humour which permeate his playing come from Fats Waller and the stride school. It must be observed that these roots are purely pianistic ones, rather than Keyboard outgrowths of influential horn styles". Miss Clar goes on to point out, and demonstrates with musical examples transcribed from records, the importance of chords in Erroll's melodies. "The chordal melodies are executed with the same facility, at the same rate of speed, and within the same stylistic framework as are his single-finger efforts. A favourite trick, and an example of his omnipresent sense of humour, is to build a series of crashing chords to a tremendous crescendo, then suddenly to break off Cat what should be the all-out climax) into a high, pianissimo, delicate single-finger line". The use of chords was certainly a feature of Garner's work, especially on some of the tracks included here; in fact some of his own originals were so rich in harmony that if one played just the chords, one had virtually also played the melody, which is true also of some popular songs, All The Things You Are for example.

The "Apartment Sessions" are important in a number of ways, not the least being the fact that Timme's sixteen-inch acetates gave playing times of over ten minutes. Overture In Dawn gives a clue to the time of the sessions. At this period Garner was active at a number of locations, sometimes racing from one club to the next in order to fulfil engagements. "There was one time when I had three jobs on The Street" he told Arnold Shaw, author of "52nd Street" (Da Capo Press) "I was working at Tondelayo's, doubled at the Dueces and accompanied Billy Daniels when he played the Spotlite. And one night when the Pianist didn't show at the Onyx, I played there too. Four jobs. And that was just about making a good week's salary. The clubs sure didn't pay. They were making money hand over fist. But the musicians couldn't get money out of them"

In September, 1945 Erroll made his first big impression on the record-buying public when his record of Laura came out on the Savoy label. From then on the only way was up and his popularity increased by leaps and bounds. Yet despite his appeal to non-specialised audiences he remained always the committed jazzman. Gamer straddled the swing and bop eras with ease, at home with Vic Dickenson and Charlie Parker. (He led his trio on the memorable Dial session of February, 1947 when they backed Parker and vocalist Earl Coleman; that evening when we met and talked, and laughed, Erroll told me it was he, and not Bird, who wrote Cool Blues. "It was my tune" he said "but Bird was down on his luck and just out of Camarillo so I gave it to him. He got the royalties at a time he needed the money".)

Under the astute agency of Martha Glaser, Garner became big business right up until his untimely death, following a heart attack, on January 2, 1977. He was 55 and had accomplished so very much in his lifetime. But the beginning is here, in Timme Rosenkrantz's apartment, the early dawn light filtering through the curtains and those full, rich chords creating magic.

ALUN MORGAN