BLP 5014

Erroll Garner - Overture To Dawn - Volume 3

Released - 1953

Recording and Session Information

Timme Rosenkrantz apartment, NYC, November 24, 1944
Erroll Garner, piano.

On The Sunny Side Of The Street

Timme Rosenkrantz apartment, NYC, December 10-12, 1944
Erroll Garner, piano; others unknown but possibly include Vick Dickenson, Bobby Platt, trombone; Barney Bigard, clarinet; Timme Rosenkrantz, percussion; However, most of them were overdubbed in 1953?.

Yesterdays

Timme Rosenkrantz apartment, NYC, December 20, 1944
Erroll Garner, piano; unknown, guitar.

Fast Company

Timme Rosenkrantz apartment, NYC, December 23, 1944
Erroll Garner, piano; possibly John Simmons, bass; overdubbed in at a later date, poss. 1953.

I Got Rhythm

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
I Got Rhythm	Gershwin	December 23 1944
On the Sunny Side Of The Street	McHugh-Fields	November 24 1944
Side Two
Yesterdays	Kern-Harbach	December 10-12 1944
Fast Company	Erroll Garner	December 20 1944

Liner Notes

The success of Blue Note's first Erroll Garner releases (BLP 5007, Vol. 1 and BLP 5008 Vol. 2), has led to the release of a further series of three volumes to swell the anthology of early Garner now in eager demand among collectors.

The present series was recorded around the same time and under the same conditions as the first set. Heralded only by the occasional and enthusiastic word-of-mouth conmen€ from such fellow Pittsburghers as Billy Strayhorn, Erroll had descended upon the teeming jazz alley of 52nd Street and was working at a small and short-lived boite called Tondelayo's. None of the commercial recording outfits were interested in Garner at the time, but Timme Rosenkrantz had an exceptional supply of nocturnal facilities, and young Mr. Garner was ever ready to avail himself of them - a good piano in a quiet fourth-floor walk-up apartment on West 46th Street, copious libations, and a disc-recording apparatus (tape recording was virtually unknown in 1944 except in the larger studios). It was under these mellow, early-hour conditions that Erroll's first records were made.

The completely impromptu program in these volumes shows even more flexibility of moods than the first two. There are frequent traces of the characteristics that were later to become Erroll's set personal style. The complete freedom of improvisation, coupled with the unawareness that these ramblings would ever be put to any commercial use, produced some performances as lengthy as they are intriguing. I Got Rhythm and Yesterdays both run over nine minutes; Erroll's Reverie, the Debussy impression later compressed into three-minute format in a more recent version, runs eight minutes. The appropriately titled Clock Stood Still, which has moments of strangely Gershwinesque melodic charm, might well have been the title for thin whole series, for time seems suspended as Erroll weaves his way in and out of subtle harmonic and melodic complexities to convey a mood of buoyant euphoria.

Most of the music here is original Garner, but when a standard song is taken, it merely serves as a point of departure for a flow of typical Garner music for which Erroll has selected a theme that lends itself ideally, both in melody and chord pattern, to his fantasies.

The traditional blues gets an effective workout in Fast Company; a humorous; octave-jump theme forms the delightful basis of Opus I, unrelated to any other opus by this title. In Duke For Dinner Erroll slyly interpolates suggestions of various compositions developed in the Ellington orchestra, welding them into a pattern that the Duke himself would certainly find fascinating.

It would be foolish to attempt a complete analysis of everything that happens on these three discs. Erroll has been dissected many times before, and has never been found wanting in any of the qualities of invention and technique great artist in modern music.

LEONARD FEATHER
(Associated Editor, Down Beat)