LT-1100

Bob Brookmeyer / Bill Evans - As Time Goes By

Released - 1981

Recording and Session Information

Olmsted Sound Studios, NYC, March 12, 1959
Bob Brookmeyer, Bill Evans, piano; Percy Heath, bass; Connie Kay, drums.

Honeysuckle Rose
As Time Goes By
The Way You Look Tonight
It Could Happen To You
The Man I Love
I Got Rhythm

Reissue of United Artists UAL 3044 : "Bob Brookmeyer And Bill Evans - The Ivory Hunters".

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Honeysuckle Rose	A. Razaf-T. Waller	March 12 1959
As Time Goes By	H. Hupfeld	March 12 1959
The Way You Look Tonight	D. Fields-J. Kern	March 12 1959
Side Two
It Could Happen To You	J. Van Heusen-J. Burke	March 12 1959
The Man I Love	G. Gershwin-I. Gershwin	March 12 1959
I Got Rhythm	G. Gershwin-I. Gershwin	March 12 1959

Liner Notes

BOB BROOKMEYER-BILL EVANS

At the time this program of two-piano improvisations was recorded early in 1959, Bill Evans was posed on the threshold of a career of extraordinary promise and fellow explorer Bob Brookmeyer, no mean pianist himself, was much more widely known in jazz circles as a valve trombonist and composer-arranger. Evans had been on the national jazz scene for only a short time, his first job with Jerry Wald's sextet in 1956 followed by stints with a number of New York-based units, among them those of Tony Scott, Don Elliott, George Russell and others, culminating in his joining the Miles Davis group in 1958, a move that inevitably focused a great deal of attention on the young pianist. His first two albums for Riverside Records, critical successes that confirmed the brilliance and originality of his conception, had been in release for some time but the broad acceptance he was to receive as a result of his association with Davis was just around the corner.

Brookmeyer's professional experiences over the previous decade had been both more extensive and varied. Starting as a clarinetist, he later took up piano and trombone and, following studies at the Kansas City Conservatory and military service, he joined the Tex Beneke band in 1951, later performing with Claude Thornhill, Ray McKinley, Louis Prima, Terry Gibbs and Woody Herman. In 1953 he joined Stan Getz in one of the most enjoyable and thoroughly musical groups the saxophonist ever has headed, remaining for a year during which he established his reputation in jazz circles. He consolidated this even further when the following year he replaced trumpeter Chet Baker in the greatly popular Gerry Mulligan quartet and, a bit later, the sextet the baritone saxophonist formed. He remained with Mulligan for several years before coming East with the interesting trio of clarinetist-saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre (guitarist Jim Hall was the third member) and settling in New York City.

There he soon established himself as a busy member of the jazz community, performing with many ad-hoc groups for club and recording dates, leading units of his own for varying periods, and participating in studio sessions too numerous to catalog. It was during these years that his writing skills were most actively deployed, and many a session of the period was graced with Brookmeyer's witty, inventive and always swinging charts. His knowledge of the traditions of jazz was intelligent and comprehensive and for this reason he was able to write for, and perform comfortably with an extraordinarily wide range of ensembles. Of the two he was, at the time, the more widely known performer.

It was not a likely, let alone obvious pairing, this recorded meeting of the introspective, austerely lyrical Evans and the puckish extrovert Brookmeyer. Yet, as you'll hear, it worked beautifully, tribute to the acumen, or just plain intuition of United Artists producer Jack Lewis. It was his idea to have them attempt several two-piano numbers prior to undertaking what was to have been a conventional quartet date featuring Brookmeyer's trombone and Evans' piano. While the two were no strangers to one another's playing, and earlier had worked together in a quintet Brookmeyer organized for an engagement at the Half Note, they had never joined forces pianistically before this recording session. In fact, the first inkling they had of Lewis' intention was when they showed up at the studio at the appointed time and found not one, but two pianos positioned for recording.

Once started, however, the two responded so fully to the challenge of the situation that Brookmeyer never got around to unpacking his horn. The resultant performances comprise one of the most unusual, and unusually invigorating, recordings either has undertaken. Curiously enough, given the striking success of the venture, the album has been out of print almost since its original release as The Ivory Hunters (IJAS 6044), Its appearance now after more than two decades restores to print one of the rarest and most rewarding recordings of Evans' long, sustainedly creative career and reminds us anew of Brookmeyer's impressive skills as a pianist of uncommon intelligence, lucidity and resourceful, witty creativity.

The key word here is spontaneity. While this is claimed for virtually every jazz recital — instantaneous improvisation being one of the identifying characteristics of jazz performance — very few possess this cherished quality to the degree these performances do. Since neither player had been apprised of Lewis' intentions, had expected to play quite another type of session in fact, they were able to approach the performance with absolutely no preconceptions, no idea of what would be played and how it should proceed. Such ideas as either might have had about the proposed original session — good tunes for a trombone-piano-rhythm lineup, how they might be structured, and so on—had to be discarded as soon as the two-piano idea was suggested and tentatively agreed to. Whatever was worked out between the two pjanists and their two co-workers, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Connie Kay, the rhythmic engine of the Modern Jazz Quartet, was done on the spot, in response to a new, totally unexpected playing situation.

I Got Rhythm, the first tune to be recorded, was done without benefit of any preliminary discussion. The two pianists simply sat down and immediately began to communicate with one another, sculpting the shape of the performance as they played, through reponsive, engaged interplay. Their success in bringing off this demanding discipline is easily gauged: listen to how fresh-sounding, exciting and full of surprise they are able to make this overfamiliar vehicle. Having thus demonstrated to their satisfaction that the approach could work, Brookmeyer sketched out some routines for several of the numbers and showed Evans and Heath the chord changes to As Time Goes By but otherwise the group's music was wholly, spontaneously improvised.

Technically and temperamentally the pianists were ideally equipped to undertake music making of this challenging sort. Shortly after these recordings were made fellow pianist Warren Bernhardt observed of Evans: "Everything he plays seems to be the distillation of the music...Pianistically, he's beautiful. He never seems to be hung up in any way in doing anything he wants to do — either technically or harmonically. You can voice a given chord many different ways, but he always seems to find the correct way When he's confronted with a choice on the spur of the moment of improvisation, he doesn't have to wonder which voicing is best. He knows. And he is physically capable of executing it immediately. It's as if the line between his brain and his fingers were an unusually direct one."

"It's such an accumulated thing," Evans explained. "The art lies in developing enough facility to voice well any new thought. It's taken me 20 years of hard work and playing experience to do as well with it as I can. There's no short cut. It takes a lot of time and study." Technique alone, of course, is not enough; it's simply a means to an end. As Brookmeyer observed, "Jazz is a personal expression. A jazzman should be saying what he feels. He's one human being talking to others, telling his story — and that means humor and sadness, joy, all the things that humans have. You tell it freely and honestly, and sometimes you don't make it. It's a matter of percentages — like telling a joke no one laughs at." In Evans' estimation, "I find that when I'm feeling my best, spiritually and physically, I project. I want to communicate, I want to give."

There can be little doubt that on the afternoon of March 12, 1959, both pianists were united in this feeling of well-being, of joyous, stimulating communication, or that, in Brookmeyer's phrase, the percentages were with them. Every one of these performances bears witness to this. They succeeded as well as they did not only because of the undoubted talent and imagination of the participants but because they bent themselves totally to the task at hand. That there was a great deal of mutual respect between the principals can be heard constantly throughout their collaboration. Evans on Brookmeyer: "Since Bob was originally a piano player, he has a natural approach — he doesn't approach the piano with caution. This enabled him to carry out the interplay." Brookmeyer on Evans: "If he's not a genius, he's the next thing to it. I think he is one of the important pianists in jazz history and will continue to be. He has taken from the best of jazz piano that preceded him and retained the most swinging qualities."

Brookmeyer was right, of course. The passage of the next two decades, during which Evans' talent blossomed, bore witness to that. Evans in fact became one of the most influential pianists of modern times, emulated by virtually every keyboard player who followed in his wake. Sadly, that singular voice was stilled; the pianist died of heart failure at his home in New York City on September 15, 1980, at age 51, an incalculable loss to jazz. On a more optimistic note, Brookmeyer after a decade-long hiatus recenty has returned to jazz activity at the helm of a striking, hugely satisfying quartet and is playing better than ever. There's even greater cause for rejoicing: he's writing again, both for his small group and for large ensembles. Jazz will be richer for his return.

"The jazz musician's function is to feel," the great teacher and pianist Lennie Tristano once observed. "Jazz is improvising, It is the personal, emotional impact of a great improviser It provides the listener with an experience he can have no other way." Multiply this by two and you'll have an apt description of this remarkable one-time meeting between two of jazz' great improvisers, Bill Evans and Bob Brookmeyer

—Pete Welding

(NOTE: In this stereo recording, Bob Brookmeyer's piano is heard on the left, Bill Evans' on the right. To make sure your system is connected properly, after the two-piano interplay during the first two choruses of Honeysuckle Rose, it is Evans, right channel, who takes the first solo. — PW)