This album might have been called something like Bill’s Bubbles or Evans Pops The Pops, because that is what it is – an effervesence of brilliantly played piano over a collection of themes which deserve this very treatment, but all too seldom get it. The square cover design, the even squarer notes (with warmest apologies to Jack Maher!) and even the rectangularity of the sleeve itself only denote that there is a record by the aforesaid Mr. Evans inside, which, surprisingly enough, is NOT square.
‘Evans the piano’, to use the Welsh vernacular of his obvious forbears, grips a theme in the way that a swooping eagle grips its small but still struggling prey. Those readers who have toyed with, and possibly rejected, his more obscure but equally brilliant albums like ‘Explorations’ and ‘Conversations’, will find here the extension of simplicity, the fluid elaborations of pieces we are liable to whistle in the bath or when it isn’t raining whilst we try to mow the lawn on a summer’s day.
As you read these words, Bill should be paying his first playing visit to thee shores, and reducing the visiting firemen in London to pulp with the incredible subtlety of his music. This is jazz, sophisticated in the sense that it has grown up with the general advances of its type, but without embracing the affectations generally associated with the so-called sophisticated pianists. The restrained delicacy of Paul Motian’s drumming is only surpassed by the fantastic rapport generated by bassist Gary Peacock. The opening track, Little Lulu, proves this, and prompts me to enquire, as a complete digression, why there are so many outstanding bass players in America. They cannot all be born with such elephantine instruments, like the proverbial silver spoons, in their mouths, and anyway they make for such bad chewing and sucking at the pram stage.
Discography
Little Lulu; Sleepin’ Bee; Always; Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (17¾ min) – I’ll See You Again; For Heaven’s Sake; Dancing In The Dark; Everything Happens To Me (17 min)
Bill Evans (p); Gary Peacock (bs); Paul Motian (d). 18th December, 1963.
(Verve VLP 9077 12inLP 32s.)
