Requisites
Waltz For Debby ~ Bill Evans Trio | By Eddie Carter
By 1961, pianist Bill Evans not only had one of the best trios in the United States but one of the best groups in jazz with bassist Scott LaFaro who would replace Sam Jones and Paul Motion on drums. Together, this threesome made four incredible albums for Riverside Records. Portrait in Jazz in 1960, Explorations in 1961, and two albums recorded in performance at The Village Vanguard, on June 25, 1961. Sunday at The Village Vanguard released the same year and the subject of this morning’s discussion, Waltz For Debby (RLP 399/RS 9399) in 1962. These LP’s became a standard of excellence among other piano-bass-drums records that followed. My copy used in this report is the 2000 Mono audiophile reissue (DIW-9011 – RLP-399) by DIW Records. This is the third Japanese pressing of Waltz For Debby, but the first Mono reissue manufactured by Victor Entertainment, Inc. The previous two albums released in 1975 and 1984 were both Stereo reissues by Victor Musical Industries, Inc.
The opening track, My Foolish Heart was written in 1949 by Ned Washington and Victor Young! This timeless evergreen became a well-recorded jazz standard and was featured on the silver screen in the film dramatization, the same year. The introduction is a suspenseful and ingeniously planned affair where the trio interacts beautifully so that no one voice dominates or falls subordinate to the others. Bill is ideally suited to this serene standard as the song’s only soloist because he could create compelling improvisations in any context. Here, he crafts a stately delicate reading that unfolds its beauty gently. Scott and Paul complement the pianist with a subtle expression of intimacy that’s beautiful and as lush as any I’ve heard.
Bill’s contribution to the album is the title tune, named for the pianist’s niece and one of two selections heard here that made their first appearance on the 1956 album, New Jazz Conceptions. The introduction is a mild two instrument dialogue by Bill and Scott evolving into a midtempo theme treatment when Paul joins the conversation. Evans’ opening solo is a gorgeous tour-de-force surging with vibrant activity, then LaFaro gives a vigorous exercise on the closer delivered with the utmost assurance that’s impossible not to tap your foot to.
Detour Ahead by bassist and violinist, John Frigo, guitarist Herb Ellis, and pianist Lou Carter is a song that hasn’t lost its charm by being done too often. This jazz standard was written in 1947 after all three musicians left The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra to form a trio, The Soft Winds. Bill masterfully negotiates the opening statement affectionately with skillfully paced cues of rich intonation. Scott closes with an expressive reading that’s inexpressibly poignant and heartfelt into an elegant coda.
My Romance by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart was written in 1935 for the Broadway musical, Jumbo and also returns in the 1962 musical film, Billy Rose’s Jumbo. This evergreen opens with a marvelous solo introduction by Evans, then LaFaro and Motion shine joining him for a midtempo theme treatment that doesn’t fail to please the audience and listener. Bill’s opening solo is on point, emphasizing his remarkable technique and facility for complex melodic invention. Scott moves with supreme confidence and a lively rhythmic drive on the final reading propelled by the nostalgic reinforcement of the piano and drums until the blissful ending.
The opening notes of Some Other Time by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green recall Evans’ and Paul Chambers’ introduction to Miles Davis’ Flamenco Sketches two years earlier on Kind of Blue. This tune was written in 1944 and featured in the musical, On The Town. The pianist originally planned to record it on his 1958 album, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, but used another Bernstein, Comden, Green composition instead, Lucky To Be Me that’s also heard in the film. The trio presents the melody with a collective warm glow, and Bill delivers a gentle tenderness and tranquility on the song’s only solo that’s bewitching. Scott and Paul add a lovingly subtle supplement that’s just the right touch culminating with a tender climax and warm response from the crowd.
The album closes, paying homage to Evans’ old boss Miles Davis with a scintillating rendition of Milestones, first performed by the trumpeter as the title tune of his 1958 album. This jazz standard opens with a medium-fast introduction by the trio that shifts into uptempo for the melody. Evans is extremely entertaining on the first solo, working efficiently to the sparkling groundwork of his bandmates. The highlight though is the fireworks LaFaro creates on a marvelously energetic closer that’s a perfect finish to a phenomenal set and album.
Scott LaFaro was a gifted hard-bop bassist who was highly engaging. He also added a dimension of artistic delicacy, maturity and meticulousness to the four albums he appeared as a member of The Bill Evans Trio. LaFaro was considered one of the best musicians in jazz and was slated to do greater things in the years ahead. Sadly, that wouldn’t happen because just ten days after this recording was made, he would die in an automobile accident devastating Evans personally and the loss to jazz itself was incalculable. The six selections on this LP were splendidly recorded originally by Dave Jones and the remastering by JVC Mastering Center for this reissue is extraordinary. Like its companion, Sunday at The Village Vanguard, Waltz For Debby is an evocative, riveting live performance that’s captured at its apex and a musical treat by The Bill Evans Trio that I strongly recommend auditioning and occupying a spot in your jazz library!
~ Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Riverside RLP 12-291/RLP 1129); Explorations (RLP 351/RLP 9351); Kind of Blue (Columbia CL 1355/CS 8163); Milestones (Columbia CL 1193/CS 9428); New Jazz Conceptions (RLP 12-223); Portrait in Jazz (RLP 12-315/RLP 1162); Sunday at The Village Vanguard (RLP-376/RLP 9376); Waltz For Debby (Riverside Original Recording Series SMJ-6118); (Riverside Jazz Golden 50 VIJ-113) – Source: Discogs.com
~ Detour Ahead, My Foolish Heart, My Romance, Some Other Time – Source: JazzStandards.com
~ Victor Entertainment, Inc. is the new name for Victor Musical Industries, Inc.
~ Jumbo, Billy Rose’s Jumbo, On The Town, Lucky To Be Me, The Soft Winds – Source: Wikipedia.org
© 2020 by Edward Thomas Carter
Waltz for Debby is a 1962 live album by jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans recorded June 21, 1961 at the Village Vanguard. It was released in early 1962. The album was the fourth and final effort from the unit as bassist Scott LaFaro died in a car accident just ten days after this live date.
Track Listing | 38:29- My Foolish Heart (Victor Young/Ned Washington) – 4:58
- Waltz for Debby [Take 2] (Bill Evans/Gene Lees) – 7:00
- Detour Ahead [Take 2] (Lou Carter, Herb Ellis, Johnny Frigo) – 7:37
- My Romance [Take 1] (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart) – 7:13
- Some Other Time (Leonard Bernstein/Betty Comden/Adolph Green) – 5:11
- Milestones (Miles Davis) – 6:30
- Bill Evans ~ piano
- Scott LaFaro ~ bass
- Paul Motian ~ drums
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Raymond Ventura was born on April 16, 1908 into a Jewish family in Paris, France and learned to play the piano as a child. By the time he turned 17 in 1925 he was the pianist for the Collegiate Five, which recorded as the Collegians for Columbia Records beginning in 1928 and then for Decca in the 1930s.
Later he led the Collegians and it became a dance orchestra resembling a big band. His sidemen included Alix Combelle, Philippe Brun, and Guy Paquinet. In the early Forties, Ray led a big band in South America and in France during the rest of the decade.
One of his band’s popular songs from 1936 was Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise in which the Marquise is told by her servants that everything is fine at home except for a series of escalating calamities. It was seen as a metaphor for France’s obliviousness to the approaching war.
Between 1931 and 1953 he appeared with his big band in four films, American Love, Beautiful Star, Women of Paris, and A Hundred Francs A Second. Pianist and bandleader Ray Ventura, who helped popularize jazz in France in the 1930s, March 29, 1979 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ian Armit was born on April 11, 1929 in Fife, Scotland. He played in Sandy Brown’s band in 1957, and that same year he released the solo EP Jazz Club Piano on Decca Records. The late 1950s saw him as part of the band by Humphrey Lyttelton and was part of the recording sessions by Al Fairweather, Cy Laurie, and Wally Fawkes.
In the 1960s Armit worked in the British blues scene with Alexis Korners Blues Incorporated, with Rod Stewart and toured the United States with the singer Long John Baldry in 1971. As a session musician, he worked with Sandy Denny, Bob Wallis, and went on a European tour.
Moving to Switzerland, he led his own quartet, recorded his Ian’s Boogie Woogie with the Old Rivertown Jazz Band and performed with Piccadilly Six, the Harlem Rambler and other local blues bands. Pianist Ian Armit, who recorded five albums as a leader from 1954 to 1976, passed away on February 18, 1992, in Zurich, Switzerland.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frankie Carle, born Francis Nunzio Carlone on March 25, 1903 in Providence, Rhode Island. The son of a factory worker who could not afford a piano, he practiced on a dummy keyboard devised by his uncle, pianist Nicholas Colangelo, until he found a broken-down instrument in a dance hall. By 1916, now a teenager, he began working with his uncle’s band as well as a number of local bands around the state. To overcome prejudice against Italians he changed his name to Carle.
In the Thirties, he started out working with a number of mainstream dance bands that included the Mal Hallett Orchestra, had his own orchestra and at one time was billed in an ad for a night club as America’s Greatest Pianist. Joining Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights in 1939, Frankie later became co-leader of the band. His popularity during his time with Heidt’s band allowed him to leave the band in 1944 and form his own band, The Frankie Carle Orchestra and his daughter, Marjorie Hughes, sang with his band. During World War II, with his orchestra, he recorded a couple of V-Disc in a program of the U.S. War Department that featured his new compositions Moonlight Whispers and Sunrise Serenade. Some eleven years later he disbanded, embarked on his solo career in 1955 and until the 1980s, maintained a close following of loyal fans.
He had early exposure on the radio as a pianist for The Four Belles, a singing group distributed by the World Broadcasting System. In the mid-1940s, he and singer Allan Jones starred in the Old Gold Show on CBS radio and was also featured on the shows Pot o’ Gold, Treasure Chest, and The Chesterfield Supper Club. Over the course of his career, he recorded some four-dozen albums, composed over two-dozen popular romantic dance melodies. Pianist and bandleader Frankie Carle, whose #1 hit Sunrise Serenade sold over a million copies, passed away on March 7, 2001.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lenny Tristano was born Leonard Joseph Tristano on March 19, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois, the second of four brothers. He started on the family’s player piano at the age of two or three. He had classical piano lessons when he was eight, Born with weak eyesight, and then with measles, by the age of nine or ten, he was totally blind. He attended the Illinois School for the Blind in Jacksonville, Florida for a decade around 1928. During his school days, he played several other instruments, including trumpet, guitar, saxophones, and drums and by eleven, he had his first gigs, playing clarinet in a brothel.
Back in Chicago, Tristano got his bachelor’s degree in music from the American Conservatory of Music but left before completing his master’s degree, moving to New York City in 1946. He played saxophone and piano with leading bebop musicians, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach among others. He formed his own small bands, which soon displayed some of his early interests – contrapuntal interaction of instruments, harmonic flexibility, and rhythmic complexity. His 1949 quintet recorded the first free group improvisations, that continued in 1951, with the first overdubbed, improvised jazz recordings.
He started teaching music, with an emphasis on improvisation, in the early 1940s, and by the mid-1950s was concentrating on teaching instead of performing. He taught in a structured and disciplined manner, which was unusual in jazz education when he began. His educational role over three decades meant that he exerted an influence on jazz through his students, including saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.
Through the Fifties to the Sixties he would go on to record for the New Jazz label which would become Prestige Records, and Atlantic Records, he founded his own label Jazz Records, create his own recording studio, tour throughout Europe, played A Journey Through Jazz, a five-week engagement at Birdland, s well as other New York City jazz haunts. His last public performance in the United States was in 1968 but continued teaching into the Seventies.
Having a series of illnesses in the 1970s, including eye pain and emphysema from smoking for most of his life, on November 18, 1978 pianist, composer, arranger, and jazz improvisation educator Lennie Tristano passed away from a heart attack at home in Jamaica, New York.
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