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Erroll Garner was a completely unique pianist. Like the best jazz musicians, he had his own distinctive and highly original style. But much to his good fortune, his playing was so accessible that his audience reached far beyond jazz, without him ever having to alter or water down his playing.
Garner, a natural musician who never learned to read music, came out of the last years of the swing era yet was never imprisoned by his roots. On uptempo tunes, he could emulate the Count Basie Orchestra with his left hand strumming like Freddie Green's rhythm guitar. One of his trademark innovations was when his right hand played just slightly behind the beat, creating an unusual echo effect. His playing was always full of wit (he loved to confuse his sidemen by playing completely free form introductions to songs and letting them guess what the tune was going to be) and he displayed so much joy during his solos that it was impossible to resist. No matter how wild and hard-swinging his flights became, one always heard the melody in his playing, as they did in his early idol Fats Waller, yet he could sound very sentimental during ballads.
Erroll Garner, who was born in 1923, was self-taught and was playing professionally by 1937. He was mostly heard in his native Pittsburgh until he moved to New York in mid-1944 and joined the Slam Stewart Trio. A year later he went out on his own, leading a trio that was immediately popular. Internationally famous during the next 30 years, Garner never lost his appeal or enthusiasm for playing.
25 Standards, recorded in the late summer of 1945, is practically Garner's first commercial recordings since it was only preceded by a handful of sessions. The unaccompanied solos (three numbers add bassist John Levy) were recorded by the pianist during two dates and quite typically nearly all of the performances are first takes. Garner always had the ability to sit down at the piano and spontaneously create an album's worth of material.
While he uses the “echo effect” less often than he would in later years and there are bits of stride piano, the 24-year old Garner was always very distinctive. The 25 concise performances (only “You Made Me Love You” exceeds four minutes) feature Garner saying a great deal in a brief period of time. 25 Standards features Erroll Garner clearly having a great time digging into some of his favorite tunes from the era and coming up with variations that still sound fresh. As was always true of him, his playing throughout 25 Standards is irresistible.
Review
"A very distinctive pianist whose playing was immediately recognizable, Erroll Garner often emulated the Count Basie Orchestra with his left hand strumming like Freddie Green’s rhythm guitar, while his right created an echo effect by playing just slightly behind the beat. Popular throughout his career, Garner is heard on 25 Standards at practically the start of it all. He is heard performing unaccompanied solos (with three numbers adding bassist John Levy) in the late summer of 1945. Even at that early stage, his playing sounded unlike anyone else’s and was full of joy." -Scott Yanow
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