Miles Davis & Bill Evans

[ghost of miles]

Working on a Night Lights show about Miles and Bill Evans, and came across a remark by Paul Motian that I somehow completely missed the first time I read both of the following texts? In John Szwed’s So What biography of Miles, he alludes to a comment that Paul Motian makes in the booklet to The Complete Bill Evans On Verve. Here’s the quote:

Motian: Well, you know, we were supposed to make a record with Miles, the trio with Bill, myself, and Scott LaFaro.

Bill Kirchner: Really?

Motian: Yes, we were going to record. We were talking to Miles about it, it was all set up, and then Scott got killed and the whole thing got forgotten.

?! What label would it have been on? I would assume Columbia—that they wouldn’t have been willing to let Miles do a one-off for Riverside (Evans’ label at the time), and that they would have carried more weight as a bigger entity than Riverside. More importantly, what would it have sounded like? Motian doesn’t mention a specific timeframe, but the quote seems to imply that any discussion of such a date was going on not long before LaFaro’s death in a car accident in the summer of 1961. Intriguing to think about what would have resulted from what I presume would have been a quartet session.  Wondering how LaFaro and Davis would have got on, musically speaking. (Did they ever record or perform together? Nothing’s coming to mind at first thought.)

Edited August 9, 2020 by ghost of miles

[jlhoots]

I'd like to have heard that.

[Late]

8 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Intriguing to think about what would have resulted from what I presume would have been a quartet session.

Maybe the closest we can get to that setting (Davis, Evans, LaFaro, Motian) are the ballads from Seven Steps To Heaven. Feldman sounds (to me) like he'd been listening to Evans a fair amount.

Had that quartet actually recorded, I'm sure the ballads would've been amazing.

=================

Connecting back to the discussion in 2009 (about Hancock's influences, Evans being one of them), I've often wondered to what extent Herbie listened to Tristano. If Herbie is influenced by Bill Evans (which I think he is), then he'd have picked up some Tristano influence via Evans.

Another question — is this statement valid? --> No George Russell = no Kind of Blue. In other words, would that recording exist as we know it without Russell's thinking on harmony?

[ghost of miles]

41 minutes ago, Late said:

Maybe the closest we can get to that setting (Davis, Evans, LaFaro, Motian) are the ballads from Seven Steps To Heaven. Feldman sounds (to me) like he'd been listening to Evans a fair amount.

Had that quartet actually recorded, I'm sure the ballads would've been amazing.

=================

Connecting back to the discussion in 2009 (about Hancock's influences, Evans being one of them), I've often wondered to what extent Herbie listened to Tristano. If Herbie is influenced by Bill Evans (which I think he is), then he'd have picked up some Tristano influence via Evans.

Another question — is this statement valid? --> No George Russell = no Kind of Blue. In other words, would that recording exist as we know it without Russell's thinking on harmony?

Not as close as your suggestion, but I've also thought about revisiting Tony Scott's Sung Heroes, which offers the only example I can think of off the top of my head of the Evans/LaFaro/Motian trio playing with or backing another musician.  Wonder if Miles would have done "Nardis" with them?  (He never actually recorded it himself, iirc)  

I tend to lean towards concurring with your statement re KOB.  Russell is also the one who suggested that Miles hire Evans in 1958--not as significant as his thinking on harmony, but another bridge to KOB.  I'm inclined to also say that No Bill Evans = no Kind Of Blue.

[JSngry]

George Russell extended the lifespan of the jazz imagination by several generations.

BIll Evans gave several generations an excuse.

Big difference.

[Larry Kart]

'BIll Evans gave several generations an excuse."

 

Interesting that you should put it that way. That was precisely the point I made in my infamous Bill Evans piece, reprinted tin my book.

[Rooster_Ties]

Remind me — once Miles got on Columbia (and not pre-Columbia), is “Thisness” (circa June-July 1967) the only example of Miles backed by a piano trio specially in a studio situation, i.e. sans any other horns?

I realize it’s just from a rehearsal (iirc), and from a mono reference tape at that. But that’s the only “other-horn”-less situation I can think of with Miles. (Live, of course there’s that Newport set from 1969, where Wayne was stuck in traffic - which I really love, btw.)

[jazzbo]

There was a quartet session in California (on Seven Steps to Heaven) and of course occasionally live the saxophonist would sit out (my favorite version of "I Thought about You" at Antibes for example). . . but otherwise I think . . . yeah, no other Quartet performaces. . . .  (?)

[ghost of miles]

16 hours ago, JSngry said:

George Russell extended the lifespan of the jazz imagination by several generations.

BIll Evans gave several generations an excuse.

Big difference.

Not saying that Bill Evans’ contributions to jazz were as significant as George Russell’s. I am saying that just as it’s hard to imagine Kind Of Blue without Russell’s harmonic thinking, it’s hard to imagine KOB without the influence of Evans. And that’s not to take away Miles’ accomplishment as a leader—no Miles Davis, *definitely* no Kind Of Blue. But even Miles himself said that “I built that album around the piano playing of Bill Evans.” And of course that’s one of the things that made Miles so great—using the right musicians to help create whatever sound he was after, or letting what they were doing help determine that direction in the first place. No Wayne or Herbie or Tony Williams, no ESP/Miles Smiles etc. This can turn into a diminishing-returns line of thinking that ultimately boils down to no things-exactly-the-way-they-happened = no things-exactly-the-way-they-happened. But I’d say Evans’ contributions to KOB, compositionally and otherwise, are pretty key to how that record turned out. 

Edited August 10, 2020 by ghost of miles

[JSngry]

Evans worked a LOT with George Russell before joining Miles, starting in 1956(!). Evans was open to it, to be sure. but Russell the theoretician and "thinker" was really, really exerting a "pull" in those days, far beyond what he relatively meager recorded output would suggest.

Again, Evans was open to it, temperamentally inclined, even, but I really don't think you have that Bill Evans without George Russell's shaping. The whole "modal" thing, Russell more or less put that bug in everybody's ear who had an ear to have it put in. And Miles knew Russell form the Birth Of The Cool Days.

Not that Evans wasn't a supremely inspired vessel (at that time, anyway), but no George Russell, no KOB, that's a safe bet. No Bill Evans,, something else happens around "modality", just not KOB. It was going to happen, it was just a matter of how. In fact, given Miles' previous peeks into scalar-based improvisational structures, you might be able to say that Bill Evans was Miles' practical way to get George Russell without having to actually use/deal with George Russell - if he even could, which would not in any way be a given. That would be a very Miles-ian thing to do!

 

[ghost of miles]

Yeah, definitely—Russell was actually the guy who recommended Evans to Davis, and of course, Jazz Workshop, “All About Rosie,” New York, N.Y. etc.  And modality was already underway before KOB and would have proceeded without it. But I’m having a hard time thinking of another pianist who could have brought what Evans brought to KOB in 1959.  There must have been somebody—names eluding me at the moment, though. I mean, that’s why no Red, Wynton only for “Freddie Freeloader” (I always loved David Baker’s story of encountering Evans shortly after KOB’s release and praising BE’s piano playing, “especially on ‘Freddie Freeloader!’” Honest mistake on David’s part, but he said Evans took it in bemused stride). I mean yeah, you’re probably right—George R could have done it, though the end result is still going to have IMO a pretty different vibe than what we have with Evans in the piano chair. (And we wouldn’t have “Blue In Green” and quite possibly no “Flamenco Sketches” either, which Evans and Davis put together after Davis suggested the sextet do “Peace Piece” for the KOB sessions.) Plenty of people had that “Bill Evans sound” later on, but not in 1959. 
 

Btw iirc Miles had been interested in Russell’s thinking for quite awhile by KOB, hadn’t he? Didn’t he visit Russell while Russell was in the hospital years before KOB? I know Russell’s ideas had been of interest to other musicians since his time with Gillespie in the late 1940s. (EDIT: overlooked your comment about Birth of the Cool and GR/MD)

Edited August 10, 2020 by ghost of miles

[JSngry]

12 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

There must have been somebody—names eluding me at the moment, though.

Paul Bley had the musical temperament, but probably not the social one.

But yeah, Paul Bley was ahead of most people, including Bill Evans, imo. But I guess Paul Bley was a quirky kind of guy!

George Russell was not much of a pianist, btw, not in terms of working-musician type pianist. He knew it, but he wanted a working band, so he did it.

I mean, Evans was predisposed that way, sure. And he was definitely rightguyrightplacerighttime for a few years. But without Russell....Everybody Would Still Dig Bill Evans, just not sure that it would have been the SAME Bill Evans.

It might have been Yusef Lateef!

[sgcim]

As much as I love George Russell's EARLY music, none of it sounds like KOB. If you read both of their biographies, especially GR's, you'd know that GR's great early works (IMHO) were NOT informed by his LCC, but by the European 20th Century composers, whose scores he studied at the time. This is explicitly stated in the Russell biography.

By the same token, Bill Evans' remarkable sight reading ability allowed him access to the modal music of  numerous composers (not just Ravel and Debussy), and his close friend Glenn Gould, called Evans "The Scriabin of Jazz". To ignore Evans' monumental contributions to the harmonic materials of KOB, and suggest that Russell was the main influence on KOB is to ignore all the facts about the session:

1) Davis could NOT do the music he wanted to do on KOB without Evans. Garland and Kelley did not have the harmonic background Evans had absorbed from the countless scores he read through in his practice sessions. Tony Scott even mentioned that he was hanging around Evans' apartment one day, and heard Satie (whose harmony is as strong an influence on KOB as Debussy and Ravel) being played for the first time by Evans.

2) Garland and Kelley did not have the touch that Evans had to perform the type of music on KOB that differentiates itself from Miles' previous work.

3) Each musician brought their own thing to the performances, and most were first takes. This means that all the harmonic things were entirely Evans' own, and Miles claimed credit for Blue in Green and Flamenco Sketches which, according to the great American composer Earl Zindars, Evans played long before KOB

4) Just because Russell showed Davis what a mode was one night for ten minutes, does not mean he had much to do with KOB

5) Evans' work with Russell did not produce music that sounded anything like KOB. I remember loaning a PHD musician who loved KOB, my fave album at the time, Geo. Russell's "Jazz Workshop" and he returned it in disgust saying that he hated that type of music and it doesn't sound anything like KOB.

6) Paul Bley's non-free playing had nowhere near the harmonic vocabulary  that Evans had, especially at that time, Evans understood what Bley was doing during their free duet on Russell's Living Time, but said it was not for him, because playing free is taking the easy way out regarding jazz improvisation.Thank God that Russell chose Bley for his LCC music, and Evans for his early music recordings. Evans still did those two, IMHO, tasteless later Russell record dates, but it was more out of friendship than for musical reasons.

 Friends of mine who went to NEC back in the 80s said most of the students ridiculed Russell and his LCC music, behind his back.

Edited August 10, 2020 by sgcim

[JSngry]

Ok, but...Russell's "LCC" was in his mind and thoughts and conversations LONG before it actually got published. That was just the final result of a long thought process. Hell, check out the intro to "Cubano-Be, Cubano Bop" - nobody in jazz was thinking like that at the time, nobody.

To think that Russell as not thinking about modality as an alternative to choral improvisation before the formal "LCC" is missing the point, imo.

Also, I will not here nor before nor anywhere else suggest that Russell was "the main influence on KOB", but I will suggest that it was his lens as much as anybody's through whom the ultimate vision was filtered. I think that without that particular, direct experience that Evan turns into something else, no doubt equally interesting, but, really, that first Evans record on Riverside, what's there to indicate anything like what happened once he started getting out in the world?

George Russell attracted a lot of top shelf, theoretically-curious musicians of the time. Bill Evans was certainly one of them, probably the one best-equipped to realize that there was another side to come out on, and then to do so (too bad he punked out, but so many do, at least he did go there before shirking back).

Put another way - if there was no KOB w/o Bill Evans, what kind of Bill Evans would we have had w/o George Russell? And who did we - any of us - have before we had George Russell?

btw - I will always take Paul Bley, regardless of free or non-free (like, what does that mean, really?). Paul Bley is, Bill Evans was.

 

 

[Larry Kart]

To quote myself: "Quite articulate about his music, i.n a 1964 interview Evans said this: 'The only way I can work is to have some kind of restraint involved, the challenge of a certain kind craft or form and then to find the freedom in that.... I think that a lot of guys ... want to circumvent that kind of labor.' Then there is this Evans statement: 'I believe that all music is romantic, but if it gets schmaltzy, romanticism is disturbing. On the other hand, romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty.'

"Plusible words perhaps, but the value that Evans seemingly places on restraint in itself leads one to ask what is being restrained and why? Evans' "challenge of [working within] a certain kind craft or form" Is not merely an account of his own necessary practice; it lends to that practice an air of moral virtue ("I think that a lot of guys ... want to circumvent that kind of labor.') In other words, for Evans certain kinds of musical labor are not only valid but they also validate. And should an aesthetically valid outcome be reached in a seemingly non-laborious manner, that can be disturbing. Thus in 1964, after acknowledging the brilliance.ant, ludic, and completely unpremeditated two-piano improvisation that he and Paul Bley contributed to George Riussell's 1960 album "Jazz in the Space Age.," was "filled to do," Evans says, "[But to do] something that hadn't been rehearsed successfully, just like that, almost shows the lack of challenge involved in that kind of freedom."

Geez, Louise -- you think it might show something else? Like maybe that certain "just like that" circumstances might lead to results and discoveries that the world of "challenges" and "restraints" (as Evans conceives the meaning of those terms) might not lead to? And why does the absence of successful rehearsals (I assume Evans meant that the Evans-Bley duo piano  improvisation was not rehearsed at all rather than unsuccssfully rehearsed) equal a "lack of challenge"? Doesn't it merely modify the nature of the challenge, if you want to use that term? BTW, in that duo portion of "Jazz in the Space Age," does anyone have the sense that Evans and Bley are "merely "tossing off" what they play rather than paying very close attention to what they're doing/what's happening?

 

Also,  "romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty." What the heck does Evans think romanticism is? It was an epoch of sensibility that fueled much creativity in all the arts for a good portion of the 19th Century and has had an even longer life, especially in music, in terms of audience appeal. That I think would be accurate. But I would guess that that is not quite what Evans means but rather something ike "music that can more or less melt you"  -- say, Chopin or Rachmaninov, which is BTW not to denigrate the music of those composers in any way; Chopin is a giant, and Rachmaninov's popularity should not obscure the substance of his best work. In any case, while much Bach does melt many people,  by no means does Bach's music fall under the umbrella of romanticism in the first and more accurate sense of the term I outlined above.

[JSngry]

Kins of Blue aside, Jimmy Giuffre + Paul Bley = more, more better, more lasting, more inytiguing, less cliche-able music than Miles Davis + Bill Evans.

 

[Late]

During a blindfold test, Bill Evans listened to Cecil Taylor. He had positive things to say.

==================

What about Lennie Tristano's influence on Herbie? Anyone hear that? It can readily be heard in Evans.

[Larry Kart]

12 minutes ago, Late said:

During a blindfold test, Bill Evans listened to Cecil Taylor. He had positive things to say.

==================

What about Lennie Tristano's influence on Herbie? Anyone hear that? It can readily be heard in Evans.

 

 Matthew Shipp: " The one person Cecil really hated was Bill Evans. In fact, after I told him how much I liked Bill Evans, he didn’t talk to me for a few years!"

Allen Lowe has posted here in some detail about Tristano's influence on Herbie.

[Larry Kart]

In Peter Pettinger's Evans bio he tell the story of Russell's first encounter with Evans. Chicago singer Lucy Reed, a good friend of Evans (he plays on her first Fantasy album) fell by Russell's NYC apartment with Evans in tow. Unimpressed by the geeky look of this newcomer, Russell nonetheless showed Evans some of his music. Evans sat down and proceeded to play the beJeezus out of it. Russell said that this was a life-changing experience for him.

[Guy Berger]

17 hours ago, sgcim said:

As much as I love George Russell's EARLY music, none of it sounds like KOB. If you read both of their biographies, especially GR's, you'd know that GR's great early works (IMHO) were NOT informed by his LCC, but by the European 20th Century composers, whose scores he studied at the time. This is explicitly stated in the Russell biography.

By the same token, Bill Evans' remarkable sight reading ability allowed him access to the modal music of  numerous composers (not just Ravel and Debussy), and his close friend Glenn Gould, called Evans "The Scriabin of Jazz". To ignore Evans' monumental contributions to the harmonic materials of KOB, and suggest that Russell was the main influence on KOB is to ignore all the facts about the session:

1) Davis could NOT do the music he wanted to do on KOB without Evans. Garland and Kelley did not have the harmonic background Evans had absorbed from the countless scores he read through in his practice sessions. Tony Scott even mentioned that he was hanging around Evans' apartment one day, and heard Satie (whose harmony is as strong an influence on KOB as Debussy and Ravel) being played for the first time by Evans.

2) Garland and Kelley did not have the touch that Evans had to perform the type of music on KOB that differentiates itself from Miles' previous work.

3) Each musician brought their own thing to the performances, and most were first takes. This means that all the harmonic things were entirely Evans' own, and Miles claimed credit for Blue in Green and Flamenco Sketches which, according to the great American composer Earl Zindars, Evans played long before KOB

4) Just because Russell showed Davis what a mode was one night for ten minutes, does not mean he had much to do with KOB

5) Evans' work with Russell did not produce music that sounded anything like KOB. I remember loaning a PHD musician who loved KOB, my fave album at the time, Geo. Russell's "Jazz Workshop" and he returned it in disgust saying that he hated that type of music and it doesn't sound anything like KOB.

6) Paul Bley's non-free playing had nowhere near the harmonic vocabulary  that Evans had, especially at that time, Evans understood what Bley was doing during their free duet on Russell's Living Time, but said it was not for him, because playing free is taking the easy way out regarding jazz improvisation.Thank God that Russell chose Bley for his LCC music, and Evans for his early music recordings. Evans still did those two, IMHO, tasteless later Russell record dates, but it was more out of friendship than for musical reasons.

 Friends of mine who went to NEC back in the 80s said most of the students ridiculed Russell and his LCC music, behind his back.

Russell’s late 1960s / early 1970s music is some of the most exciting/vital of that era.  I would much rather listen to it than to anything under Evans’s name.

[sgcim]

7 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

In Peter Pettinger's Evans bio he tell the story of Russell's first encounter with Evans. Chicago singer Lucy Reed, a good friend of Evans (he plays on her first Fantasy album) fell by Russell's NYC apartment with Evans in tow. Unimpressed by the geeky look of this newcomer, Russell nonetheless showed Evans some of his music. Evans sat down and proceeded to play the beJeezus out of it. Russell said that this was a life-changing experience for him.

Yes, and he was able to play the "bejeezus" out of it without any influence of George Russell at all. That kind of destroys Jim's theory about there would be no Bill Evans without George  Russell.

Like Phil Woods ( another great player I've had to 'defend' against you and Jim) Bill Evans was a composer/arranger's dream. He could sight read anything (Evans' ability to sight read Babbitt's "All Set" complete with dynamics and articulations(!) amazed Gunther Schuller to such an extent, that he used Evans on some of his Third-Stream performances and recordings), and then enhance the piece to such an extent through his own tasteful contributions, that the piece becomes something greater than it would be had the arr./composer hired anyone else. On top of all that, Evans would bring an improvisational genius that was unequaled during his time.

I was surprised to recently read that it was Evans' changes that Sheila Jordan used on "If You Could See Me Now" on her recording with Barry Galbraith and Steve Swallow, and not George Russell's, as it was assumed. Evans jotted down the changes on a book of matches for her.

21 hours ago, JSngry said:

Kins of Blue aside, Jimmy Giuffre + Paul Bley = more, more better, more lasting, more inytiguing, less cliche-able music than Miles Davis + Bill Evans.

 

Oh yeah, I'm sure you're gonna find a lot of jazz fans that prefer JG + PB over MD +  BE.

On 8/10/2020 at 5:07 PM, JSngry said:

Ok, but...Russell's "LCC" was in his mind and thoughts and conversations LONG before it actually got published. That was just the final result of a long thought process. Hell, check out the intro to "Cubano-Be, Cubano Bop" - nobody in jazz was thinking like that at the time, nobody.

To think that Russell as not thinking about modality as an alternative to choral improvisation before the formal "LCC" is missing the point, imo.

Also, I will not here nor before nor anywhere else suggest that Russell was "the main influence on KOB", but I will suggest that it was his lens as much as anybody's through whom the ultimate vision was filtered. I think that without that particular, direct experience that Evan turns into something else, no doubt equally interesting, but, really, that first Evans record on Riverside, what's there to indicate anything like what happened once he started getting out in the world?

George Russell attracted a lot of top shelf, theoretically-curious musicians of the time. Bill Evans was certainly one of them, probably the one best-equipped to realize that there was another side to come out on, and then to do so (too bad he punked out, but so many do, at least he did go there before shirking back).

Put another way - if there was no KOB w/o Bill Evans, what kind of Bill Evans would we have had w/o George Russell? And who did we - any of us - have before we had George Russell?

btw - I will always take Paul Bley, regardless of free or non-free (like, what does that mean, really?). Paul Bley is, Bill Evans was.

 

 

Read Larry's quoting of the first meeting of Evans and Russell.

[sgcim]

22 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

To quote myself: "Quite articulate about his music, i.n a 1964 interview Evans said this: 'The only way I can work is to have some kind of restraint involved, the challenge of a certain kind craft or form and then to find the freedom in that.... I think that a lot of guys ... want to circumvent that kind of labor.' Then there is this Evans statement: 'I believe that all music is romantic, but if it gets schmaltzy, romanticism is disturbing. On the other hand, romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty.'

"Plusible words perhaps, but the value that Evans seemingly places on restraint in itself leads one to ask what is being restrained and why? Evans' "challenge of [working within] a certain kind craft or form" Is not merely an account of his own necessary practice; it lends to that practice an air of moral virtue ("I think that a lot of guys ... want to circumvent that kind of labor.') In other words, for Evans certain kinds of musical labor are not only valid but they also validate. And should an aesthetically valid outcome be reached in a seemingly non-laborious manner, that can be disturbing. Thus in 1964, after acknowledging the brilliance.ant, ludic, and completely unpremeditated two-piano improvisation that he and Paul Bley contributed to George Riussell's 1960 album "Jazz in the Space Age.," was "filled to do," Evans says, "[But to do] something that hadn't been rehearsed successfully, just like that, almost shows the lack of challenge involved in that kind of freedom."

Geez, Louise -- you think it might show something else? Like maybe that certain "just like that" circumstances might lead to results and discoveries that the world of "challenges" and "restraints" (as Evans conceives the meaning of those terms) might not lead to? And why does the absence of successful rehearsals (I assume Evans meant that the Evans-Bley duo piano  improvisation was not rehearsed at all rather than unsuccssfully rehearsed) equal a "lack of challenge"? Doesn't it merely modify the nature of the challenge, if you want to use that term? BTW, in that duo portion of "Jazz in the Space Age," does anyone have the sense that Evans and Bley are "merely "tossing off" what they play rather than paying very close attention to what they're doing/what's happening?

 

Also,  "romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty." What the heck does Evans think romanticism is? It was an epoch of sensibility that fueled much creativity in all the arts for a good portion of the 19th Century and has had an even longer life, especially in music, in terms of audience appeal. That I think would be accurate. But I would guess that that is not quite what Evans means but rather something ike "music that can more or less melt you"  -- say, Chopin or Rachmaninov, which is BTW not to denigrate the music of those composers in any way; Chopin is a giant, and Rachmaninov's popularity should not obscure the substance of his best work. In any case, while much Bach does melt many people,  by no means does Bach's music fall under the umbrella of romanticism in the first and more accurate sense of the term I outlined above.

I can only answer the first part of that by quoting Hindemith: "We only have twelve tones in music, therefore we must be very careful about how we use those twelve tones" (or something to that effect).

As for the second part, maybe Evans was thinking about the excesses of Lizst.

On 8/10/2020 at 5:07 PM, JSngry said:

Ok, but...Russell's "LCC" was in his mind and thoughts and conversations LONG before it actually got published. That was just the final result of a long thought process. Hell, check out the intro to "Cubano-Be, Cubano Bop" - nobody in jazz was thinking like that at the time, nobody.

To think that Russell as not thinking about modality as an alternative to choral improvisation before the formal "LCC" is missing the point, imo.

Also, I will not here nor before nor anywhere else suggest that Russell was "the main influence on KOB", but I will suggest that it was his lens as much as anybody's through whom the ultimate vision was filtered. I think that without that particular, direct experience that Evan turns into something else, no doubt equally interesting, but, really, that first Evans record on Riverside, what's there to indicate anything like what happened once he started getting out in the world?

George Russell attracted a lot of top shelf, theoretically-curious musicians of the time. Bill Evans was certainly one of them, probably the one best-equipped to realize that there was another side to come out on, and then to do so (too bad he punked out, but so many do, at least he did go there before shirking back).

Put another way - if there was no KOB w/o Bill Evans, what kind of Bill Evans would we have had w/o George Russell? And who did we - any of us - have before we had George Russell?

btw - I will always take Paul Bley, regardless of free or non-free (like, what does that mean, really?). Paul Bley is, Bill Evans was.

 

 

All I know is that I love Russell's early music, and then he reached a point where it was too blobby and sloppy and messy for me. YMMV.

[JSngry]

29 minutes ago, sgcim said:

Oh yeah, I'm sure you're gonna find a lot of jazz fans that prefer JG + PB over MD +  BE.

The assumption there is that I'm looking for them? Why would I be doing that, I know what I like (and why), I don't need "a lot of jazz fans" to help me with that.

[Larry Kart]

sgcim wrote: "I can only answer the first part of that by quoting Hindemith: "We only have twelve tones in music, therefore we must be very careful about how we use those twelve tones" (or something to that effect).

The limitations of Hindemith's own music, estimable as it often is, are a fairly sure sign of the limitations of his or anyone else's fetishization of "craft" and "rules."

sgcim also wrote: " On top of all that, Evans would bring an improvisational genius that was unequaled during his time." Unequalled? By Rollins? By Coltrane? By Wayne Shorter? By Ornette (if you will; I would). Hell,  I would say that if Clifford Brown or (working close to home) Scott LaFaro had lived normal life spans, their achievements would have surpassed Evans'.

[JSngry]

If it would have been Bill Evans in that car wreck, we'd mourn the lost of so much unfilled promise.

As it is, it's kinda like, ok dude, you had your chance and blew it. Promise not unfulfilled, promise squandered.

SO much useless music for SO long....after so much superb playing.

But, you know, he made his choices, as do we all. Then time runs out, and there you are....were.