Chris Anderson

[Nate Dorward]

Lately I've been often playing None but the Lonely Heart, a duo album by Charlie Haden & the little-known pianist Chris Anderson released on Naim. It's a disc which may not be for all tastes: it's very latterday-Hadenish, i.e. all standards, no drummer, low-volume, medium- to slow-tempo, romantic, quietist. But basically Haden's just first on the billing because he's famous & Anderson's not--it's Anderson's disc, & he's an extraordinary player. He's now quite elderly; he's blind, & suffers from glass-bone disease (a la Petrucciani). His technique is homemade--delicate, rhythmically very distinctive (nearly rubato, a bit fragile), not "swinging" in a conventional sense--& his procedure is typically to unfold a tune at great length, restating it again & again (a la Monk) with different inflections & according to a very personal harmonic language (in the liner notes it says he's as influenced by film-music writing as by "jazz"). The tunes are all bittersweet jazz standards--"Nobody's Heart", "The Things We Did Last Summer", "Good Morning Heartache", "The Night We Called It a Day", &c.--plus a short blues improv for good measure.

Anyway, was wondering where to go next. Does anyone know anything about Alsut, who released his "solo ballads" discs? I tried to order them through Cadence/North Country but they were out of stock, & Slim at North Country said that they didn't even have a current address for Alsut to reorder them. Joe Milazzo tells me Anderson recorded as a sideman in the 1960s with Frank Strozier; he's on a live Charlie Parker pickup-band recording of the 1950s that I haven't heard; other than that I know little about him other than what's in the liner notes to this disc. He was apparently Herbie Hancock's teacher at one point, though it's hard to hear any connection between the two men's styles.

[Spontooneous]

Would love to hear this disc!

Anderson has two other leader dates I know of:

-- "Love Locked Out," on Mapleshade, in the '90s. Get it!

-- A trio session on Riverside in the '60s. Can't remember the title. I keep hoping the OJC series will get to this one.

I hope there are others I don't know about yet.

The Mapleshade disc made a believer out of me.

[mikeweil]

There was a trio session with Billy Higgins on the Japanese DIW label.

[Chuck Nessa]

I used Chris for an Ira Sullivan/Red Rodney set at the Chicago Jazz Festival in around '80. He is really severely disabled, but a warm guy

He has leader dates on Vee-Jay (w/Bill Lee and Art Taylor - 1960), Jazzland (w/Bill Lee, Walter Perkins & PJJ - 1961), Jazz Heritage (solo - 1987), DIW (w/Ray Drummond & Billy Higgins) and Alsut (solo) as well as the discs mentioned

[Vincent, Paris]

You should have a look here, on Naim website Anderson seems to have recorded another solo set for that label.

[Larry Kart]

I remember hearing Anderson at Chicago sessions in '57-'58 and thinking that because of his frailty (he had to be helped up onto the bandstand and to the piano bench) it would be a miracle if he were alive in ten years. He's probably outlived almost everyone else on the bandstand and three-quarters of the people in the room. I used to have a copy of the Jazzland LP (it perished in a basement flood) and recall that it didn't come very close to his in-person effect. He was a sound/dynamics/chord-voicing player par excellence -- subtly shifting pastels -- and I recall that the date was set up along more standard "blowing" lines. Someone (don't recall who) once claimed that Anderson was a source for Vanguard-era Bill Evans.

[Nate Dorward]

Thanks for the info....yes, it's astonishing the guy's still around, to judge by the bio & the photos! -- The other Naim I've seen listed (don't have) wasn't solo but a disc with him accompanying an unfamiliar (to me) singer, Sabina Sciubba--anyone heard this? (I tend to be cautious about dates with singers, since if they don't click for me then they usually really get under my skin....) -- But that new solo disc on Naim sounds intriguing. There are, I should mention, two really nice solo pieces on None But the Lonely Heart besides the duos with Haden.

Hm, so anyone know what's up with Alsut? Who runs it anyway?