Though diminutive in stature (he was only 5 foot 2 inches in height and sat on a Manhattan telephone directory so that he could really bear down on the keyboard), pianist Erroll Garner was a giant of jazz. Beloved by fellow musicians like pianists Billy Taylor and Art Tatum, he was a favorite of promoter and fellow pianist George Wein, who booked Garner first into his Storyville nightclub in Boston and later showcased him at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. As Wein once said, “Garner is the single most important piano stylist of the past 35 years. Most every piano player who has heard Erroll Garner owes him something. Garner epitomizes all that makes jazz the great music of our age. He is a natural. His music communicates to those who know nothing of the meaning of the word jazz. His music is serious, yet joyous. He has developed an individuality of style that has blessed only the greatest exponents of music. To put it simply, Erroll Garner is a great musical genius. He has given me some of the most memorable and musical moments of my life.” Garner’s distinctive and immediately recognizable style, with its potent dynamics, infectious swing feel and emphasis on melody, made him one of jazz’s most popular musicians during the 1950s. His composition “Misty” became a jazz standard and is still covered to this day while his 1955 live recording, Concerts by the Sea, became the best-selling jazz album of its day. Three years before that breakthrough recording, Wein had booked Garner for an engagement at his intimate Storyville club in the Hotel Buckminster on Kenmore Square near the Boston Red Sox home, Fenway Park. (Red

Sox star Ted Williams was reputedly an avowed Garner fan and would often be seen in the Storyville audience for Garner’s engagements there). The evening was recorded and broadcast on Boston radio station WHDH and became part of Wein’s massive audio archive. Nearly 60 years later, this concert is being made available for the first time since those Storyville patrons witnessed the original performance.

Following an introduction from the eminent jazz critic Nat Hentoff (now a respected NEA Jazz Master), Garner opens his Storyville appearance with “Rosalie,” a Cole Porter tune from a 1937 movie of the same name, which the pianist had resuscitated on his 1949 Savoy album, Yesterdays. His trademark four-to-the-bar left hand approach, in which he comps in the manner of a rhythm guitar and uses accents like a drummer to ‘goose’ the beat, can be heard immediately on this set-opener. His signature use of soloing with block chords in the right hand also comes into play on this energized rendition. Garner’s rhapsodic reading of “I Surrender Dear,” a hit song for Bing Crosby in 1931,” incorporates some florid right hand statements by the pianistic original.

His take on “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” a tune named for the Harlem dance hall and claimed during the late ‘30s by the big bands of Benny Goodman and Count Basie, is given a stripped-down trio reading by Garner, who embellishes the Swing era standard with laid-back, behind-the-beat octaves. Dig John Simmons’ insistent walking bass on this old chestnut. From that ebullient romp they segue into a requested number, the melancholy ballad forever associated with Billie Holiday, “Lover Man.” Garner’s rococo right-hand statements here make for a wholly original take on that 1941 torch song. Next up is an ebullient, Garnerized interpretation of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” a Jimmy McHugh-Dorothy Fields tune from the successful Broadway musical, Blackbirds of 1928, His four-to-the-bar left handed comping statements and chordal melodies are in full effect on this lively, mid-tempo swinging interpretation by the maestro. His version of Jerome Kern’s “All The Things You Are” opens with a solo flourish before settling into a ballad form full of signature filigrees with the right hand. Garner concludes his Storyville set with a jaunty rendition of the 1930 Tin Pan Alley number “I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You)” that serves as the best showcase of the evening of his laid back,behind-the-beat phrasing of a melody with the right hand.

Born in Pittsburgh on June 15, 1923, Garner began playing piano at the age of three. He attended George Westinghouse High School along with fellow Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn and Ahmad Jamal. Essentially self-taught, he never learned to read music and remained an ‘ear player’ all his life. Garner’s earliest gigs, at age 11, were on the Allegheny riverboats. By 14, he joined a band led by local saxophonist Leroy Brown. After playing locally, he moved to New York in 1944, briefly working with bassist Slam Stewart on 52nd Street. In 1947, he played with Charlie Parker on the famous “Cool Blues” session for Savoy Records. Garner’s accessible style became popular in the 1950s following the recording of “Misty” and his best-selling Concerts by the Sea album. He continued recording and touring both at home and abroad through the ‘60s and was reportedly the favorite jazz musician of “The Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson, who booked him on the show many times. Garner died from a cardiac arrest on January 2, 1977. Perhaps George Wein put it best when he wrote in his autobiography, “Myself, Among Others”: “Erroll Garner was a true original in the history of jazz piano. For reasons I do not understand, considering the high respect other contemporaries had for him, Garner seems to have been forgotten by younger jazz critics and jazz pianists alike. There was only one Erroll Garner and it would help every jazz pianist if they paid a little more attention to his talent and creativity.” (Bill Milkowski)

Erroll Garner – piano; John Simmons – bass; Shadow Wilson – drums