Celebrating Bill Evans (b. Aug. 16, 1929) and Mal Waldron (b. Aug. 16, 1925)

By Fritz Byers

    Today is the birthday of two essential jazz pianists – Bill Evans, a front-line luminary in the music by almost any reckoning; and Mal Waldron, less prominent in the broader culture but widely admired among musicians and by partisans of what is loosely but helpfully called the avant-garde.

    For years I’ve been meaning to write at length about Bill Evans and what his music has meant to me over the half-century of my attentions to jazz.  Today, I renew the resolution to do so.  But for now: if you’ve not done so, lately or ever, listen to his recordings with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian – the two studio recordings, Portraits in Jazz, and Explorations, and the justly revered live recordings at the Village Vanguard from June 1961.  These recordings are, in the words of the great jazz writer Martin Williams, “some of the treasures of recorded jazz.”  They are an apex of the piano-trio form, and showcase Evans’s unrivaled touch and harmonic technique.  

And here you can watch Bill play one of his signature tunes, “My Foolish Heart,” in the company of the bassist Chuck Israel and the drummer, Larry Bunker, the duo who followed Scott and Paul in Bill’s trio after Scott’s death in a car accident, ten days after the Village Vanguard session.  The sound fidelity here is less than optimal, but everything else about this clip is a pure reflection of Bill’s art.

Mal Waldron is a different kind of cat.  And like Bill, he deserves his own lengthy tribute.  I’ll talk with fellow blogger Kim Kleinman about this, and maybe invite our friend Rob Michaels to make his debut by explicating Mal’s genius.  Rob and I recently took terms raving about Mal’s underappreciated contributions to Charles Mingus and to Eric Dolphy’s famous concert at the Five Spot, which you can find as Eric Dolphy/Booker Little Quintet, At the Five Spot, Complete Edition.

Before that landmark date, and even as his taste for innovation grew in the late 50s, Mal worked as Billie Holiday’s accompanist for the last two years of her life, a vocational education of almost indescribable value.  He then worked with the great singer Abbey Lincoln and non-pareil drummer Max Roach, which would have brought him pretty much full circle.

For most of the rest of his life – he passed in 2002 – Mal lived overseas, where he was aptly viewed as a cultural treasure.  Nearly everything he recorded is worth your time.  I especially value his duets with the soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and his solo recordings, which began with All Alone (1966) and include the masterworks Blues for Lady Day (1972) and Mingus Lives (1979).  To hear him as the anchor of a rhythm section, don’t miss What It Is, from 1981, with the tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan, the bassist Cecil McBee, and Mingus’s long-time drummer, Dannie Richmond.

Here is Mal with a solo performance of “All Alone.”  I’m pretty sure he’ll reach you with this.

Happy birthday, and thank you, to both.