Red Garland

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

I have really been enjoying his recordings lately, especially Red Garland Revisited! (CD) and The Red Garland Quintet with John Coltrane (LP). I am a huge Errol Garner fan along with Bill Evans, and to a lesser extent Monk, Horace Tapscott et al. However, I think there is no one who could excel Red's lyricism with ballads and slow pieces, as well as his beauty of tone. My piano teacher always preached the gospel of beautiful tone in piano playing, revering performers like Solomon, Myra Hess, and Dinu Lipatti for their attention to this facet of playing. I hear that same quality in Red's playing, more so than perhaps any jazz pianist.

These 8 album (4 CD) sets are available from Amazon at ridonkulously cheap prices (~ $14 each).







I should buy all of them, but it is just too much music. I'd rather buy the LPs one at a time (new or used) and really get to know them--even though it is far more expensive that way. Still, I love those LPs!

Any thoughts on Red and his recordings--which are your favorite albums?

[aukhawk]

He was also fundamental to the Miles Davis quintet of 1956 (Davis, Coltrane, Garland, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones) that produced four classic albums, Cookin', Relaxin', Workin' and Steamin' (often now found as 2 CDs).  This group specialised in mid-tempo numbers that, to quote one sleevenote, "almost play themselves", supposedly taking influence from the pianist Ahmad Jamal (by Miles' own account).

One number, You're My Everything from the Relaxin' album, opens with Red Garland launching into a lyrical intro when he is rudely interrupted by Miles who is heard to growl "block chords man, block chords" - and after a short pause the number starts again with over-loud crunchy piano chords.  The instruction seemed to stay with Red for the remainder of his time with Miles, you rarely hear anything but 'block chords' from him after that.

[king ubu]

Favourites? Certainly "Groovy" and "Red Garland's Piano", as well as the expanded 2 CD set of the Prelude live recordings:



I'm not that much into Art Taylor usually, but the trio of Garland-Chambers-Taylor is great.

From those rickulously cheep bootleggs I've so far stayed away quite successfully. It seems sometimes they don't even provide full line-ups and such ... I've got half a dozen (or a few more) of Garland's albums on individual reissues (Fantasy/OJCCDs mostly, and at least one from a Japanese series), and then all the recordings with Miles and Coltrane, the latter as part of the three thematic boxes (leader and sideman sessions, and collaborations/jams) put out by Concord, after they took over the Fantasy catalogue (those three boxes couldn't be stopped in time by them ... lucky us!)

I guess his albums are quite consistently fine, the question is how many you want/need ... one to consider as well is this release by Elemental:



This is from after his return to Dallas (1965) to take care of his mother there ... his career slowed down (but I guess it would have in NYC or elsewhere, too, as those were hard years for jazz musicians of his kind). There's an MPS album (which I have on my records shelf) and some other interesting late recordings (on Galaxy mostly but I don't have any of them I think), there are also a couple of live albums with Lou Donaldson from 1980 (I own one of them on CD I'm sure, not sure I ever found the second or not, too much music piling up ...)

[San Antone]

Those "apostrophe" albums were book-ended by two others by that quintet:

Miles (the New Quintet) also on Prestige and 'Round About Midnight on Columbia



The four in between were all done over two marathon sessions in 1956 in order to fulfill the band's contract with Prestige so that they could begin their tenure on Columbia.  Those four would come out over the next year or two while Miles was also releasing Columbia stuff.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

Favourites? Certainly "Groovy" and "Red Garland's Piano", as well as the expanded 2 CD set of the Prelude live recordings:



...

From those rickulously cheep bootleggs I've so far stayed away quite successfully. It seems sometimes they don't even provide full line-ups and such ...



This is from after his return to Dallas (1965) to take care of his mother there ... his career slowed down (but I guess it would have in NYC or elsewhere, too, as those were hard years for jazz musicians of his kind). There's an MPS album (which I have on my records shelf) and some other interesting late recordings (on Galaxy mostly but I don't have any of them I think), there are also a couple of live albums with Lou Donaldson from 1980 (I own one of them on CD I'm sure, not sure I ever found the second or not, too much music piling up ...)

Thanks for the suggestions. I actually received the cheapo years 1956-1959 Garland set referenced above and am quite pleased with it. At least there is original cover art on the cover, unlike the Bill Evans Fantasy set for nearly $100 with generic gray covers. (I am tracking down the Evans' Fantasy recordings as LPs anyway). Packaging is minimal and the plastic holders that hold the CDs in place disintegrated into a million pieces upon opening the box, but that has happened with very expensive CDs as well. Sound quality is quite good given the age of these recordings. For $13 I am happy--for $50 or more I would expect better. Realisticaly though, my CDs get ripped once and then I listen to the FLACs, while the CDs themselves sit on my shelves for very long periods of time unless I need the liner notes. And realisitically, it is also easier to just look stuff up online.

I am at the point where I would be happy to stop buying CDs entirely and go with high-res downloads if they included a pdf of the liner notes. I'll save my space for books and LPs!