MUSIC OR DIE #29: Bill Evans Trio, "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" (1961)

Remember that smoking is bad, kids

Part 29 of my 1000+ part series.
(For info on that, clickety-click-click)

In which I remain floating in a sea of jazzy uncertainty. 

TL;DR

I cling to these images like a lifeboat in choppy waters

More after The Cut >>>



Continuing the storied tradition of eras past (i.e., the previous post), I'm going to finish off each track's commentary with pictures found on Google Images - specifically from searching the word "confusion."  

1.) Gloria's Step (take 2) - My uncultured brain immediately thinks of Vince Guaraldi and the music from "Peanuts" (not the main theme, but like...the background music as they're all walking around. Yeah. I'm 85% positive I've said something like this in a previous post.)

I meeeean...am I wrong?

I mean, it's pleasant and inoffensive. 

2.) My Man's Gone Now - This is one from Porgy and Bess by Gershwin....and man, have I ever covered Gershwin. Though shockingly, this was not one of the songs covered in Ella Fitzgerald's comprehensive Gershwin run-through - she did record it for the Porgy and Bess album, however:

For my money, though, I'd argue that Nina Simone's version is the best - and yes, I'll fight you on this:

It's a beautiful song, and Bill Evans Trio's arrangement is lovely. For me, though, something is lost in translation once the lyrics are removed.

3.) Solar - So apparently this is the best-known version of this piece. Miles Davis did an earlier recording of it, however, and the first two measures of it are even on his tombstone. Huh.

I prefer Davis' version, if for no other reason than because of the greater number of instruments, including SexySax. I'm a cretin.

A both alarmingly high and not at all surprisingly high number of search results were COVID related

4.) Alice in Wonderland (take 2) - Wouldn't ya know it, it's a jazzy version of the opening theme to the 1951 Disney movie:

I'm biased! I like this!

5.) All of You (take 2) - Is it bad that all I can think about is that John Legend song? Yes? Yeah, I thought so. (Side note: wow, as I'm writing this, that video has OVER 1.7 BILLION VIEWS?!)

But this is a Cole Porter classic, one that I shockingly haven't(?) covered before! Here's a version by Ella Fitzgerald, because WHY NOT:

It sounds very much like a product of its time (i.e., the mid-1950s), which hey, I'm down for. 

As for the arrangement at hand...again,  it's fine. I don't have much to say.

Click me. I dare you.

6.) Jade Visions (take 2) - This was apparently the last song of the set the Trio recorded, and in fact the last thing that bassist Scott LaFaro ever recorded before tragically dying in a car accident less than two weeks later. 

It's the shortest piece on the record and to my untrained ear the most sonically unique and interesting. The time signature is quite different, and the music is almost trance-like. I wouldn't exactly call it something I like, per se, but I appreciate how different it is from the others.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Man, this was a hard post to write, mainly because I just don't know what to say. If you're a jazz aficionado, this is apparently a must-listen. For me and my empty shell of a skull, I just hear pleasant music. And it is, it's really pleasant. 

I've read a number of articles and reviews about this album trying to understand what I'm missing. Virtually all of them point to the seamless interplay of the Trio: how they work off each other, how they interweave their parts. I think that with my modern ear I didn't even catch that, but I don't deny that it's true. In a way, I think it's more evidence to the fact that this is so smooth and seamless that nothing in particular on the album stood out to me...as contradictory as that sounds.

Personal standout tracks:

I don't know how to answer this. Because I'm so biased I'm going to say "Alice in Wonderland."

This'll do