The Unique Genuineness of Erroll Garner

by Zachary Vanderslice

This June 15th, WKCR is celebrating the birthday of the great jazz pianist, Eroll Garner. During this year's fundraising drive, WKCR asked you, our listeners, to vote on an additional birthday broadcast to be aired this summer. You had the option of picking between Eroll Garner, Chick Corea, and Sonny Clark, and by an astounding margin, Erroll Garner won.

Born in 1921, Eroll would have turned 102 this year but sadly passed in 1973 at 55. Garner grew up in Pittsburg and started playing piano at the young age of three. He was self-taught, choosing to learn everything by ear instead of by lesson or by reading. After playing in his high school band, Garner began playing in New York. His early work is best characterized by his 1947 recording session with Charlie Parker (“Cool Blues,” for example). At this point, his distinctive style— characterized by polyrhythm and virtuosic melodic lines in the right—was already evident but it wasn’t until almost a decade later that his popularity would skyrocket.

In 1955, Columbia released Garner’s immediately classic Concert by the Sea. It was a live recording of Garner with Eddie Calhoun (b) and Denzil Best (d) in the assembly hall of Sunset School in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. The album featured Garner’s signature ballad,

"Misty," and was an instant best-seller. "Misty," Garner’s best-known standard, is undoubtedly one of the genre’s greatest, most wrenching, and most beautiful ballads. It is unsurprising that its fame has endured in the works of great singers and even in the Clint Eastwood film, Play Misty for Me.

Garner continued playing throughout the 1960s and 1970s, recording numerous classic albums. Particular favorites include his 1961 release Dreamstreet, Gemini (1972), and Magician (1974). Of particular interest is the recently released album, Ready Take One (2016), which features a variety of previously unreleased Garner recordings from 1967, 1969, and 1971. Our upcoming birthday broadcast (a full 24 hours of Garner’s piano) will certainly feature these classics, and many, many, more.

Garner’s renown has often been attributed to his unique ability to capture a sense of happiness and joy in his music. Garner described in 1952, to TIME Magazine, that “I just play what I feel. Suddenly I hit a groove that moves me, and then I take off. I don't worry about how it'll come out." Perhaps, it is not joy or happiness in paritucular that Garner captures in his playing, but a naturalness. There is not a performance of his that does not feel completely genuine.