Erroll Garner was born 91 years ago today. Garner was a jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad Misty has become a jazz standard. Born in Pittsburgh, to an African American family in 1923, Erroll began playing piano at the age of three. He attended George Westinghouse High School, as did fellow pianists Billy Strayhorn and Ahmad Jamal. Garner was self-taught and remained an ear player all his life – he never learned to read music. At the age of seven, he began appearing on the radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh with a group called the Candy Kids. By the age of 11, he was playing on the Allegheny riverboats. At 14 in 1937, he joined local saxophonist Leroy Brown. He played locally in the shadow of his older pianist brother Linton Garner and moved to New York in 1944. He briefly worked with the bassist Slam Stewart, and though not a bebop musician per se, in 1947 played with Charlie Parker on the famous Cool Blues session. Although his admission to the Pittsburgh music union was initially refused because of his inability to read music, they eventually relented in 1956 and made him an honorary member. Garner is credited with having a superb memory of music. After attending a concert by the Russian classical pianist Emil Gilels, Garner returned to his apartment and was able to play a large portion of the performed music by recall. Called one of the most distinctive of all pianists by jazz writer Scott Yanow, Garner showed that a creative jazz musician can be very popular without watering down his music or changing his personal style. He is referred to as a brilliant virtuoso who sounded unlike anyone else, using an orchestral approach straight from the swing era but …open to the innovations of bop. Garner died from a cardiac arrest on January 2, 1977. Here, Garner plays “Misty.”
Posted on: Sun, 15 Jun 2014 06:20:24 +0000
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