When asked why he never bothered to read music, Erroll Garner responded: "Hell, man, nobody can hear you read."
If you want to buy the eight-minute version of Garner playing The Man I Love, which I referred to last weekend (many have been asking), you need to buy Gershwin Jazz, a Sony sampler.
Sadly, Sony has still not been able to come to terms with the Garner estate for the rights to his complete 1950s Columbia recordings. Hence, much of Garner's best output for the label continues to be disgracefully out of print or available only on CDs with poor fidelity from the early 1990s.
On a positive note, I'm still enjoying the 10-CD Erroll Garner box from Germany ($24) that I mentioned on September 4. I find I wind up listening to them in reverse order—starting in the early 1950s and winding back to the mid-1940s. The evolution in Erroll's attack and comfort level is evident and exciting as you move back in time.
Wax clip: To see Garner's cocktail-shaker approach to a My Fair Lady medley, go here.
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