Bill Evans at Town Hall

Of pianist Bill Evans' many live albums, At Town Hall ... Vol. 1  has always been among his most delicate and elegant. Evans' playing is taut and graceful, with lovely long improvisational lines and a snappy, fluid attack on the keyboard. The mix of standards and two originals—one was a suite in memory of his' father, who died just three days earlier—also were neatly selected and assembled.

For those who share my love of this album, here's a list of little-known facts about the recording taken from Peter Pettinger's How My Heart Sings, a Bill Evans' discography, and quotes from sources I spoke to yesterday afternoon. I also have a rare treat for you at the bottom:

• Despite playing New York club dates for 10 years, the Town Hall recording on February 21, 1966 was Evans' first New York concert appearance.

• Evans played the first half of the Town Hall concert with just bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Arnie Wise, and the second half with an orchestra.

• According to Tom Lord's Jazz Discography, the orchestra segment was arranged and conducted by Al Cohn [pictured] and featured Ernie Royal, Clark Terry and Bill Berry (trumpets), Bob Brookmeyer, Quentin Jackson and Bill Watrous (trombone), Bob Northern (French horn), Jerry Dodgion, George Marge, Eddie Daniels, Frank Petrovsky and Marvin Holladay (reeds), Evans (piano), Chuck Israels (bass) and Grady Tate (drums).

• The orchestra performed four Al Cohn-arranged tunes: Willow Weep for Me and What Kind of Fool Am I as well as Evans' originals Funkallero and Waltz for Debby.

• Verve never released Volume 2, which was to have featured the orchestral material and three trio tracks that didn't fit on the first LP. Yesterday I asked Jan Stevens of The Bill Evans Web Pages what became of the band tracks. Jan says Evans was intensely displeased with the result:

"Al Cohn did a strange thing. The orchestral material was set up so the band played one of Cohn's arrangements followed by Bill playing a solo interlude between songs. In this regard, the four songs were meant to be a kind of suite, with Bill's piano bridging the gaps. But Helen Keane told me in the early 1980s that Bill was extremely unhappy with the result. She said the tracks would never come out, no matter what. So far, they've never been commercially issued. What's more, they have never appeared on a bootleg, which leads me to think Verve may have purged the masters immediately on Keane's or Evans' insistence." [Photo of Helen Keane and Bill Evans by Phil Bray, courtesy of BillEvans.nl in the Netherlands]

• Although Creed Taylor's name and signature were used by Verve on the LP jacket, Creed told me yesterday that Helen alone produced the concert and that he wasn't there and had nothing to do with the event or the album's production.

• Gene Lees, the legendary jazz writer and close friend of Evans, said yesterday he couldn't remember the concert and didn't know specifically why the orchestral material wasn't issued or what happened to the tracks.

• The concert was Chuck Israels' last recorded appearance as a regular member of the Bill Evans Trio.

• Note-for-note piano transcriptions of the six songs recorded at Town Hall were recently issued as Bill Evans at Town Hall: Piano Transcriptions and Performance Notes by Pascal Wetzel. You'll find it here.
  

And now for the treat I promised you above. Thanks to the generosity of JazzWax reader Kurt Kolstad, who attended the Town Hall concert in 1966, here's the program sheet, front and back, including Gene Lees' tribute essay. Kurt says the song selections did not appear in the program and were announced from the stage (click on the image to enlarge):

 

Comments

[Bill Forbes]

Interesting! I've had the Vol 1 LP since the seventies and have always wondered about Vol 2.

[Matt]

"Who could keep up with it."

Man, I've been waiting for someone great to say that. It's really a load off.

[Jon Foley]

"At Town Hall" is one of the great Evans albums, and an unjustly neglected one. The Evans/Israels/Wise trio is, for me, his finest group, perhaps equalled only by the Evans/Israels/Larry Bunker trio. Scott LaFaro was a great bassist, but Chuck Israels meshed with Evans' style better than any other bassist, and he was (and is) an outstanding soloist. Just listen.

[Red Colm O'Sullivan]

What of Arnold Wise, though? He's so wonderful on this record, I'd love to know more about him. (Wasn't he English ? Maybe not).

[Jon Foley]

I first saw Chuck Israels and Arnie Wise together as part of the Steve Kuhn Trio in the late 50's. They were all college students at the time in Boston.
For some more information on them, see Chuck Israels' website - http://www.chuckisraels.com - and look at the Biography and Photos sections.