Erroll Garner Uncovered: EP.02 - Chick Corea / Closeup In Swing
“…it’s a rediscovery…the man is blowing me away every time I hear him play and what he can do technically and with a groove…there is absolutely no one that I’ve heard that creates a groove like Erroll.” - Chick Corea
ORIGINAL 1961 LP LINER NOTES
This is Erroll Garner's second album work of 1961. The selection herein were chosen by Garner from more than sixty improvisations performed by him and hi accompanists , during several evening sessions in July and August. Included are his inspired and imaginative treatments of eight great standards, and two new Garner compositions'- Shadows (a ballad in the genre of his renowned Misty, Dreamy, Solitaire and Dreamstreet) and El Papa Grande, a brilliant mambo revel. The ·swing feeling, elan, passion, and lyricism of these sides makes them a wonderful, warm adventure for the listener--a penetrating "Closeup in Swing.”
Now in his late thirties, the Pittsburgh-born Garner has been playing piano since the age of three. A deeply creative and sensitive artist, his prolific career has spanned the riverboats on the Allegheny River to the top concert halls of the world. Garners incredible conceptions and remarkable two handed swinging attack have brought him world-renown for almost two decades. His is one of the most original and distinctive musical voices of contemporary times. British jazz critic, Albert MacCarthy, calls Garner “...the last of the great individualists in jazz.”
— MARTHA GLASER
“When he sets out to spin variations on a thousand themes, he is first of all an impressionist, often hovering in the French realms of Debussy and Ravel. But he can suddenly turn into the dissonant as if the acrid tonalities of Schoenberg were hot on his heels. He sometimes seems to be composing a concertoin the Copland idiom... he works with his bass player the way a flamenco dancer works with the guitar”