Everybody Digs Bill Evans; Two of Us Talk About Him (Part 2 of 2)

A shorter edit of this conversation appeared previously in The Tonearm.

Continued from Part One…

In the new set’s liner notes, you assert that LaFaro helped move bass beyond its timekeeping role. Tell me more about that.

Eugene Holley Jr.: As I said before, Scott LaFaro understood the main function of the bass in a jazz format. The drummer keeps time, but the bass implies the harmony and the rhythmic direction of the band. Up until Scott LaFaro’s time, that was the function of the bass: to anchor the rhythmic and harmonic foundation of the band, especially when other people are soloing.

What Scott LaFaro did was to keep those foundations in check while simultaneously introducing an improvisational element. He was improvising [as if] he was a front person. He was able to do both at the same time; he would imply the things that were needed rhythmically and harmonically, but at the same time, he would solo like he was a horn player.

I want to be fair: he was not the first to do it. People like Israel Crosby, John Kirby, contemporaries like George Duvivier, Charles Mingus… they could all do that. But they didn’t employ that facility the way that Scott LaFaro did.

How do you think that the studio sessions by this trio differ in character, if at all, from the live recordings that they made?

Usually when a musician – in the jazz context or even in the pop context – makes a live recording, the tempo tends to be faster. But when a great one like Ahmad Jamal recorded in the studio, he sounded the same. He could create that live mentality in a studio.

And I think the Bill Evans Trio does the same thing. There is a difference when they’re playing in front of people, but it’s very fine. They’re so well tuned together that it’s almost the same. When you listen to the Sunday at the Village Vanguard recordings – which were made right after these studio recordings – the audience is so quiet. But you can feel their intensity; you can feel that they’re listening.

And those musicians are listening also, because music is a two-way street. To answer your question, I think the trio is so well tuned, well-prepared and well inspired that there’s almost no difference between the studio recordings and the live recordings.

We know that Evans took Scott LaFaro’s death pretty hard, but he certainly continued. And as great as the bassists who would follow were – Eddie Gomez, for example – what do you think the trio lost with the death of LaFaro?

He didn’t know the language they created; he created the language they knew. In other words, [later Trio bassist including] Eddie Gomez and Mark Johnson knew the language that the trio created with Scott LaFaro, but they didn’t create it. LaFaro co-created that language. And when you lose someone like that – in any group – it’s an irreplaceable loss.

What can we learn and experience by hearing the alternate takes that are on this new Haunted Heart set?

What you learn from alternate takes in the jazz context is very important. Because sometimes when you hear the final product on a recording, you tend to freeze that moment of inspiration and improvisation almost like it’s an arrangement.

When you hear the alternate takes of the Bill Evans Trio in this particular context, what you’re hearing is [what] these guys were coming up with at the speed of sound. And sometimes those alternate takes could have been the take. I’ve talked with musicians who have been around for decades, and some of their work has been reissued with alternate takes. And they’ll say, “You know, 30 years ago, I went with what was released, but I might have put the alternate take on if we were doing it today.” So I think what you hear with Bill Evans and Scott and Paul is the beauty of theme, variation and improvisation with those alternate takes.

What do you see as the enduring legacy of that trio that made Portrait in Jazz, Explorations, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby?

They were individuals who came together from different parts of the jazz idiom, and in a very brief time they were able to come up with a way of playing jazz that was not necessarily revolutionary, but evolutionary. It was not a break from how jazz trios were performed before, but what Bill, Scott and Paul did was create in the jazz trio arrangement idiom a kind of circular improvisation in group performance that [hadn’t been] done and sustained at that level.

Jazz has a forward propulsion to it; that’s what we call swing. But they added a multi-directional component to that forward direction. It still was swing, but it was swing in a circular, communal sense.

Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Studio Recordings was released November 21 from Craft Recordings.