{"id":30668,"date":"2026-02-25T05:30:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T10:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30668"},"modified":"2026-01-22T09:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T14:30:12","slug":"everybody-digs-bill-evans-two-of-us-talk-about-him-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/25\/everybody-digs-bill-evans-two-of-us-talk-about-him-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Everybody Digs Bill Evans; Two of Us Talk About Him (Part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A shorter edit of this conversation appeared previously in<\/em> The Tonearm.<\/a><\/p>\n

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

In the new set\u2019s liner notes, you assert that LaFaro helped move bass beyond its timekeeping role. Tell me more about that.<\/b><\/p>\n

Eugene Holley Jr.:<\/strong> 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\u2019s time, that was the function of the bass: to anchor the rhythmic and harmonic foundation of the band, especially when other people are soloing.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2026 they could all do that. But they didn\u2019t employ that facility the way that Scott LaFaro did.<\/p>\n

How do you think that the studio sessions by this trio differ in character, if at all, from the live recordings that they made?<\/b><\/p>\n

Usually when a musician \u2013 in the jazz context or even in the pop context \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

And I think the Bill Evans Trio does the same thing. There is a difference when they\u2019re playing in front of people, but it\u2019s very fine. They\u2019re so well tuned together that it\u2019s almost the same. When you listen to the Sunday at the Village Vanguard<\/i> recordings \u2013 which were made right after these studio recordings \u2013 the audience is so quiet. But you can feel their intensity; you can feel that they\u2019re listening.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s almost no difference between the studio recordings and the live recordings.<\/p>\n

We know that Evans took Scott LaFaro\u2019s death pretty hard, but he certainly continued. And as great as the bassists who would follow were \u2013 Eddie Gomez, for example \u2013 what do you think the trio lost with the death of LaFaro?<\/b><\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t 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\u2019t create it. LaFaro co-created that language. And when you lose someone like that \u2013 in any group \u2013 it\u2019s an irreplaceable loss.<\/p>\n

What can we learn and experience by hearing the alternate takes that are on this new <\/b>Haunted Heart<\/b><\/i> set?<\/b><\/p>\n

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\u2019s an arrangement.<\/p>\n

When you hear the alternate takes of the Bill Evans Trio in this particular context, what you\u2019re hearing is [what] these guys were coming up with at the speed of sound. And sometimes those alternate takes could have been the<\/i> take. I\u2019ve talked with musicians who have been around for decades, and some of their work has been reissued with alternate takes. And they\u2019ll say, \u201cYou 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.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

What do you see as the enduring legacy of that trio that made <\/b>Portrait in Jazz<\/b><\/i>, <\/b>Explorations<\/b><\/i>, <\/b>Sunday at the Village Vanguard<\/b><\/i> and <\/b>Waltz for Debby<\/b><\/i>?<\/b><\/p>\n

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<\/i>, but evolutionary<\/i>. 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\u2019t been] done and sustained at that level.<\/p>\n

Jazz has a forward propulsion to it; that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Studio Recordings <\/b><\/i>was released November 21 from Craft Recordings.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A shorter edit of this conversation appeared previously in The Tonearm. Continued from Part One… In the new set\u2019s liner notes, you assert that LaFaro helped move bass beyond its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,42,49],"tags":[312,5840,5841,1921],"class_list":["post-30668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-jazz","category-new-release","tag-bill-evans","tag-eugene-holley-jr","tag-paul-motian","tag-scott-lafaro","cat-41-id","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30668"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30673,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30668\/revisions\/30673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}