Red Garland Trio
Swingin’ on the Korner
(Elemental)

WILLIAM “RED” GARLAND was a Texan, born in Dallas in 1923, whose father was a lift operator at the First National Bank.
“William, we’re not musical,” father told son, “it must be something you were meant to do.”

Red followed two very contrary arts with his hands, being both a boxer in his youth and, after a stint on the clarinet, a prime pianist.

“Discovered” by Hot Lips Page in his home town, by the early 1950s he was playing in New York with some of jazz’s greatest saxophonists, from Coleman Hawkins to Charlie Parker to Lester Young.

By 1955 he became part of Miles Davis’s first great quintet, with John Coltrane, bassist Paul Chambers and the jewel among the drummers Philly Joe Jones, before he began to cut a series of rampant trio albums for the Prestige, Jazzland and Moodsville labels.

By 1965 the first Davis quintet had disbanded and Red’s mother died in Dallas. He returned to his family and, apart from a few rare forays to New York and Los Angeles for club dates, he stayed in his home town, out of the jazz spotlight.

Swingin’ on the Korner was recorded at San Francisco’s Keystone Korner during five nights of performing in December 1977, just seven years before Garland’s death.

He is playing with two old and intimate confreres — the ebullient Philly Joe and the rampaging “walking” bassist Leroy Vinnegar, born in Indianapolis in 1928.

It is almost incredulous to learn that they never played as a trio before as they perform superbly through two hours of live rapture, with Red manifesting in his every note what another great Texan pianist, Cedar Walton, said of him: “No practitioner of the art of jazz piano swung any harder or with any more soulful lyricism than did the great Red Garland.

He paved the way for so many of us.”

From blazing opener Love for Sale, the trio blare into a succession of ballads and bop standbys, with Red playing on the cusp of each melody, Vinnegar pulsing within their very innards and Philly Joe’s speed of percussive reaction and depth of empathy creating three swinging souls in each one.

Each performance has a narrative, as if these so-often-played tunes like I Wish I Knew, The Christmas Song, Autumn Leaves or Never Let Me Go are telling entirely new stories which the listener is prompted to create by the trio’s sheer freshness of delivery.

The sudden quietude of It’s Impossible is sublime in its suddenness, with Vinnegar’s deep effervescence and Red’s notes so carefully chosen, chiming like keyboard bells.

After folk tune Billy Boy, three bop classics follow — firstly the very un-American Dear Old Stockholm and its evocation of another faraway harbour city, a trio palaver of close musical comradeship.

Then there is Kenny Dorham’s Blues in Bebop, where Red brings together his epoch and his heart’s blood, and where you bless the now-times exuberance of live recording. The third is a very singular, almost tender, version of Green Dolphin Street.

The second CD begins with Red playing Monk and Straight No Chaser with Philly Joe’s astonishing foreground drums.

Lucky were the listeners at the Keystone Korner that night to be so close to it all as Philly tears up the leather and Vinnegar’s bass throbs so relentlessly alongside Red’s boiling pianism.

Some more reflective minutes pass with On a Clear Day You Can See Forever before the trio go gently into a climatic rendition of The Best Things in Life Are Free before transforming it into the naked poetry of swing.

This session has never been released before. If you want to hear unity of sound and creativity of conception to an nth degree — here are your moments with Red, Philly and Leroy.

By Chris Searle