Search - Erroll Garner :: Magician / Gershwin & Kern

A Real Gem

Freddie Green ----- CoeZ2@aol.com | Northern N.J. | 12/17/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Garner is pure magic on this cd. A piano player who's grace and style remains unmatched. Take a good listen to the song "Nightwind". It's a pure treasure in the "Misty" tridition. For a little laugh catch "Nice Work if You Can Get It". This short number was never available on the orginal LP,and you hear Erroll sing (how often do you hear that),and even cracks himself up at the end. Erroll Garner was born June 15, 1921 and died January 2, 1977 at the all too young age of 55. Noboby did it better. I'm forever grateful for the music he left behind."

The Magic of a Genius

Fabricio Monteagudo | USA | 04/01/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Garner recorded his last album, MAGICIAN in October of 1973 at the age of 52 (and died at 55 in January of 1977).
This album proves that he was moving ever forward in his
playing. It demonstrates how much his style evolved since the
mid-1940s. It also demonstrates that his compositional gift
was expanding in its sheer variety of influences (it was not just swing anymore, he touched Latin with both a hybrid Cuban
or Brazilian feel, even a gospel-music tinged composition. It has been reported that just a few days before passing away he said that "only the tip of the iceberg was showing and that he had a head full of music.Wait till you hear it!!" Sadly, we will never know what that music might have been. The beauty of Garner's talent while he was alive, though, was that sense of surprise that would make you wonder where his fantastic imagination would take him across the piano. (And of course, the results were always and continue to be delightful and transcendentally joyful to our ears!!)
Check out his fantastically romping version of the Carpenters' ballad "(They Long To Be) Close To You" complete with a typically humurous introduction by Garner before he plays the main theme and grooves like only he could. His first composition on the album is a great slow medium blues with an
appropriate title for how the Garner style had developed during the previous thirty years, "It Gets Better Every Time". It is blues with unusually captivating harmonic richness with piano voicings reminiscent of some of the late blues compositions and arrangements by Duke Ellington. Gershwin's "Someone To Watch Over Me" is given fresh treatment as a tightly grooving bossa nova. Dig his uncanny sense of rhythm on this one!! Other highlights are his ballad in the "Misty" mold, "Nightwind" his
gospel-flavored composition complete with organ and tambourine "One Good Turn" and perhaps one of his very best
Afro-Cuban tinged compositions "Mucho Gusto", which would prove to the last tune on the album (and of his studio recording career).
The second album is taken from sessions recorded in 1964 and 1965 (that were not released in vinyl form at the time until 1976) and features great songbooks of Gershwin and Jerome Kern. Of particular interest are his rousing version of "Strike Up The Band", one his most gorgeous treatments of any ballad he ever touched, "Love Walked In" and his infectiously spirited version of "I Got Rhythm". On the Kern side, of interest are "Lovely To Look At", "Can't Help Lovin Dat Man", and "A Fine Romance".
Both albums serve as proof that the elfin Garner's music is still today an indispensable and irrepressible legacy for all who like spirited, joyful, and downright swinging jazz piano."

If God himself played jazz piano.......

Jazz Pianist | Milwaukee, WI USA | 03/03/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Erroll Garner swings this album to gloriuos, outrageous, joyous heights. Listen to his amazing re-creation of the Carpenters classic "Close to You"; it swings so unbelievably hard and is the epitome of stunningly, dazzlingly "hip". It is impossible to sit still during this and very many other tracks on this remarkable disc. Then Mr. G will turn around and play something as meltingly beautiful and exquisitely tender as "Love Walked In". Gifted as a Mozart, Erroll Garner had something none of the rest of them had, and truly "strode like a colossus among pygmies." Jazz truthfully doesn't get any better than this."