Easy to Love: The Erroll Garner Collection Vol. 1

Polygram/Verve (1990)

Notes on this Production

This album marks the first world-wide release in over a decade of some of Erroll Garner's hitherto unissued recordings.

Making choices from the trove of great recordings and compositions Garner left in the proverbial trunk was a labor of joy and some perplexity. Pianist/arranger Sy Johnson and I spent days of intensive listening to tapes, emerging with enough material for several albums. Johnson, who was Garner's personal choice to annotate and arrange his compositions for the Erroll Garner Songbook, termed Garner's work... "a celebration of the human spirit; a life force."

The material in this album derives from four different sessions, circa '61, '64, '65. Accompanists on all of them are bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Kelly Martin, both of whom worked with Garner in the '50's and '60's. As always with Garner performances, the recordings were improvised and many of them are one takes. No attempt was made to "homogenize" the mixes or tape transfers; rather, we strove to preserve the original sound and balance.

Much honored in his lifetime, Garner's posthumous tributes and awards have continued since his untimely death in 1977. Concerts, festivals, ballets, poems, lyrics and film showings have all celebrated Garner and his works. For the past five years, Misty has won awards from ASCAP as "one of the most performed standards of the past decade." A scholarship fund has been established in Garner's name, and an oral history project is ongoing for the Garner Archives.

We are most fortunate to have Dudley Moore, a long-time Garner devotee, write the notes for this album. Renowned as an actor in film, theater, and television, Moore is also an accomplished musician and composer, at home in both the classical and jazz genres. London-born, Moore began his piano studies at the age of six, and went on to advanced classical studies on piano, organ and violin, and composition and arranging, at Oxford's Magdalen College, where he earned degrees in 1957 and 1958. He later performed with Johnny Dankworth's orchestra, and with his own trio. In recent years, he has been appearing as guest soloist with major symphony orchestra, during breaks in his film schedule.

We are privileged to present this first work in the new Erroll Garner Collection, and are most pleased to have Dudley Moore as our tour guide.

-- Martha Glaser

Click for Dudley Moore's notes

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