Celebrating Ready Take One's 4th Anniversary
In celebration of the 4th anniversary of Erroll Garner’s Ready Take One, we are sharing Robin D.G. Kelley’s passages from the album liner notes. Join Dr. Kelley on our new podcast, Erroll Garner Uncovered, where he sits down with some of today’s most important musicians to discuss Garner’s music and try to discover, “Who is Erroll Garner to you?”
Ready Take One is available for purchase on vinyl on Amazon: Click here to view
Robin D.G. Kelley
Professor/Writer/Historian
“When Erroll records, he doesn’t really know what he’s going to play. . . [T]here wasn’t any talk about ‘take two, take three.’ It was always one take.” Well, almost. Drummer Jimmie Smith can be forgiven for a slight bit of hyperbole since his recollections are essentially accurate, borne out in these remarkable, newly discovered studio sessions. Yes, there are false starts and occasional second takes, but these are rare moments resulting from a little too much merriment in the studio. We only know this because the producer, Peter Lockhart, had the foresight to include a few light moments of session banter. Set lists were rare and the band operated in a state of uncertainty as to Garner’s next move. But once Martha Glaser announced, “Ready, take one,” from her perch in the control booth, the band usually delivered near flawless tracks. In other words, Garner’s studio sessions resembled his concerts—unpredictable, playful, electric, and swinging from the gate. Ready Take One not only showcases his genius as a player and composer but sheds some light on Martha Glaser’s role as producer and longtime collaborator.
photo by Charles Stewart
The fourteen tracks included here were recorded in 1967, 1969 and 1971—when Garner’s quartet was in exceedingly fine form but their frenetic tour schedule limited their recorded output. Half of the songs were recorded November 28–29, 1967, after winding down a year that included two European tours, a U.S. tour, performances with the Milwaukee and Baltimore symphony orchestras, and a cover story in Down Beat magazine. Garner’s sidemen had been with him a year or less, though all were consummate musicians. Veteran bassist Ike Isaacs worked with everyone, from Tiny Grimes and Count Basie to vocalists Carmen McCrae and the trio Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. Jimmie Smith, the youngest member of the group, had also backed Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, as well as Jimmy Forest, Pony Poindexter, and organists Larry Young, Jimmy McGriff, and Richard “Groove” Holmes. Jose Mangual, the celebrated Puerto Rican conguero, rounded out the rhythm section. He had cut his teeth in the 1940s with Stan Kenton, Machito, and Chano Pozo during the early Latin/bop phase, and backed artists such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Artie Shaw, and Sarah Vaughn.
Garner’s song choices are famously eclectic, from a relaxed version of I’m Confessin,’ a jaunty romp through Cole Porter’s Night and Day, a slow, occasionally abstract take on Duke Ellington’s Satin Doll, to his earliest cover of Bobby Hebb’s wildly popular Sunny. Improvising over a slight Latin beat, Garner’s take on Sunny is funky, exuberant, and wholly original.
Why it remained in the vault (along with his 1969 cover) is puzzling, though given that a couple of dozen versions of Sunny appeared in 1967 alone may very well have convinced Glaser to avoid an already overcrowded field. Garner’s virtuosity is on full display throughout his exquisite rendering of Stella by Starlight, which owes much to the rhythm section’s effortless shifts between samba and swing.
Even die-hard Garner fans will find much that is novel in his renditions of standards—his wild, peripatetic introductions are always full of surprises. And that’s not all: the sessions produced two original compositions debuted here for the first time. Back to You is a gorgeous ballad that feels like a marriage between his iconic Misty and Stairway to the Stars. Down Wylie Avenue begins deceptively as a standard Bb blues, but after the second chorus slides into the eight-bar bridge to I Got Rhythm. Technically, then, Down Wylie Avenue is a 44-bar AABAABCAAB song form! And this from a man renowned for his inability to “read music.”
The band’s marvelously lush take on Misty, recorded in Paris in May of 1969 capping a month-long European tour, marked the end of an era. Legendary bassist, George Duvivier, and drummer, Joe Cocuzzo replaced Isaacs and Smith and participated in a recording session in October that yielded Chase Me, a jubilant, brisk tune full of shout choruses, punctuated by Garner’s vigorous left hand.
Photo by Charles Stewart
By the time the 1971 sessions roll around, Jimmie Smith was back in the drum chair accompanied by thirty-year-old Ernest McCarty, Jr., a bassist out of Chicago with an impressive resume that included working with singer/songwriter Oscar Brown, Jr. Smith, McCarty, and Mangual jelled immediately, which should be evident on the album’s opening track, High Wire, whose funky bass line screams 1970s. The two standards, I Want to Be Happy and Caravan, prove that Garner had lost nothing in terms of imagination and virtuosity. Following a gospel-inflected introduction, he takes off on I Want to Be Happy, playing stunning shout choruses in perfect unison with Smith’s snare drums. And once again, we are treated to two more new Garner originals: Latin Digs, a Bb blues over a Latin rhythm, and Wild Music, an A minor blues over lightning. What makes this song “wild” is Garner’s rubato introduction, which strikes me as a mini tribute to Rachmaninoff.
Finally, there is Martha Glaser, Garner’s longtime manager and general, issuing some direction but making sure the conditions are optimal for her friend to make music. I say friend because it is clear from the snippets of conversation that Garner is more than a client and the recording studio is more than a work place. They could be hanging out in Glaser’s living room or Garner’s suite or backstage in some concert hall. The warmth, informality, and mutual respect are clearly on display. Well, almost. Authentic working friendships are never free of tensions and miscues, and we should not expect Garner and Glaser and the rest of the quartet to be immune. But at the end of the day, how can anyone come away from these staggeringly beautiful and joyful sessions without a smile, without that happy feeling that something magical took place? So be prepared to listen deeply, both to the music and the laughter. Dig Erroll and Martha and the rest, at work, at play, making music. Ready?
Robin D.G.Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. From 2006 to 2011, Kelley was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He was the 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient; and is author of numerous works, including Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original.