The
Most Happy Piano
Errol Garner
Born in Pittsburgh in 1921 , Errol Garner started playing piano at the age of two. He never learned to read music,
probably because it was never a necessity for him. He learned to
play the 'novelty' styles of Zez Confrey and others from listening
to 78 records, a style which used steady left hand chord rhythms
to support very free right-hand melodic interpretations. This provided
a perfect basis for the hard-swinging jazz style that Garner was
to pioneer.
At the age of seven, Garner began appearing on radio station KDKA
in Pittsburgh with a group called the Candy Kids, and by the age
of eleven he was playing on the Allegheny riverboats. Garner began
to attract attention after he moved to New York in the early forties,
and shortly afterwards he made his first recordings. By 1950, Garner
had established himself an international reputation, and from that
point until his death on January 2, 1977, he made countless tours
both at home and abroad, and produced a huge volume of recorded
work.
Garner's style evolved out of the 'novelty rags' of the twenties.
More contemporary jazz influences include Earl Hines, another
Pittsburgh native, and the rhythm compings of Freddie Green (Count
Basie's longtime guitarist). But Garner was ultimately a very
idiosyncratic player, and he doesn't fit well into any of the
standard piano style groupings of 40's and 50's jazz. His characteristic
traits are of course his steady, guitaristic, left hand compings,
and, most obviously, his octaval treatments of melodies and solo
lines. The major seventh arpeggio in octaves which introduces
Garner's biggest hit, Misty is an example. Another typical Garnerism
is the pizzicato, super-syncopated introduction. These intros
are often highly independent of the main part of the piece. They
range from fanciful to sassy, but always their choppy staccato
serves to highten the driving effect once Garner turns on his
relentless left hand rhythm.
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